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I should have tested my first epub better before publishing it to Kindle. I just now discovered that Kindle apparently doesn't support hyperlinked images, which seems bizarre to me.

Can anyone tell me if there's any kind of workaround for this? My next epub is going to have hundreds of images, each one linked to a section where people can see its source and copyright status. If I can't link the images themselves, then I presumably have to include some text under each image that's linked to this section.

So many weird epub bugs!

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  • I was wondering. Is this some kind of art ebook? This is a very interesting problem -- and I don't know the answer. I imagine it has to do with the limited rendering of e-ink devices, but I'll check back with you after doing some research.
    – idiotprogrammer
    Jun 12, 2017 at 3:30
  • No, it's a reference book, but it has a fairly ambitious navigation system. I generally use the up arrow (what's it called, a caret?) to identify links to the next (upper level), but I want to use traditional home icons to identify links to the home pages of particular sections. I lost the URL, but I saw a comment somewhere about Kindle being designed in a way that discourages image hyperlinks.
    – WordBear
    Jun 12, 2017 at 4:01

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(I assume you are talking about an internal, not external link. Is that right?)

Here are some helpful clues and semi-educated guesses.

The epub3 spec doesn't say anything about whether reading systems need to support this feature. Also, there is nothing in the Content Document spec which forbids this. So I wouldn't think that a hyperlinked image would cause a validation problem. (I could be wrong though).

By default, touching an area with a graphic in a reading system will simply enlarge the image. But currently vior for the the touchscreen reading systems I know is that when you click an image, it enlarges that image. You would need some way to let the reader know that the image is also a link.

Here are some guesses:

1)the reading system would need to indicate dual actions for the image OR 2)you would need some scripting language that would permit the opening of a link.

Personally, I see no reason why a reading system shouldn't include hyperlinked images; indeed, the hover action does seem to trigger actions in certain contexts on a tablet. In contrast to web browsers, ebook reading systems don't seem designed to permit animation or interactivity. This could change.

One feature which is semi-supported on iBooks is aside popups. http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2015/best-practices-for-ebook-back-matter-footnotes-and-endnotes/ If the goal is simply to provide data for each art work, a simple popup might do the trick. Or you could add a caption to each image which shows the information you want.

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