Kindle and iBooks on iPad still have a farsighted way to go . Craig Mod , release experimenter , breaks them down , tell us what needs touch on and offers up some future functionality for digital books .
get ’s not talk about picture integration .
Or young ‘ interface substitution class . ’
These are n’t CD - read-only memory from 1993 .
Let ’s speak about text .
rent ’s blab out about the digital Koran .
UGLY WIDOWS AND SCABBY ORPHANS
IT ’S A RAINY SUNDAY AFTERNOON and I ’m sit down in a cafe in central Tokyo , urgently trying to enjoy a Holy Writ on my iPad . Distractions burst : sloppy composition , misspelt words , confusing pageboy breaks , widows , orphan , humbled tables . These and more pull me from the story spell . In that bit I realize , although I ’ve had this hearty aim of glass and metallic element for a few week , I have n’t managed more than ten pages of anything .
What , then , is the problem ?
It ’s not the sieve – I ’ve happily read several novel on my iPhone .
It ’s not the weight – it feels o.k. when rest on a tabular array or my knee .
The problem is much simpler : iBooks and Kindle.app are incompetent e - reader . They get in the way of the meter reading experience and handle digital record book like poorly typeset PDFs .
We can do better . ( We have to do better . )
But there ’s something beyond user interface and design issue nagging at me : these applications are ignore a core characteristic unique to digital schoolbook . They ’re ignore the meta - data create as we move through and differentiate our vitamin E - Scripture .
This essay considers two sets of query :
1 ) What ’s amiss with our current e - proofreader and how do we reconstruct them ?
2 ) What meta - data do we create when enlist digital text , how can our e - lecturer bosom it and how does that deepen our kinship with books ?
Let ’s first look at our east - readers from a design and usability view . Then weigh how they can really start to embrace the ‘ digital ’ of digital book .
THE STATE OF OUR E-READERS
Place iBooks and Kindle.app side - by - side and core design dispute emerge :
alternatively of allowing the text to breathe , iBooks close up the readers ’ field of view with the dust of a 3D ‘ book . ‘(FIG 1 ) Whereas Kindle.app opts to expend the iPad ’s large canvass to float the text block in generous white outer space .
Kindle.app ’s page design place sailing elements in their right contexts : meta action at law like pass to your subroutine library and bookmarking live in the left and right margins , forth from the text ; lineal natural action like change font size and navigation dwell below the center text block.(FIG 2 )
iBooks , or else , lumps meta and unmediated elements together in a chrome soup . Screen real estate outside of the text block is satiate with lazy metaphor .
Oliver Reichenstein at iA Inc.[1 ] aptly send for this general metaphor overload on the iPad ‘ kitsch , ’ and in particular dangerous in iBooks :
Having the same static thick paper slews leave and mighty in your e - reader software , on the first as well as on the last page is not just visually incorrect , is also confusing ; it feels wrong and it is incorrect . It ’s kitsch .
Metaphor in design that supply genuine value – changing the setting newspaper stacks to represent actual page impart in a Quran , for example – is arguably useful , but the mindless embrace of metaphor based on Apple ’s user interface guidelines is a mistake . Especially when these metaphors yell loudly and mature old quickly – precisely the polar destination for which great interface design strives ( be hushed and eld graciously ) .
Kindle.app ’s interface negociate to annul the kitsch trap . It ’s as minimal as possible while still retaining a ‘ book ’ feel . It does n’t jar us with superfluous Thomas Nelson Page - turning animation . It does n’t clutter up the edges of our screen with nonmeaningful metaphor . Even the clock disappears when hiding Kindle.app ’s navigation chrome . ( Of all thing distracting , Dear iBooks , is the clock not the worst ? ) It lets us focus , reasonably , on the one thing we come to do : read .
FIG 3 and FIG 4 show these software in their most minimal states . Which would you rather say ?
FONTS
iBooks also brings with it a host of typographic issues . Font Feed ’s Stephen Coles[2 ] on the font pick of iBooks ( and the iPad overall ):
If you ’re not going to let the publishing firm / book designer pick out the book ’s typeface – and Sam Wieck explains[3 ] why that alone is wrought with problems – the exploiter ’s pick well be secure . alas Apple offer just five : Baskerville ( Monotype ) , Cochin , Palatino , Times New Roman , and Verdana . Of these , I ’d say Palatino is the only legitimate choice for reading a book on a filmdom .
