kindle fire hd the missing manual 2nd edition

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Kindle
Fire HD
Peter Meyers
Beijing | Cambridge | Farnham | Köln | Sebastopol | Tokyo
2nd Edition
The book that should have been in the box
®
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Kindle Fire HD: The Missing Manual, Second Edition
By Peter Meyers
Copyright © 2013 Peter Meyers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Printed in Canada.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North,
Sebastopol, CA 95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional
use. Online editions are also available for most titles (safari.oreilly.com). For more
information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800.998.9938 or

Editor: Nan Barber
Production Editor: Holly Bauer
Proofreader: Carla Spoon
Illustrations: Rebecca Demarest
Indexer: Ron Strauss
Cover Designers: Randy Comer, Karen
Montgomery, and Suzy Wiviott
Interior Designer: Monica Kamsvaag,
Ron Bilodeau, & J.D. Biersdorfer
February 2012: First Edition.
January 2013: Second Edition.

Revision History for the Second Edition:
2012-01-11 First release
See
/> for release details.
The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Kindle Fire HD: The
Missing Manual and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their
products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book,
and O’Reilly Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been
printed in caps or initial caps.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher
and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting
from the use of the information contained herein.
ISBN: 978-1-449-35729-0
[TI]
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Contents
The Missing Credits vii
Introduction
1
PART I
Getting Started and Reading
CHAPTER 1
Out of the Box: Setting Up, Taking a Tour 13
Parts and Ports 14
Turning the Fire On, Making It Yours
16
Rotation and Orientation
20
Turning the Fire O

21
The Home Screen
23
Prying Eyes and Controlling Kids
28
Tapping, Touching, Typing
31
Installing Apps
34
Cloud vs. Device
37
CHAPTER 2
Reading (and Listening to) Books 41
Grab a Book 42
Page Turning and Navigation
42
Search…and Research
48
Playing Page Designer
52
Notes and Highlighting
54
Bookmarks
56
Reading on Multiple Devices
58
Audiobooks
62
Browsing and Buying
67

Borrowing and Lending
72
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IV CONTENTS
CHAPTER 3
The Newsstand 77
Apps vs. Kindle Editions 78
Reading and Navigation
80
Browsing and Buying
84
CHAPTER 4
Documents and Spreadsheets 89
The Built-in Docs Library 90
Third-Party Apps
95
PART II
Watching and Listening
CHAPTER 5
Watching TV and Movies 103
Browsing and Downloading 105
App Spotlight: Netflix and Hulu
113
Syncing and Sharing
119
CHAPTER 6
Photos and Home Videos 123
Getting Pictures and Videos onto the Fire 124
Browsing Photos
134

CHAPTER 7
Listening to Music 137
Getting Music onto the Fire 138
Browsing and Searching
143
Listening
145
Playlists: Be Your Own DJ
149
Browsing the Store and Buying
152
PART III
Communications and Browsing
CHAPTER 8
Email, Contacts, and Calendar 163
Email and Address Book Setup 164
Checking and Reading Email
171
Composing a Message
177
The Contacts App
179
Keeping Your Calendar
181
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V413HAV
CONTENTS V
CHAPTER 9
Browsing the Web 187
Visiting a Website 188

Navigation and Viewing Basics
191
Favorites and Recently Visited Sites
195
Searching
197
Copying Text and Images
198
Sharing and Saving Web Pages
199
Security and Other Advanced Settings
201
PART IV
Kindle in Appland
CHAPTER 10
Playing Games 209
Making Shapes 210
Finding Paths
212
Falling Objects
216
Quizzes and Brain Teasers
218
Word Puzzlers and Number Boards
219
Driving and Flying
222
CHAPTER 11
Creative Corner 225
Painting and Drawing 225

Photos
229
Music
231
Cooking and the Kitchen
232
CHAPTER 12
Managing Time, Tasks, and Travel 237
Clocks 238
To-Do Lists and Notes
240
Dining Out
243
Travel
244
Bills and Banking
247
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VI CONTENTS
PART V
Appendixes
APPENDIX A
Settings 255
Help and Feedback 255
My Account
256
Applications
256
Parental Controls
257

