Amazon Kindle-Edition blogs now allow ‘new window’ links to be followed

AMAZON KINDLE-EDITION BLOGS NOW ALLOW SUBSCRIBERS THE ABILITY TO FOLLOW LINKS THAT ARE CODED FOR “NEW WINDOWS” (“new tabs” on a computer web browser, but not recognized formerly in the Kindle Editions).

This is a long-desired feature, and its absence in the new Kindle 3, despite its more capable web browser, was lamented.

With this kind of link which is meant to bring you to another website via a new window while keeping the blog-website in place in the original window, we’d get a Kindle-edition blog error message instead, saying:

“Web Browser could not open this link
because opening multiple windows is
not supported”

Now, the Kindle Edition blogs can now just follow links like this!

And you can get back to your last Kindle-Edition page merely by pressing the BACK button.

(The image at the top is a screenshot of a page in the Kindle-Edition (UK edition) of this blog.
The blog holds the last 25 blog articles as of that day.)

Amazon programmers were apparently able to enable this feature, finally, from their servers (which makes sense), so that no new software change was needed on the Kindle itself.

Earlier Kindle devices
As a result, subscribers can not only follow links now, with Kindle 3, but I tested my DX Graphite, which uses software version 2.5.x rather than Kindle 3’s v3.0.x and it worked for that software version also.  It, however, made me realize how much faster the website-response time for Kindle 3’s (UK: K3’s) is, relative to how long it takes a site to load on the Kindle 2.

I’ve always been patient with loading time on the Kindle because the experimental web browser is free.  I’d forgotten just how patient I was until I tried this on the Kindle 2 — but if you’re not in a hurry, this is now doable.

Kindle 1’s are enabled also.  I accessed the last Kindle blog received on my Kindle 1 and tried a link to a businessinder.com page.  Well, I thought the Kindle 1 probably was not able to do it, at least not in my lifetime, but after 45 seconds, the page actually came up.  This will not be what most Kindlers will want to do on a Kindle 1, but it’s nice it was enabled for all Kindles, for the Kindle-edition blogs at least.

Twitter and Facebook links, not enabled in this way
However, new-window type links are still not doable, with Twitter and Facebook.  Hyperlinks placed by users on those services almost always involve coding for the ‘new window’ (or new tab) process.  In these cases, there is just no response to clicking on one of those links.  Nothing happens.

Since so many of us are on (costly to Amazon) 3G cellular network access when trying to get on the Net when outside our homes, I can see the lack of motivation to enable this capability ASAP for those extremely popular, somewhat addictive social-network sites.

Twitter workaround
However, the Twitter problem has been given a workaround by our being able to use kindletwit.com.

Tip:  When you try to log on via it’s OAuth style log-in process, you get a message that the Kindle cannot load that site.  That’s a spurious message because once the page load finishes, you can.  It just takes awhile as it’s starting a special security-login process.
However, when you start to type in your user name, your cursor will actually be in the URL ‘Location” field at the top.  So move it down to the login-field before typing.

Ongoing downloadable Mobiweb file
That Kindletwit link is in my downloadable mobiweb file of good links/URLs for Kindles.  The file includes tips on how to get around problems on some sites used, but the file is not well-organized and can be confusing.

I spent about 10 hours reformatting the file the other night, re-writing it to make it clearer, using a different organizational procedure, and adding all kinds of sites to it, but when I saved it and backed up that same file, the Open Office software I was using (because I couldn’t find my WORD discs for the netbook) truncated 95% of the file, although the raw data exists in the file.  Five recovery programs were not able to retrieve or extract that data in a readable way.

So I’ll have to do that over and plan to do that in a week, after I recover from the experience :-).  That file is useable as it stands, but I left out quite a bit in it while trying to do listings for Kindle 3 and Kindle 2.
For those who do use it, the CNET link no longer works and should just be m.cnet.com.

Upshot
That side-note aside: it’s excellent that those who were frustrated by not being able to follow links in the Kindle-edition blogs can now do so.  I suspect that most people choosing to follow an information link would be on Kindle 3 (due to the speedier new Webkit browser) and would be likely to be using WiFi than the 3G cellular network access that costs Amazon when used.

Tip2 – an important one to remember.  When reading this on the Kindle-Edition blog, links that are to earlier articles on Kindleworld site should be ignored because they take too long to load, due to the long listing of information and reference links that are on each page of the blogsite.

I discovered this new and long-requested link-following capability while talking with the helpful Kindle-blog representative yesterday.  He could follow the blog links, and when I tried the same links on my own Kindle 3 with him, I was finally able to also.  It was a great feeling!  And the page came up faster than I expected, on the Kindle 3.
I suspect that Tom Semple and others who mentioned, in comments here and in email, the inability to follow new-window links on the Kindle device’s blog edition, will be as glad as I.

Via Andrys Basten’s Kindleworld blog