printer of dead-tree books died? that's good news! i sincerely hope we get rid of rotten pulp industry completely. it leads to expensive books unnecessarily, bad legislation and terrible copyright laws and keeps modern America on its knees with its outdated technology.
imo, web should be able to handle distribution and consumption both.
Our brains are wired to treat processing information from a physical unchanging object very differently than from a slab of glass with ephemeral content on it. Words on a printed page do stick in your head better than content flowing past on a screen.
I am so looking forward to the day we have some form of electronic book though! A series of e-paper pages that will make my brain feel like it's holding a 'real' book will be that day I switch.
p.s. I want an electronic paper map I can fold up and stuff in a pocket, that requires little energy and still allows me to do all the pinch/zoom and tap tricks I can do on a tablet.
Any time this phrase appears in an argument it's a good indication that I can ignore the argument.
Our brains are not "wired." They are pretty malleable and adaptable, and while a lot of that happens during childhood, they do remain fairly malleable throughout life.
While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written information. Books have only existed for a couple thousand years, but originally were quite expensive to produce and only available to the wealthy; mass market production of books has only happened for a couple hundred years.
There are probably reasons why many people prefer physical books to e-books, but to make a claim that it's based on some kind of "wired" preference in our brains rather than practical factors like battery life, compatibility issues, screen refresh rates, or any of a number of other simple, practical explanations is a bit extreme, and would need to be backed up with some kind of evidence.
I personally don't consume much in e-book form, but the reasons are because of DRM, ecosystem lock-in, poor formatting in e-books, and the like. I actually consume a lot more content electronically than I do in dead-tree form, but it happens to be web pages and DRM-free PDFs.
> While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written information
It's the other way around. The book isn't better because we evolved for the book. The book is better because it evolved for us.
The key difference between books and e-books is that books are 3D objects giving us a sense of location for the information contained therein that varies in a consistent, logical manner as we progress through the information. This allows us to use our spatial memory, which yes, we are hard-wired to have, to help remember the information in the book. We evolved for this kind of memorization and are good at it.
> It's the other way around. The book isn't better because we evolved for the book. The book is better because it evolved for us.
But computer interfaces are evolving for us as well.
I'm not arguing that they are currently better; just that there isn't much about the form of the book that we are "hard wired" to prefer, but rather some inadequacies in both human interface as well as some other practical issues of e-book distribution.
The first paper you link is the only one that I would say really supports your point, but it only compares one way of reading on a screen (a PDF) against paper for a short document, and it doesn't probe very deeply into why reading comprehension was worse on the screen than paper. Is it the spatial location, is it the fact that you can spread out pages and see more at once on paper, is it the reduced eye strain from reflective vs. backlit presentation?
These are all things that could be relatively easily compared; provide paper with a scrolling interface rather than letting you turn the pages by hand, provide a paginated interface for the screen, use an e-ink display rather than LCD for the e-book case.
The second is about spatial memory of information on paper, but doesn't compare with a computer screen, and you can have a memorable spatial arrangement on a computer as well.
The third one compares paper to screen for proofreadig, but is from the 1983 and using white on black text on an Apple II. I think the differences in screen technology and UI design, along with the subjects having to learn a special purpose UI for copyediting on the screen, make that not all that relevant simply for the comparison of reading a book.
So anyhow, while there is some research on a screen being not as good as paper, it doesn't look like it goes into very much depth as to the reason for the difference, and whether it's based on spatial memory, deficiencies in UI on the computer, eye strain due to backlighting, or some combination.
EDIT: Apparently the book thing linked isn't actually made with the book thing? I am confused and feel like an asshole now.
I strongly dislike your book thing.
Why?
* Animations manage to drop frames on my brand-new flagship Android phone.
* Pageflip animation (subjectively) doesn't even look very good.
* Can only imagine how much battery power is getting used drawing that animation.
* Gesture recognition is a bit dodgy, occasionally had to swipe several times
* Hijacked back button, meaning I had to search through my history to go back and find this comment to complain
* Wastes a hilarious amount of previous screen real estate on negative space, especially combined with browser chrome; and because it doesn't scroll, the browser chrome is never hidden. https://postimg.cc/cg6JvZGh/12615d74
Honestly really sorry to be so harsh- but at least on mobile, for me, this is perhaps the worst reading experience I could imagine- well, at least there aren't any ads.