Sounds & Display
257
Wireless
258
Device
258
Location-based Services
259
Language & Keyboard
259
Security
260
Legal & Compliance
260
APPENDIX B
Troubleshooting and Maintenance 263
WiFi Not Working 264
Unresponsive App
265
App Installation Problems
265
Out-of-Date Apps
265
System Software Updates
265
Battery Draining Too Quickly
266
Sharing or Selling Your Fire
266
Where to Head for Help

267
APPENDIX C
8.9-inch Model Special Features 269
Activating 4G/LTE Service 269
Keyboard Extras
271
Accessibility
273
Index 275
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About the Author
Peter Meyers designs, speaks, and writes about
digital books. Currently he’s vice president of editorial
and content innovation at Citia (), an
incredibly cool publishing startup. For more than two
decades, he’s worked at the intersection of writing and
technology. He cofounded Digital Learning Interactive,
a pioneering multimedia textbook publisher (sold in
2004 to Thomson Learning). Peter has written for many
publications, including the
New York Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
Wired
,
Salon
, and the
Village Voice
. During a five-year tour of duty at O’Reilly Media,

he worked in the Missing Manual group, serving as managing editor and associ-
ate publisher. He’s also the author of
Best iPad Apps
and
Breaking the Page:
Transforming Books and the Reading Experience
. Peter’s undergraduate degree
is from Harvard, where he studied American history and literature, and he has an
MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives with his wife and two
daughters in “upstate Manhattan” (aka Washington Heights). Online, you can
find his blog at and his tweets at />petermeyers.
About the Creative Team
Nan Barber (editor) has been working with the Missing Manual series since its
inception. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, a variety of electronic
gadgets, and a stack of dictionaries. Email:
The Missing Credits
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VIII THE MISSING CREDITS
Holly Bauer (production editor) resides in Ye Olde Cambridge, Mass. She’s a
production editor by day and an avid home cook, prolific DIYer, and mid-century
modern furniture enthusiast by night/weekend. Email:
Carla Spoon (proofreader) is a freelance writer and copyeditor. An avid run-
ner, she works and feeds her tech gadget addiction from her home office in the
shadow of Mount Rainier. Email:
Ron Strauss (indexer) specializes in the indexing of information technology
publications of all kinds. He is also an accomplished classical violist and lives
in northern California with his wife and fellow indexer, Annie, and his miniature
pinscher, Kanga. Email:
Yvonne Mills (technical reviewer) is a writer, blogger, and gadget addicted she-
geek. She is equally comfortable in the corporate world as she is blogging from

within a fort made out of her extensive tablet collection. Follow her musings at
www .acerbicblonde.com.
Acknowledgments
The Missing Manual series doesn’t accept ads, but I can’t resist kicking these
thanks off with an uncompensated word of gratitude to the makers of Cafe du
Monde. Friends, this is some writing-friendly coffee! For a book that was largely
written in the wee hours of the day, this caffeinated support was crucial. In the
department of humans that helped, Brian Sawyer gave me the green light on
the initial version of this project, and to him I remain thankful. At Amazon, Leslie
Letts and Amir Pellig were patient, valuable guides to the Fire. They answered
many questions that I would have had to spend hours hunting down on my
own. On a related note, technical reviewer Yvonne Mills did a thorough job of
spotting missing or confusing explanations; she also added a number of great
suggestions. Indexer Ron Strauss put together the subject finder at the back of
this book; as a huge fan of that overlooked art, I wanted to say thanks for doing
such a great job on that front. What this book contains, of course, is more than
just words, and for the finely polished images and labels I wanted to tip my hat
to Rebecca Demarest. Equally important is Holly Bauer’s work; each page layout
is a beautifully crafted combo of words and pictures thanks to her fine interior
design skills. Speaking of prose: My editor Nan Barber has demonstrated why
she belongs in the Missing Manual Hall of Fame; thanks to her, with ample help
from proofreader Carla Spoon, lots o’ flab and fuzzy verbiage got trimmed and
clarified.
On the home front, this writing project couldn’t have happened—and wouldn’t
be worth doing—without the help of my three favorite touchscreen fanatics.
Willa, I hereby award you the Ms. Junior Cryptographer Award, for youngest-ever
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THE MISSING CREDITS IX
cracker of Mom and Dad’s security code. Esme, you are now platinum-certified
on every version of Toca Boca ever invented. Here’s to many more joint sketch-

