[V]

It's about categorization (i.e., bookshelves) not folders or tags or other means per-se.

A browse-by-folders option would take all of 20-30 minutes to write, along with another 20-30 for an update to content manager to handle moving them around (Amazon would dump them in the main directory like it does now, no need to alter that at all).  It's really a degree of shoddy implementation that this isn't there as a half-way descent developer could have a workable system in place over lunch.

Bookshelves, using a tagging system most likely since it gives the easiest flexibility, would be a bit harder but not overmuch.  Two days (max) to allow both bookshelves and folder accessibility...and I know they're making enough profit off this to allocate a dev for 2 days to do this.

I can understand why they wouldn't open it up for 3rd party development but this lack of basic functionality just about cries out for some hacking.

"You can have 1,500 books!  All...er...piled in the middle of the floor....good luck finding something" /sigh

 

[V]

As I understand it, the Kindle uses Linux. It's an open-source OS that naturally supports directories (folders). I'm surprised some programmer hasn't already come up with a "folder" mod.

Well, writing the code itself is easy. Getting it into the compiled code on the Kindle so that it's usable as a feature is entirely another matter. And you might even have to monkey with the OS itself depending on if it does any code validation. And it may do a code validation with Amazon before it offloads new content (some device vendors are more paranoid than others) so whispernetting might be an additional concern. Now, you can do this (if you have the time and inclination) but it's not really worth the trouble just to hack in such a small feature.

With the source code at hand, though, it wouldn't be a big deal at all.

I'd settle for it to process web pages locally, at least then I could write up some HTML (well, I'd write up some code to wrap HTML around a database dump) to cut down the clutter with some faux-bookshelves. I can't find a way to do that or externally link from a .prc file.

 

[V]

Well that settles it.

I bet Mr T would get folders/tags/etc