Five Tips for Navigation on the Kindle – #2: Flipper Options

OK, so now you know how to use the Enhanced Progress Bar to jet around the book you are reading. If it is a big text, then this is an immense help. Otherwise, you are left clicking “next page” like the flipper button on a pinball machine.

Once you are in the vicinity of where you want to be in the text, you can hold down the “Alt” key and press “next page” or “previous page” to jump ahead (or back) more than one page at a time–5% ahead (or back) to be precise. How’s your math? You don’t even want to try to calculate how many pages (er, positions) that is, because to do so you would have to know how many pages positions this particular book has. For more of this nonsense, see this post.

(Secret EduKindle Tip: I do better on this kind of rapid scanning if I just reduce the font size to #1 and use the flippers to cover a lot of ground with each flip. With the smaller font, I am still covering ground quickly, but I am not skipping over anything–like a chapter heading, for example–which can happen when I use the Alt+flipper strategy. I also try to avoid pressing the flipper too quickly, as that seems to skip pages as well.)

Stay tuned for some more navigation tips that are a bit more precise than these “flipper” strategies.