ing sessions!
And to my darling Lisa: I am grateful to you especially for enduring my annual
fall book-writing ritual. For your extra-innings childcare work, your above-and-
beyond-the-call wifely support, and your heapings of multi-gigabyte love, I
hereby pledge that I will figure out a way to write faster!
—
Peter Meyers
The Missing Manual Series
Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computer products that
don’t come with printed manuals (which is just about all of them). Each book
features a handcrafted index and cross-references to specific pages (not just
chapters). Recent and upcoming titles include:
Access 2010: The Missing Manual
by Matthew MacDonald
Access 2013: The Missing Manual
by Matthew MacDonald
Adobe Edge Animate: The Missing Manual
by Chris Grover
Buying a Home: The Missing Manual
by Nancy Conner
Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, Third Edition,
by Matthew MacDonald
CSS3: The Missing Manual, Third Edition,
by David Sawyer McFarland
David Pogue’s Digital Photography: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue
Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual
by David Sawyer McFarland
Droid 2: The Missing Manual
by Preston Gralla

Droid X2: The Missing Manual
by Preston Gralla
Excel 2010: The Missing Manual
by Matthew MacDonald
Excel 2013: The Missing Manual
by Matthew MacDonald
Facebook: The Missing Manual, Third Edition
by E. A. Vander Veer
FileMaker Pro 12: The Missing Manual
by Susan Prosser and Stuart Gripman
Flash CS6: The Missing Manual
by Chris Grover
Galaxy S II: The Missing Manual
by Preston Gralla
Galaxy Tab: The Missing Manual
by Preston Gralla
Google+: The Missing Manual
by Kevin Purdy
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X THE MISSING CREDITS
Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual
by Chris Grover
HTML5: The Missing Manual
by Matthew MacDonald
iMovie ’11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue and Aaron Miller
iPad: The Missing Manual, Fifth Edition
by J.D. Biersdorfer
iPhone: The Missing Manual, Sixth Edition
by David Pogue

iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual
by Craig Hockenberry
iPhoto ’11: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue and Lesa Snider
iPod: The Missing Manual, Eleventh Edition
by J.D. Biersdorfer and David Pogue
JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual, Second Edition
by David Sawyer
McFarland
Living Green: The Missing Manual
by Nancy Conner
Microsoft Project 2010: The Missing Manual
by Bonnie Biafore
Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual
by Bonnie Biafore
Motorola Xoom: The Missing Manual
by Preston Gralla
Netbooks: The Missing Manual
by J.D. Biersdorfer
NOOK Tablet: The Missing Manual
by Preston Gralla
Office 2010: The Missing Manual
by Nancy Conner, Chris Grover, and Matthew
MacDonald
Office 2011 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual
by Chris Grover
Office 2013: The Missing Manual
by Nancy Conner and Matthew MacDonald
OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue

Personal Investing: The Missing Manual
by Bonnie Biafore
Photoshop CS6: The Missing Manual
by Lesa Snider
Photoshop Elements 10: The Missing Manual
by Barbara Brundage
PHP & MySQL: The Missing Manual, Second Edition
by Brett McLaughlin
QuickBooks 2013: The Missing Manual
by Bonnie Biafore
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition
by David Pogue
Windows 7: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue
Windows 8: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue
Your Body: The Missing Manual
by Matthew MacDonald
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THE MISSING CREDITS XI
Your Brain: The Missing Manual
by Matthew MacDonald
Your Money: The Missing Manual
by J.D. Roth
For a full list of all Missing Manuals in print, go to www.missingmanuals.com/
library.html.
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START SMALL, GET BIG.
That motto must be on the wall somewhere at

