John Wang

Over the past couple weeks, I have been testing out the new Amazon Kindle2 for reference use on Web Design and Development. I went through the Amazon.com Kindle Store to see what books were available to get on the Kindle. I also looked at all the books to see if eBook PDF versions were available so that I could convert them to the Kindle. I was able to find a few Print books to compare with the Kindle and also some PDF books too. Here are some pictures comparing the same section of the books.

Kindle vs Print

I used 2 separate books for comparing Print to Kindle formatted books. Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards and Andy Budd’s CSS Mastery. They are both available on the Kindle Store and in Print format. The Kindle version of the book compared very well to the Print version. The only real difference I noticed was the loss of color pages if the Print version had them. Other than that, reading was very easy and comfortable. Images were the only concern, and Amazon managed to do a pretty good job at having it scale properly. You can change the size of the images that show up throughout the book if you want to see it bigger. The text formatting was interesting, as it’s fixed-width font and center-aligned. So every now and then you may only see 3-4 words per line depending on your font size choice. Overall, I am enjoying the experience so far.

Print vs PDF Converted

The book used for this comparison is Jason Baird’s The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. The book is published by Sitepoint and available in Print and PDF eBook format. I converted the PDF version of the book using Mobipocket Creator 4.2 Publisher Edition. It’s a free Windows ONLY application. The process is quite simple. Select the PDF, import it, fill out the required metadata, build the PRC file and copy it over to the Kindle via the USB cable. Once that’s done, you can begin reading your book.
Comparing the 2. The converted PDF did have some issues with images and their sizes. Not really all too surprising. The main part where it seemed to have issues, was with text inside of a box. The converted software takes the text out of the text box and creates an image for the text box. As for regular images. It’s mostly random. The screenshot of the Website in the book converted fairly well. However, as you will see in the next section, some images were not resized as expected. It doesn’t cause too much of a problem for reading the actual text though.

Kindle vs PDF Converted

For this comparison, I chose to use Jeff Croft’s Pro CSS Techniques book. It’s published by Apress and available on the Amazon.com Kindle Store. The Converted PDF actually reads very well. As I said before, the images sometimes tend to have resizing/scaling issues. One thing that the converted PDF does have issues with, is sidebar-type quotes or text. It tends to incorporate them into the book based on it’s location on the page instead of keeping them separate. So, that does take some getting used to. For standard plain text PDF books, it works wonderfully. I have not yet tried sending Amazon a PDF to convert and see if their results match up. I also haven’t tested other means of converting the PDF such as using Stanza. For the Apress books, since every one that I’ve gotten from them are all in grayscale anyways, there isn’t any issue of loss of color. For Sitepoint books though, I can see loss of color as an issue. If there is color-coded code in the books, I can see it become an issue. Since most of the Web Development books I found available are Apress books, I haven’t run into that issue.

iPhone App

The Kindle iPhone App is freely available on the Apple iTunes App Store. You can only read the books you purchase through the Kindle Store. As of right now, converting PDF files to Kindle format cannot be read on the iPhone. Here are some screenshots of CSS Mastery and Designing with Web Standards on the Kindle iPhone App.

A Small sampling of books available in the Kindle Store

• CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions (Kindle Edition) by Andy Budd
• Designing the Obvious (Kindle Edition) by Robert Hoekman
• Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning (Kindle Edition) by Dan Brow
• Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional (Kindle Edition) by Simon Collison
• Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax: From Novice to Professional (Kindle Edition)
  by Michael Purvis (Author), Jeffrey Sambells (Author), Cameron Turner (Author)
• Pro CSS Techniques (Kindle Edition) by Jeff Croft (Author), Ian Lloyd (Author), Dan Rubin (Author)
• Pro JavaScript Techniques (Kindle Edition) by John Resig (Author)
• Bulletproof Ajax (Kindle Edition) by Jeremy Keith
• Designing with Web Standards, Second Edition (Kindle Edition) by Jeffrey Zeldman

Conclusion

Overall, I am enjoying using the Kindle as a reference material for Web Design books and Web Development books. I have converted all of the Sitepoint PDF eBooks that I have bought and also the vast majority of the Apress eBooks as well. Having them all readily available and search-able is really convenient. Also, the note-taking and highlighting capabilities of the Kindle are very easy-to-use and helpful.

Your Thoughts and Comments?

What do you think of the Kindle as a viable replacement for Print books, Textbooks or reference books?

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