Comixology have announced new progress on the Amazon Kindle web reader front: guided view is back – and (mostly) fluid again. At least on the beta reader.
In a Twitter thread the Amazon-owned company said:
“We’ve got some news…
“We’ve been hard at work rebuilding the Comixology Guided View experience on the Kindle web reader and are excited to announce that it is now available in beta!
“In the Kindle web reader, you will now see the Guided View beta settings options on the top right navigation bar when a book has Guided View enabled. Books without Guided View will not show these setting options.
“With many ways to read books in Guided View, the fastest way is by double clicking on a panel. Then use the left/right keyboard keys or click the arrows in the browser window to move from panel to panel. You can also change the speed of transition animations or turn them off.
“We’re still ironing out some kinks. For the best experience, we recommend reading on your desktop using Chrome or Firefox browsers. If reading on your phone or tablet use the Comixology apps. Experiencing any issues? Please Tweet or DM our customer support at @cmxsupport
“Check out these changes now at read.amazon.com!”
1./ We’ve got some news… pic.twitter.com/R9qJcrWi9A
— Comixology (@comiXology) December 15, 2022
Comixology has been under fire since the introduction of the 4.0 edition of the service in February, which de facto subsumed the website and app contents into the Amazon Kindle ecosystem – with disastrous results. Without the Comixology website, browser-based users lost the ability to read their books seamlessly online as the Kindle web reader was not nearly so advanced.
In the summer a beta version of the Kindle for Web Reader was unveiled restoring some of the basic Comixology features browser users had grown accustomed to such as double page spreads and vertical scroll but lacking the much-hailed guided view functionality, saying at the time: “We know Guided View is a critical part of the web reading experience – we’re working hard on it and plan to launch it later this year.” The wait for guided view is now over – six months later.
Of course, given the PR nightmare that has been 4.0 – reactions remain mixed.
One more step towards being back to where we were before February 2022.
Amazon has shown an amazing lack of customer care and a phenomenal amount of arrogance during this entire transition. If they weren’t ready with their store, they should have left the old system in place.
Horrible customer experience. It’s moderately better than the abysmal blazing tire fire that it was but that bar was pretty low.
Honestly a an all-around despicable showing by Amazon.
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