For a quarter of a century, almost, Jakob Nielsen has lamented the low resolution of text on the computer screen, and he's been right. Webwriters have created a whole new style of writing to deal with that problem.
Now he's written a Kindle 2 Usability Review (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox). The summary:
Amazon's new e-book reader offers print-level readability and shines for reading fiction, but it has awkward interaction design and poor support for non-linear content.
Quite apart from the excitement of a new toy, the reported sharpness of Kindle 2 text has a portent for webwriters: What happens when the same sharpness is available for ordinary computer monitors and even mobile phones?
For other reasons, Amy Gahran sees great promise in the Kindle 2 for journalists. In another post, she links to a story arguing that the New York Times should give every subscriber a free Kindle, and to a review of the Sony PRS-700—a competitor of the Kindle.
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