I understand that you've probably worked quite hard on this, but in its current state, for mobile, at least on my device, it's bad.
I looked at the metrics on my dashboard. You were trying to flip through multiple pages quickly-- as in you went in with an intent to 'surf the web capriciously' and not with an intent of really reading the book. I'm sorry that initial mindset to glance through headlines quickly will have a significant impact on your overall reading experience when it comes to books.
The back button isn't hijacked either. It remembers the page you're on exactly as it is, as you progress through the book from one webpage to another. Other things like animations and page flipping etc. can be turned off, so those things are customizable but on battery thing I'll check again even I remember that the pagination interface with full animations run on 60 FPS or higher. There are probably some areas on the renderer where we can improve or may be use Houdini instead to achieve native level of performance but I'm yet to explore those paths.
Unused real estate -- I agree with you here. The new iPhones are significantly longer than the previous generations, and this exacerbates the problem. But I think it's not unfixable, thanks for the feedback!
> You were trying to flip through multiple pages quickly-- as in you went in with an intent to 'surf the web capriciously' and not with an intent of really reading the book. I'm sorry that initial mindset to glance through headlines quickly will have a significant impact on your overall reading experience when it comes to books.
If you are going to design e-readers, you should read Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book. Leafing through a book and jumping back in forth is a very important part starting to get into a book, and it is the only way to accurately decide whether you actually want to read a book or not.
I think part of my impression was just a bad choice of book to link- I was checking it out as a reader, and so, to read a book which opens with installation instructions... yeah, i'm going to flip through that quite quickly! That probably hurt your animation performance- do you, like, render the next page to a canvas for the pagination animation, so when I was flipping through quickly, scanning it, the rendering couldn't keep up- going through it more slowly, does seem to drop less frames, though it does occasionally stutter- not nearly as problematic, though.
The hijacking I referred to...
Okay, I get linked from HN, read a few pages. I press back- it goes back a page. In the book. After tens of back button presses, I got irritated, and just searched my browser history for your comment.
I think the issue I ran into is mostly that you have made a PWA eBook reader, and I expected a book as a website. When I read 20 3-paragraph chunks of text, I very much do not want to press Back 20 times.
Now, if I bought a book, and installed this as a native app- probably helping performance too- I'd be alright with this- if the perf and screen space issues were fixed, I would be happy.
But as a website to read text on, it's not great in its current form, at least on mobile.
If you want to show other folks this, I might suggest linking to the home page and letting them select a book. This might get them in the mindset of "I am opening a book in an app", and not "I am visiting a link to a website with a book on it.". And please make sure the book itself opens in a new tab- so that, if they read a few dozen pages, they don't need to press the back button dozens of times to return to the page that linked them to the web app!
The settings for animations, etc- again, going to find settings is something i'd do in the context of an eBook reader app, but not something I'd really consider for a website.
Sorry for being so harsh- I just had a really terrible experience, likely largely because of my incorrect expectations (perf and whitespace aside), and wanted to make sure that came across properly. I assume most of the interesting stuff you've done has been on the "how do I lay out a book for (such and such a device and context), with diagrams, code blocks, inline images, etc, get reflow working nicely..." and not "having laid out a book into pages, how do I let a user flip through those pages"- but the latter has to be at least alright for me to be able to pay attention to the former!
I work with ereaders and every so often a member of the press or community stakeholder will ask me when the book will die. My half joking response is: eventually, but not before I retire. I also have a prepared half-joke where I ask the person to think about the book like they might review a piece of technology. It's inexpensive, lightweight, durable, has a UI we've spent our whole life learning, is browsable and though not searchable, they've come up with some clever workarounds to make searching possible. It's also got a great screen resolution and the battery life is excellent. The book has a lot going for it compared to the ereader and it has a long life ahead of it.
Although on my parent comment I did not say e-books changed copyright law but assuming good-faith:
Experience of gaming has been great. Experience of watching TV or movies is great. Experience of listening to music is great. Any high-end software on web has been great.
But, e-books? Nope. Let's give them silly pesky files instead. Or let them buy hardware that's off the web. This is understandable because if I were on the lobbying side, I'll want to keep things like this only and send the market to believe and buy physical books instead.
books go native on web => ability to publish and update book on your own site just like a blog => my readers engage with me => meh copyright laws held by middlemen. ;-)
imo, web should be able to handle distribution and consumption both.