Amazon HQ. You see it in the products they sell (beginning with books
and music and moving on to well, everything), the services they offer
(discounted shipping evolving into the Amazon Prime service), and the
gadget group that, five years ago, unveiled the clunky but ambitious Kindle
e-reader. Soon that had spawned a growing family of fellow Kindles: the
jumbo-sized DX followed by many, many variants. It all culminated in the
company’s first version of a tablet PC—the Kindle Fire. Now the Fire too
has grown into a bigger, better version of itself. The 7-inch model you
could cradle in one hand now has strapping 8.9-inch siblings.
The Fire is deceptively powerful. Though it’s got only a few physical but-
tons, underneath its sleek, simple exterior lies a machine that can do as
much as a “real” computer. It’s a Kindle so, of course, you can buy and
read ebooks. But because it’s a multi-purpose tablet, that’s just one of its
many talents. With it, you also get:
• TV set and movie screen. Bring a Fire into bed or onto the bus, and you’ve
got your own personal entertainment center. Amazon’s Hollywood and TV
studio dealmakers have put together a cheap and large catalog that’s big
enough to rival Netflix and iTunes. Your choices don’t quite match what
you’d find on a normal boob tube or cineplex, but you still have thousands
and thousands of titles to pick from. This particular revolution is just getting
started and it’s wickedly fun for any moving image fan.
• Web browser. Most phones nowadays give you some way to surf. But even
the biggest, smartest phone is still around the size of your palm. The Fire’s
extra real estate really helps you appreciate the Web. What you see on its
shiny, multi-million colored display is pretty close to what you see on a full-
size computer.
Introduction
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2 INTRODUCTION
• Email, chat, and social networking. It’s all here. However you connect, the

Fire is ready to help. It has a nifty built-in email program, video chat with
Skype pals, and easy sharing to popular hangouts like Facebook and Twitter.
• Portable picture frame. TV, movies, and the Web aren’t always enough.
Sometimes the best home entertainment is the kind you make with your
own family: pet photos, vacation albums, and birthday party videos. If you
can capture it on a digital camera or camcorder, you can show it off on the
Fire. Photo sharing in particular is a blast. No longer do your friends have to
squint at the cellphone screen to watch little Eddie make the diving catch.
The Fire’s big enough to really light up people’s faces.
• Digital briefcase. Tired of fumbling around with printouts? With the Fire, you
never have to bother printing hotel confirmations, online shopping receipts,
or the work documents you want to read on the train. Out of the box, the
Fire is ready to display any Microsoft Word or PDF file. A few add-on apps,
which you’ll meet in Chapter 4, extend that list to almost any document type
you’ve ever heard of.
• Jukebox. Amazon’s been hard at work stocking the shelves of its digital
record shop. Even better, it’s designed free software that makes it easy to
remain a loyal Apple fan while playing its tunes on non-iGadgets—the Fire
very much included. Whether you plug in a pair of earphones, play your
music aloud on the Fire’s built-in speakers, or connect a pair of legit speak-
ers, this gadget’s great for tuning in and turning on.
• Video game player. Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, even 21st-century versions of
Pac Man and Pong—it’s all here on the Fire, plus a cool 15,000 or so other
options. A quick list of key categories include: race car driving; football, soc-
cer, and pool; word and number puzzles; card games; pinball; and strategy
and adventure fests. Hardcore teenage gamers may need a dedicated
gadget for high-end performance, but for the rest of us, the Fire is a pretty
amazing portable arcade.
• Everything else. Speaking of apps: Anything the Fire can’t do out of the box,
some developer somewhere is probably working on. Weather report videos,

