My Photo


  • Loading...

Disclaimer


  • The posts on this weblog are provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

    © 2014, Joseph B. Wikert
Blog powered by Typepad
Member since 02/2005

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

« Vook App: Reckless Road Guns N' Roses | Main | The Social Networking Potential for eContent »

June 07, 2010

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83452242969e201348379d609970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference eBook Indexes & User Interface Features:

Comments

Liz Castro

Excellent article. Thanks! What I want to see is some way to differentiate index entries in an ebook. In print, I know that "125-138" indicates more in-depth treatment than say "125" and indeed, "125-126" indicates something different than "3-4", even though it's the same number of pages, just because we know that "3-4" is probably in an introduction.

And how are we going to label index entries at all? Of course, page numbers won't do it. So what's the alternative? Could size or color indicate depth? A bar that grows or shrinks according to depth?

I love the idea of pop-up summaries when you click an index entry. And what about if when you jumped to the referenced item, it was highlighted, at least temporarily, or you could choose to display indexed passages at will? How many times have you followed an index entry only to not be able to find the reference you're looking for?

The Back button is absolutely essential. The Nook's edition of Pride and Prejudice provides return links when you go to the glossary. I appreciated it even though it was kind of ugly.

I'd love to hear more thoughts on this topic.

Eric Granata

This would be great! I especially like the idea of two books being displayed side by side. It'd be extremely great if you could reference (link to) other other books in your library.

You might be interested to know that my iPhone app, Audio Footnote, has a new version coming soon that allows you to listen to parts of the audiobook where a note was taken without losing your last listened to spot in the audiobook.

Eric Rumsey

I like your idea of split view or two books open at the same time. The current one-book-at-a-time linear model of eBooks doesn't work for a lot of non-fiction that invites flipping back and forth. Having multiple views of the same book or different books on one screen would be help a lot. With people having gotten used to reading ONE BOOK on an iPhone, how about having multiple books/views on a desktop-size screen?

Bill Seitz

Considering that ePub is just packaged XHTML, I could see a model where browsers become the main ePub readers. Then a lot of this barrier between the book and web goes away...

Belinda Leon

I'd like to be able to skip huge chunks of text. I frequently flick through books at random to see if any interesting passages jump out at me, most of the eBook readers that I've used make me flick through every. single. page. This is enormously frustrating, and takes a very long time for me to find the bit that I'm looking for. More often than not I don't know what chapter the quote was in, but I don't want to have to re-read the whole thing to find it.

Julie

A couple of these features are in Plucker, an e-reader app for the older Palms. A back button, for example. It was designed as an offline browser, but it's not bad as an book reader. Another feature of Plucker: it's possible for it to use any font you need it to. I don't know about the dedicated e-book readers, but my other e-reader apps have a limited selection of fonts.

Brian Mckney

E-Reader is the best app nowadays. It makes more easier to carry all your favorite Books compactly and access. Just Download and Transfer. E-Books for sale for with Attractive Offers and Discounts.

Brian Mckney
http://www.plrprivatelabelrights.com/plr-ebooks/ebooks

Richard Comfort

All of the things you list would, of course, be great. No argument there. But your article is 4 years old now, and a lot has happened in that time. eBooks are clearly here to stay; their sales volume is high and growing apace. Have your thoughts changed since then? Where would one find the latest ideas on this subject? I think we need to focus now on why any publisher would adopt any of these ideas. Do indexes really help sell books? Impossible to prove, and the answers are probably different for various markets and types of books. Take academic books, eg. Lucky to sell 900 books; money losers except for the occasional hit. I don't think any of these ideas would really change the economics. What would? Maybe we have to modernize our concept of what indexing is and why it's important. CMS is not a marketing handbook. And I think we need some new concepts of how indexes can be effective marketing tools in various markets.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.


  • Writer's Digest: 2013 Best Writing Websites (2013)


  • Sell Your Book Like Wildfire

StatCounter
http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2010/06/ebook-indexes-user-interface-features.html
jwikert.typepad.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-35
73410
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:BWO5WVIPUHWYUX3IRZCGSPH6LDYEQ6YN
<urn:uuid:23bee2a4-09a5-4fc0-862a-2dd916edfa0e>
2014-08-28T15:06:43Z
190.93.244.9
sha1:LQQ7C4JKJJXZ7W7R6VZZTOTVIACXXB6E
<urn:uuid:3b7c1a13-2fee-4bf3-ba47-ac98b3880d32>
http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2010/06/ebook-indexes-user-interface-features.html
length
response
<urn:uuid:35f6cc73-3de9-4da3-bb30-d1be589eb77a>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-35
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for August 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf