Ever since e-books and e-reader devices entered the marketplace to compete with less convenient conventional printed books, the technology has evolved at breakneck speed. Within just 10 years the quality of the electronic print has been dramatically enhanced, and lots of new features and innovations have been made available. Meanwhile the price of e-readers has plummeted while the quality and variety of options has significantly increased. You can buy basic e-readers, ones that also allow you to check your email or surf the web, and even ones that deliver videos and other kinds of specialized multimedia content…while enabling you to do things like communicate face to face with friends through cam sessions or shop online.
Sometimes the constant innovation is hard to keep up with, and your particular e-reader may have fun and interesting features that you aren’t even aware of…like, possibly, the few outlined for you below.
Bookmarking Made Easy
With many touchscreen e-readers you can highlight text by simply pressing on the word you want to highlight. Then drag your finger across the sentence – or sentences – without lifting it, until you arrive at the end of the section you wish to highlight. Lift your finger and some different menu options for dealing with that selected text should appear in a pop-up window. If you tap on the “highlight” command it should save your text for later.
Swiping Makes Kindle Fire Searches Simpler
With some of the newer Kindle Fire devices, though, you can execute some functions with a simple swipe of your finger on the built-in Kindle Fire keyboard. As you may know, swiping is a motion made with your finger sideways across the screen while maintaining tactile contact with the touchscreen. Instead of doing a few steps or typing in multiple commands, you can swipe to accomplish some common tasks.
For instance, if you have text typed into the search engine box on the top of the Fire, and you want to select all of it in order to copy it, swipe your finger from the key that says “?123” over the key for the letter “a” (for “all”) and it should select everything. To copy it, swipe again from the ?123 key to the key for the letter “c” (for copy) and that should copy it. To cut the text, swipe from ?123 to the letter “x”, and when you are ready to paste that copied word, slide from ?123 to the key for the letter “v.”
Touchscreen Shortcuts
Are you ever reading an e-book that is illustrated with cool graphics and pictures, but you wish you could see the image without any text? A touchscreen e-reader device may enable you to do that. To find out, select the image by tapping on it with your finger. If a little icon that looks like a magnifying glass appears, tap on the image once more…and it should open up to a full-screen view that lets you really get a closer look at it.
If you want to bookmark that page – or any page in any of the e-books you’re reading with Kindle Touch, you can do it the standard way…which requires a few steps. Or you can use a shortcut by just tapping in the upper right-hand corner of the page. That’s where you would probably fold the corner of the page in a traditional paper and ink book, right? Well, with Kindle Touch when you tap in that spot a bookmark that resembles a dog-eared page should appear to save your place in the book.
Taking a Screenshot
A screenshot is a photographic image of the screen you are looking at on your e-reader device. If you have a Kindle Voyage or Paperwhite, and you want to take a screenshot…maybe to share an image, a pie chart, or a graph found in a book, try pressing both sides of the screen in the corners, simultaneously. On other types of Kindle e-readers, you can take a screenshot by depressing the Alt key, Shift key, and the G at the same time. When a screenshot is taken you will usually notice a quick flash. Then the image should show up in your documents folder.
There Is Always More to Come
Each year there are millions of new e-books written and published, and practically every few months new innovations are made in the e-reader device industry. If you own an older version, you may be astonished by how much has changed – and how much more your money can buy in terms of value-adding features, sleek style, and ultimate portability. So if you have an e-reader, stay tuned. Whenever we discover new features or a manufacturer introduces a new generation of e-readers to its lineup, we’ll do our best to let you know and give you an in-depth review.
