Re:Apply HN: Bubblin Superbooks
by accordionclown on Thursday April 07, 2016 @05:19PM
(#11450808)
actually, i have in mind "chunking" like this:
a chapter-header should not appear in the
middle, or at the bottom, of the viewport.
initial text after a chapter-header should
appear in the same viewport as that header.
the first line of a paragraph shouldn't be split
across viewports from the rest of the paragraph.
the last line of a paragraph should not be split
across viewports from the rest of the paragraph.
an image should not be split across a viewport.
a caption for an image should appear in
the same viewport as the image itself.
the table-header for a table should not be
split across viewports from the table itself.
a table which will fit entirely within the current
viewport should not be split across viewports.
the caption for a table should not be split
across viewports from the rest of the table.
a blockquote should not be split unnecessarily
across viewports if it'll fit on a single viewport.
a list should not be split unnecessarily across
several viewports if it would fit on a single one.
a description term should appear on a viewport with
its description definitions, to the extent possible.
the last paragraph of a chapter shouldn't appear on
a separate viewport from the rest of the chapter.
any two contiguous chunks of text which refer to
each other should be shown on the same viewport.
the cover-page for a document shouldn't be split
across multiple viewports, if at all possible.
a dedication page shouldn't be split across viewports.
Chunking (in the context of cognitive science) does help with recall, but I rarely see pages being used to group relevant information... The tendency seems to be "fit as much as you can on a page, and only break to the next page early if you reach the end of the chapter". This doesn't apply to picture-books (where the use of illustrations is dictates layout more than the text), but it does apply to the _majority_ of published books.
I see "chapter (or header) -> paragraph -> sentence -> word" as the way written works are organized, with pages providing an index for lookup and marking progress, but not for denoting meaning. For example, I'll remember the story Contracrostipunctus and that it was at the end of chapter 3 in GEB, but I don't have a clue what page it was on and if the page numbers changed between editions (or were removed entirely), I probably wouldn't notice.
> It is there on mobile and tablets and people consume web on each differently
That's part of why pages are such a pain. On my phone (which is significantly smaller than a book) I need to scroll from the top to the bottom of the page, and then turn the page and scroll back to the top. On some readers that present fixed-width pages with a tiny font this is even worse because the pages don't reflow to the width of my device and I need to scroll left-to-right for every single line. Bubblin doesn't have this problem - it just crops off the left side of the page and refuses to let me zoom, but I write this with the assumption that it'll be fixed and will exhibit the aforementioned problems simply by virtue of having a fixed-size layout.
> You keep scrolling and scrolling and not even be at the middle of the article by the time you're done. In fact many people quit reading blogposts midway just after 2-3 downswipes and then they reopen it on their desktops.
Citation? I've never done this before or seen it done. I actually like reading books on my phone because I can lay in bed in any position and read till I fall asleep.