podcasts and worldwide radio tuners, recipe displays, sleep-inducing white
noise machines, horoscope advisors, family calendar keepers. These are just
a few of the apps that are
currently
available on the Fire. About half of these
special-purpose programs are free, and most cost no more than a buck or
two.
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INTRODUCTION 3
 TIP 
One simple way to load up on apps is via Amazon’s daily giveaway. At the very top of
the Appstore (either on your Fire or on Amazon.com), a paid app’s price gets slashed to the
low, low price of free. Page 36 has details on downloading and other app suggestions. Also
check out the final three chapters of this book, which are dedicated to guiding you through
the many app options that await.
What’s New in Fire-land
Most of the Fire’s new talents come thanks to a slew of hardware upgrades. Here
are the highlights:
• New container. The first Fire was a blocky, squarish affair. The second-
generation HD models come inside an all-new hardware jacket. It’s notice-
ably slimmer and sleeker, with tapered edges that make it a pleasure to hold.
 NOTE 
This book covers every version of the Fire except the original, first generation
model released in November 2011; coverage of that device and its flavor of the Fire operat-
ing system await in the first edition of this book. The new models that you’ll read about in
the pages ahead include the 7-inch non-HD Fire, the 7-inch HD version, and the 8.9-inch big
boys (one of which comes with 4G/LTE, for getting online when you don’t have WiFi). Unless
specifically mentioned, the features in this book apply to all these new models.
• Faster innards. You’d have to crack open the housing to see these changes,
but the results are apparent from swipe one. The thing

feels
faster than its
predecessor. The fluid motion on the main screen’s icon carousel (page 25),
the way photos zoom when you spread your fingers apart to enlarge them,
the vertical scrolling speed of long lists—all of it responds really quickly.
• Better screen. What you see on the display itself also looks extra spiffy. HD
model owners, of course, get the most pixels. For them the clarity is remark-
ably crisp. Non-HD owners get a pixel boost too, compared to last year’s
model. Everyone sees less glare.
• Bigger real estate. The difference between 7 and 8.9 inches may sound
minimal, but it gets you a noticeably larger amount of display area to work
with. For those looking to push their Fire into laptop-replacement duty
(working on slideshows and reports, reading PDFs, composing long emails),
the extra space can be a big help.
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4 INTRODUCTION
• Louder, crisper sound. You know that dinky, tinny sound that most portable
gadgets emit? The Fire projects in a loud, clear voice. Thanks to a pair of
stereo-capable, Dolby-powered speakers, the sound is pleasant, audible, and
perfectly adequate for entertaining pals at a picnic table. (Non-HD owners
don’t get the extra Dolby sweetness.)
• Longer battery life. The numbers differ a bit for each model—the 7-inch
non-HD model goes for about 9 hours, its HD cousin goes for about 11 hours,
and the 8.9-inch models top out around 10 hours—but they all extend the
original model’s lasting power by at least an hour.
• Quicker downloads. Souped-up antennas deliver bits from Internet to
device pronto. New, less cluttered flavors of WiFi (5 GHz) now complement
the standard 2.4 GHz band on all the HD models.
• More storage. This one’s especially useful for the HD models, where a couple
of movies and a few pixel-rich games can easily occupy 6, 8, or 10 GB. The

operating system and assorted administrative files alone require another
2-plus GBs. The starter level in HD-land is 16 GB; you can pony up extra to
bump that up as high as 64 GB.
• More connection options. In addition to the existing USB connector, the
Fires now come with a few ultra-handy new ways to slurp down content
and connect with other gadgets. Bluetooth is the biggie. With this popular
wireless technology, you can use an external keyboard or send tunes to a
speaker. HDMI is great for connecting to living room TVs and entertainment
centers. Road warriors can use the 4G/LTE cellular capability on the 8.9-inch
model to surf the Web, do email, and chat even when they’re not near a WiFi
signal.
• Video camera. An entirely new arrival, the front-facing video camera on the
HD models makes video chats possible (and complimentary, thanks to a deal
Amazon cut with Skype, the popular Internet messaging company). The lens
does double duty as a still camera for apps programmed to use it.
Even more important than these physical changes, Team Fire did a big refresh
on the software front. They’ve added media features and even improved how
the device runs.
• Operating system overhaul. The Home (main) screen has been simplified.
Items you’ve most recently used sit side-by-side in an easily swipeable
carousel. Favorites, which can include apps, websites, and ebooks, can be
summoned at a tap.
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INTRODUCTION 5
• Photos. Getting your pictures onto the original Fire was a frustratingly
multi-step affair. No longer. Your Facebook photos are now just a couple of
taps away, and the pictures you store on Amazon’s increasingly useful Cloud
Drive show up instantly.
• Reading and viewing extras. Amazon’s X-Ray service is a nifty example of
how a subsidiary-owning conglomerate can thoughtfully improve how you

