Before I shamelessly promote myself as a big fan of Kindle Apps, I better tell you that I am also a big fan of Kindle eBook reader. I really love the Kindle Apps as it works very well in tablets like iPad (I think people just use the term “iPad” instead of tablet anyway). Therefore when I know Amazon released the Kindle Cloud Reader, I have to review it …I set up the Cloud Reader without any problem, but it’s not that intuitive to set up your library for offline reading … anyway, here is the full details (with photos by the end of that blog post) of that new offering from Amazon.
- First of all, go to the homepage of Kindle Cloud Reader. Click the “Sign in to get started”, then sign in with your Amazon account credential in the next screen. That step will then kick start the Kindle Cloud Reader web application, and show you all the eBooks you have purchased for your Kindle.
- Next step is to increase the local database storage size (up to 50 MBytes) so that the application can save your books to your iPad (or other devices) for offline reading. And here is the tricky part, the application will also try to save the apps for offline use, and you will see that message “Saving app for offline use” in the bottom of the screen.
- In many cases, that step will return an error message stating “Error saving app. Tap here to try again“. If you encounter this, go to your iPad setting page and clear the cache of Safari and repeat the steps above again. The saving shall then be successful.
- Then add the apps to home screen. Change name to whatever you like and add to home screen
- Other than the Book grid view, you can also see the Book list view. You can toggle the views from the lower right corner selection buttons.
- Same as the Kindle for iPad apps, you can change the settings like font size, color mode.
- Click any book and you can start reading, and it works pretty much like Kindle for iPads.
- Now, try exit the apps and start the cloud reader again.
- If you have not saved the app for offline use successfully (see step 2 and 3 above), you will be greeted with that error message “Cloud Reader could not be opened because it is not connected to the internet“.
- To really read the books offline, you need to press and hold any book cover in your library, then select “Download & Pin Book.”
- After the download, you will see the books are “Pinned” with a green color pin icon underneath the downloaded book and ready for offline reading !!
- And lastly, there is the Kindle shop such that you can buy books directly within the web apps (if you’re online).
After all these set up, you can read the book as any Kindle apps … with three exceptions:
- You cannot currently create new notes and highlights using Kindle Cloud Reader – but notes and highlights you create while reading the book on your Kindle or another Kindle app will be displayed.
- There is no built-in dictionary (I missed it a lot !!).
- It still feels a bit slower than Kindle reader and Kindle apps.
Hope you find this review useful !!
M.Y. Lessons Learnt 