Kindle.app is n’t a font wonderland either , but it is slimly honorable . Coles remain :
Unlike Apple , Amazon clearly did their research here . PMN Caecilia[4 ] is n’t well known outside the typorati , but it ’s one of the more readable typefaces ever designed and its humiliated fortuity dividing line and slab serifs service the Kindle very well .
DEVICE UBIQUITY
Media and app syncing across iPhone and iPad is poorly thought out . MobileMe , which should be Apple ’s gateway drug for lock - in to Apple Robert William Service , is rather deal as an add - on to a small fraction of Apple ’s customer base . If Apple require to gain ground , they call for to see the top executive of web upshot in Internet service . They involve to give revenue for ambit , taking the opportunity of their other confidential information to tie users ever more nearly to Apple armed service .
Currently , I can open Kindle.app on my iPhone and read a rule book before bed . The next morning I grab my iPad and start study – effortlessly – where I left off over coffee . If I had a Kindle Reader , I could then start the same book on the train to the bureau and once again clean up on my last Thomas Nelson Page .
In an increasingly multi - equipment landscape , this sort of ubiquity plays a greater function in defining which apps feel good to use ( always synced Google Docs ) or a chore ( trying to get documents out of Pages[6 ] on iPad).[7 ]
SHOPPING
If iBooks does only one affair right , it ’s iBookstore . iBookstore – seamlessly embedded in iBooks – provides an interface for graze , purchasing and reading . Kindle.app requires you to open a web web web browser on your iPad or iPhone so as to browse their option : a serious barrier between an impulse steal or a shoulder shrug .
However , Amazon has an exceptional online bookstore capable of quickly sending Kindle books ( or free trailer ) to your iPad , iPhone or Kindle . This is a function I use on a regular basis on my laptop computer and I suspect Apple ’s in - app shop vantage is short - lived : it ’s soft for Amazon to implement an in - app bookshop than it is for Apple to develop a full - featured online bookstall .
EMBARRASSING
Of of course , who wish how great the bookstall are if it ’s painful to read the ledger ? I scantily prefer Kindle.app over iBooks – it ’s just the less horrible of two bads . Both of these applications treat e - books little better than cheap PDFs made from scanned strong-arm books . If we desire an e - lector subject of in full embracing the digital advantages of our e - books , we need to start rebuilding .
THE E-READER WE WANT
I assume the great unwashed are loosely sound . That when throw the selection between slip a DRM - costless version of a book , or purchasing a fairly price , DRM - liberal variation , they will mostly select to devote . And that they wo n’t simulate and glue the entireness online . If we do n’t wear this then much of the potential of digital books will never be realized .
What , anyway , defines a modern e - reader ? Liza Daly provides a dainty summary:[5 ]
A in truth modern vitamin E - reader is one that is intimately plug in to the World Wide Web and allows a user to make queries as a serial publication of asides , while reading or after immersive version has end .
I like this verbal description . And I like that the word ‘ query ’ is decently ambiguous . Because I do n’t think she ’s peach about connection searches . There ’s a whole mesh of datum being created every clock time we open up our digital books – data point to which these eastward - readers should be give up us access .
But first , permit ’s not forget what these applications are : spaces for consuming text . If we do n’t get the fundamentals correct , we might as well give up .
E-READER FUNDAMENTALS
Physical books and east - Bible are both text at their core . Book graphic designer long ago establish stringent rule for lay out textual matter blocks so they disappear to the reader . They direct pride in turn the physicality of a book into a dick for efficiently and elegantly getting entropy into the mind of the reader . As any good typographer knows : the good composition goes unnoticed .
Our e - readers seem to have leave this heritage . They ’ve draw a blank that their core use is simply to exhibit text as comfortably as possible ; to gently pull the reader into the level . Every other view of have a book is proclaim on this notion .
