Amazon have finally released their Kindle Publisher Tools with Kindle Format 8 support. This is a new version of the Kindle format that provides more formatting options and will be going head-to-head with EPUB 3.0 in the e-book marketplace.
We’re pleased to announce that Kindle Publisher Tools - KindleGen and Kindle Previewerwith Kindle Format 8 (KF8) support are now available for download. Kindle Format 8 is Amazon’s next generation file format offering a wide range of new features and enhancements – including HTML5 and CSS3 support that publishers can use to create all types of books. KF8 adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including drop caps, numbered lists, fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics – opening up more opportunities to create Kindle books that readers will love. Kindle Fire is the first Kindle device to support KF8 – in the coming months KF8 will be rolled out to our latest generation Kindle e-ink devices as well as our free Kindle reading apps.
Their wording makes me wonder if they’ll be supporting the new format on the older Kindles, specifically the Kindle 3 that I have.
Their wording is a little suspect. However, I would think that they would have enough fallbacks in the published content that if the older devices don’t have the ability to do all the things embodied in the new format that at least you’ll be able to read the content. Of course, this could just be a marketing device to sell more Fires, but that would be extremely skeptical of me, wouldn’t it?
What gives me hope that the older devices will still be able to do SOMETHING with the content is the last phrase about the free Kindle reading apps (but then that may just be that the platforms already support HTML5 and CSS3).