read books and watch movies. For ebooks, X-Ray lets you see a visual guide
to where a book’s characters and key places occur. (That trick comes cour-
tesy of Shelfari, an online book-reading service run by Amazon.) You can
quickly pull up actor profiles in many movies thanks to a similar link to the
IMDb entertainment encyclopedia.
• Syncing. Amazon’s Whispersync service is now almost five years old. If you
have a Kindle, you may already rely on it. This feature keeps track of your
position in a book, making it easy to start on your BlackBerry during the
commute to work, pick up on your office PC during lunch, and finish the day
using a Kindle in bed. Now the same feature is available for audiobooks and
games, so you can keep track of how many levels you’ve conquered—even if
you delete and later reinstall a game. Whispersync keeps track of your prog-
ress even when you switch between audio and Kindle book editions.
• Immersion reading. Speaking of audio and ebooks, here’s another cool
new feature. Pony up a few extra bucks, and you can listen to a profes-
sionally recorded audiobook while the ebook text gets highlighted as it’s
read. Amazon even claims this kind of so-called bi-modal reading improves
comprehension.
• Kid control. The official name for this new feature is FreeTime. That is, you,
the parent can now enjoy guilt-free time while your darlings use your Fire in
tightly controlled ways. Set up specific profiles for each Fire user, and from
there you can choose how much time they each get for app playing, book
reading, and so on.
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6 INTRODUCTION
Under the Fire’s Hood
Making all this happen is a combination of hardware and software that matches
the Fire’s exterior: simple and sufficient to get the job done. Storage size ranges
from 8 GB (on the 7-inch non-HD model) all the way up to 64 GB for the most
capacious 8.9-inch model.

The screen is a 16-million-color IPS display. That’s short for
in-plane switching
,
which means that even if you’re not looking directly at the Fire, what’s on the
screen still looks clear. In other words: Two kids in the back seat of a car both
get a decent view of the movie.
Most significant is the underlying software. The Fire runs on the Google-
designed and freely available Android operating system version 4 (nicknamed
Ice Cream Sandwich, for those keeping score at home). But you’d never know
it if you compared the Fire to one of the other Android-powered tablets out
there—Amazon made all sorts of custom changes. You’ll read about the details
in the pages ahead, but in effect, Amazon laid an easy-to-operate topcoat of its
own design over the basic Android framework. Amazon gets its base layer of
programming for free, but you benefit as well, given that many Android apps are
playable on the Fire.
About This Book
Tucked alongside the Fire and its power cord is a playing card–sized “getting to
know your Kindle” guide. It’s enough to usher you onto the home screen, where
you’ll find a bare-bones User’s Guide—the kind that covers a headline–only list
of features, without telling you much about which ones are most worth your
time. This Missing Manual, then, is the book that should have come in the box. In
the pages ahead, you’ll learn about all the Fire’s nooks and crannies. But what’s
more valuable, you’ll find out which apps and options work best and which items
are still works in progress. You’ll also get real-world counsel on how to beef up
the Fire’s still-developing talents with third-party apps.
About the Outline
The book is divided into five parts, each containing a handful of chapters.
Everything’s arranged to help you get the most out of the Fire’s key talents,
from reading and watching to staying in touch and using apps. You’ll find it
helpful to start with Chapter 1 for a quick tour of the Fire’s parts and navigation.