At the very least , this is what our atomic number 99 - proofreader need to improve :
word division
Why word division is proving to be so knotty is beyond me . Eucalyptus on the iPhone does a fine job with it . If they can , then so should Apple and Amazon .
word division is n’t as liberal a muckle for longer line duration . But if one advantage of digital Good Book is big font - sizes for the visually spoil , then hyphenation must be enforce . The impingement word division has on readability multiplies as the breaker point size increases.(FIG 5 )
Ragged Right Text
I ’m going to pretend I do n’t even have to mention this . There ’s something sociopathic about major e - readers not including this option .
Smarter security deposit
melody duration and margins are intrinsically tied to the type and size of font being used , and the shape of the page ( or screen).(FIG 6 ) Like Instapaper,[8 ] you could give lector a alternative of leading , margins and font size . But readers are n’t typographer . They should n’t have to choose . These are page design fundamentals , based on intellectual proportions . Our e - reader layout algorithmic rule should be competent in balancing these variables .
simulate and Paste
That we ca n’t copy and glue is an insult . The rationale behind this restriction is obvious : publishing house do n’t desire readers to easily extract full books . It ’s a shape of DRM through hatefulness .
Dubious folks will always find a way of life extract the text edition and redistribute it . For the rest of us , artificially circumscribe copy and spread is insidiously inconvenient , and very much cut into one of the greatest assets of digital schoolbook – easy manipulation and transportation . This Bush - league DRM is akin to using javascript to reverse off correct - click so users ca n’t save images on web pages : lame and at last ineffective .
Currently , printed book typesetting is far more nuanced and elegant than any Kindle or iBooks edition .
Add to the equation that many digital books are OCR scan with busted table and overemotional page breaks , and you have to enquire just how anyone thinks they can tear a near equivalent cost for an deficient interpretation experience . A recitation experience made substandard not because of the machine , but because of a lack of considerateness in the display . A indication experience that can be made better with a stronger focus on fundamentals .
As Bringhurst states , Typography must often make attention to itself before it will be learn . Yet for be read , it must free the attention is has drawn . Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency.[9 ]
Our e - readers already draw enough attention to themselves . Achieving statuesque transparency should now be their finish .
THE NETWORK (OR, E-READER ‘SOCIAL’ FEATURES)
Do you know those tarradiddle of someone digging through the libraries of Mark Twain[10 ] , David Foster Wallace[11 ] or Paul Rand[12 ] and rule their marked Word ? I have it away those stories . What intrigued these picture ? Of which passage did they make bank bill ? It ’s voyeuristical , inspiring and give us insight into both the text edition and the person who register the text edition .
As I read a forcible book , I underline passing and take bank bill . I punctuate these spreads with a dog ear.[13 ] Then , when I ’m finished , I ’ll summarize those notes on a blank page in the back .
I suspect many of you have like wont .
THE GREATER WHOLE
So consider this : 10,000 of us register the same Kindle Word of God , each of us highlighting and get hold of notes . Would the aggregate of this not be sort out ? If I need to publically share my note of hand with fellow Kindle or iBooks readers , should n’t there be a organization in property to do this ?
Show me the overlap of 10,000 readers ’ highlighted handing over in a digital book . This is our ‘ Cliff Notes . ’ We do n’t take Derek Sivers ’ brilliant summaries[14 ] any longer ( sorry Derek ! ) – we ’re collectively summarise for each other as we translate and notice our digital copy .
Show me a heat map of passages – ‘ hot ’ to ‘ coldest ’ . Which chapters in this Obama life should I perfectly not miss?(FIG 7 )
rent Stefan Sagmeister publicly portion out the passage he ’s highlight in the new Murakami Haruki novel . This is something I want to see . And I bet you do , too .
When I ’m consider purchase a Holy Scripture , show me how far the average reader become . Do most lector get through the whole novel or give up halfway ? How many notes do they take ? How many passages do they highlight ?
These can be intimate signifiers of the worth of a particular school text . And signifiers that , until books became digital , were invisible – or at best , idea . arrangement should be in stead to capture , combine and allow access to this datum . And this access should be seamlessly integrated with our Es - readers.[15 ]
MY CUT
When I ’m done meter reading and marking a al-Qur’an , I should be able to produce my own abridged transcript . Show me just my highlights with note . Let me export this edition . have me email it to myself . Or , if you make bold , automatically typeset it and let me order a POD copy for my personal depository library .
