ComiXology is one of the leading digital comic companies in the world. They have licensed properties for most of the big companies, such as DC, Marvel, GI.Joe, Archie, and many more. Today, the company has revised their seminal iOS app to make landscape e-reading extremely viable.
There are two major features that have been introduced today: Fit to Width and Show Two Pages. Normally, when you read in landscape mode, the comic is centered with a ton of negative space on each side. In the past, you basically had to read comics in portrait mode, because this is the way they were digitally optimized for.
Fit to Width is a great feature that will automatically re-size the comic book so that it is taking up the entire screen in landscape mode. This will automatically zoom in, making the top frames very readable. The most useful functionality of this feature is making readers pinch and zoom less to read the text and view images. Instead, you simply gesture up and down. This brings a high-level of immersion back into the comic experience. You are less concerned with pinching and zooming, and are able to get lost within the comic.
The other major new enhancement is “Show Two Pages.” When reading exclusively in landscape mode, you are able to display two pages of your comic. This feels more like the traditional comic approach and provides a more visceral experience. Older comics tend to be more dialog heavy and are not really optimized for this feature, newer ones tend to be more graphic heavy and are better suited.
ComiXology has hit a home run with this new update and it is available on iOS via all their digital properties. If you don’t use their main app, all of the standalone versions are available, too. So if you are a Marvel fan, and use that dedicated app to read and buy your comics, the new features are now upgradable in iTunes.
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.