After that, read the chapters in any order you like—page-specific cross refer-
ences point you to related material you’ll need to understand any explanation.
What follows is a highlight reel of what each part contains:
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INTRODUCTION 7
• Part One. The first chapter explains what you need to know about how
the Fire organizes its contents and how to operate its touchscreen con-
trols.
Reading (and Listening to) Books
(Chapter 2) tells the story of every
Kindle’s main talent; it’s also where audio books are covered.
The Newsstand

(Chapter 3) is next, with coverage on finding, buying, and reading magazines
and newspapers (both plain-text editions and multimedia-powered app ver-
sions).
Documents and Spreadsheets
(Chapter 4) is primarily for Microsoft
Office fans—be they businesspeople or students—but it’s also where you’ll
learn how to do things like read PDF files and load the Fire with ebooks that
don’t come from Amazon.
• Part Two. That beautiful screen you’re holding is ready to show off beautiful
images—moving and still alike.
Watching TV and Movies
(Chapter 5) intro-
duces you to the ever-growing commercial lineup that Amazon offers, ready
for display not just on the Fire, but also on your computer and network-ready
TV. For your own version of showtime,
Photos and Home Videos
(Chapter 6)

gives you the scoop on getting your own pictures and movies onto the small
screen.
Listening to Music
(Chapter 7) covers more than just buying and play-
ing the 20 million songs Amazon now sells. You’ll also find out how to import
any existing iTunes or Windows Media Player collections you have, as well as
the kinds of apps you’ll need to play podcasts and even real radio.
• Part Three. The Fire’s WiFi connection is ready to do more, of course,
than just buy books and songs and movies.
Email, Contacts, and Calendar

(Chapter 8) explains how to get the most out of three apps that ship with
the Fire, and
Browsing the Web
(Chapter 9) sets you up with Silk, Amazon’s
homemade Internet explorer.
• Part Four. The hundreds of thousands of special purpose programs—apps,
as they’re commonly called—that have revolutionized the software industry
and filled our virtual skies with Angry Birds are available, or coming soon,
to your Fire. Amazon’s set up a special store (the Appstore for Android)
where it vets each submission to make sure it’s Fire-compatible. The chap-
ters here—
Playing Games
(Chapter 10),
Creative Corner
(Chapter 11), and
Managing Time, Tasks, and Travel
(Chapter 12)—distinguish the best from the
rest, in an effort to help you spend your app budget wisely.
• Part Five. Three brief, back-of-the-book help guides. The first (

Settings

[Appendix A]) guides you through every option in the buried-deep control
room of that same name. The second (
Troubleshooting and Maintenance

[Appendix B]) lays out a half dozen or so remedies to the most common Fire
ailments and lists links to some helpful advice and support sites. Appendix C
explains how to sign up for the 4G/LTE service on the 8.9-inch model as well
as a few other features reserved just for the big screen Fires.
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8 INTRODUCTION
About→These→Arrows
In order to keep the navigational pointers in this, as well as every Missing
Manual, concise, we’ve adopted a simple shorthand for pointing out how to bur-
row through menu or button hierarchies. Rather than slowing you down with a
cumbersome series of instructions—
Tap the middle of the screen to summon the
Options bar; on it, tap the Menu button and, from the row that pops up above
it, touch Send
—a series of arrows helps more efficiently convey that info, like so:
Options bar
→
Menu
→
Send.
About MissingManuals.com
This book is loaded with web links. If you’re reading the print edition, sure, you
can type in each address every time you want to visit an online pointer. Why not,
though, bookmark the Missing CD page for this title (www.missingmanuals.com/

cds/firemm2e)? There you’ll find a list of every link mentioned within these pages.
The Missing CD page also offers corrections and updates to the book. To see
them, click the View Errata link. You’re invited to submit corrections and updates
yourself by clicking “Submit your own errata” on the same page. To keep this
book as up to date and accurate as possible, each time we print more copies,
we’ll make any confirmed corrections you’ve suggested. Or go directly to the
errata page at />While you’re online, you can register this book at
Registering means we can send you updates about the book, and you’ll be
eligible for special offers like discounts on future editions of
Kindle Fire HD: The
Missing Manual
.
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CHAPTER 1
Out of the Box:
Setting Up, Taking a Tour
CHAPTER 2

Reading (and Listening to) Books
CHAPTER 3
The Newsstand
CHAPTER 4
Documents and Spreadsheets
PART
I
Getting Started
and Reading
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