LIFE OUTSIDE THE E-READER
Digital Quran should n’t be chained to their e - readers . This is textbook . It ’s agile . There needs to be a publically accessible way to cite these books . In other tidings : our digital books need to have an online mien . Amazon has , in result , done this with their ‘ look inside ’ lineament . They have a arrangement for admit modified entree to the text without compromising the copyright .
For example : If I ’m read a particularly peachy handing over in , say , On Writing Well , and wish to cite it to my Twitter follower , I should be able-bodied to do that seamlessly within Kindle.app . I select a high spot and select “ broadcast . ” Kindle.app will then issue the text and include a connection in the tweet . The link will send my follower to the like Sir Frederick Handley Page in < > On Writing Well on amazon.com . They can graze the preceding and following Page for context , and then choose to purchase . If they already own the book , they can read it , right there , in that WWW port .
THE NEW READING FUNDAMENTALS
Previously , reading was an act of solitude by intent , with most residue of the process lock in a al-Qur’an ’s physicality . This is no longer straight .
I ’m activated about digital books for a turn of reasons . Their proclivity towards multimedia is not one of them . I ’m worked up about digital book for their meta potential . The elucidation of , in the Holy Scripture of Richard Nash , that commonality between two masses who have read the same book.[16 ]
We take to abuse back for a consequence and stop roleplay purely on style . There is no style store.[17 ] Retire those half - realized metaphors while they ’re still new .
rather , let ’s focus on the fundamentals . Improve Es - reader composition and varlet balance . incorporate well considered networked ( social ) features . Respect the rights of the reader and then – only then – will we be in a locating to further explore our new canvas .
REFERENCES
design for iPad : Reality Check — Oliver Reichenstein , iA Inc. , April 12th , 2010
What the iPad is Missing — Stephen Coles , FontFeed , April 8th , 2010
Books , Typography and the iPad , Sam Wieck , March 2010
PMN Caecilia
The iPad in the heart of the Digerati — Tim O’Reilly , David Gelernter , Liza Daly , Craig Mod , Sam Kaplan , Emily Chang and Max Kiesler , New York Times , April 6th , 2010
File Sharing with an iPad : Ugh ! , Ted Landau , The Mac Observer , April 6th , 2010
These point count now because now is when these marketplaces earn reader mindshare . I ’ve been using Kindle.app – for all its defect – on my iPhone the last six months . In a good sense , Amazon ’s already get ahead me over . There ’s little to no incentive for me to read in iBooks . Especially considering iBookstore ’s selection and pricing does n’t beat Amazon .
Instapaper.com
As Transparent as composition , Liz Danzico , Bobulate , September 6th , 2007
What David Foster Wallace Circled in His Dictionary , Slate , April 2010
Paul Rand : Bibliography as Biography , William Drenttel , Design Observer , September 3rd , 2003
Pages with bank note are dog eared on the lower - right turning point . Upper - right corner is used for bookmarking ( I have no squeamishness with pen up pages ! ) . Bottom - leave for peculiarly groovy bedcover .
Book I ’ve finished of late , Derek Sivers
Enhanced Editionsalready does this with their script analytics . On the meter reading habits of their users , they track : which pages are read , what clip of twenty-four hours the reading bechance and for how long the session lasts . Peter Collingridge , chief executive officer of Enhanced Editions , return an excellent talkat TOC about this and more in February , 2010 .
Nash on the future of publication , April 2010
On Writing Well , William Zinsser
This essay is republished with permission fromCraig Mod
Craig Modis a writer , designer , publishing company and developer concerned with the future of publishing & storytelling . He is co - author ofArt Space Tokyo , an cozy guidebook to the Tokyo art Earth . He is also co - founding editor in chief and engineer behindTPUTH.com , atomic number 27 - laminitis and developer of the storytelling projectHitotoki , and frequent confederate withInformation Architects , Japan . He ’s hold up in Tokyo for almost a decade and speaks frequently on the future of playscript and medium .
An extensive collection of images of book he ’s designed is availablehere .
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