09-07-2010, 09:04 PM | #1 |
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What ebook readers don't do
Five features I want from an ebook reader that could be developed with reasonable ease, rather than the ridiculous "it will play movie clips & integrate with Facebook" that some publishers & hardware designers seem to think are important. (And, hey, if you're dying for ebooks with animated scenes, or want to have an ebook club connection through your reader, more power to you... it's just not what I'm looking for in ebooks.)
1) Sort by "most recently viewed." Or more simply coded, a list of "10 most recently viewed ebooks." This would be a great boon for scholars who need to flip back & forth between books. Right now, most reader software sorts by Title or Author, with some readers sorting by Date Loaded and others sorting by folders, tags, and bookmarks--but I don't think any will let you open the book you were reading before this one, without navigating through one of those other methods. Even a simple "open previous book" would be useful; people would be able to switch back and forth between two books, rather than re-navigate to their main reading in order to try a sample of something new. 2) Flip through. Most e-ink can't do this regardless of whether the code gets written; the pages don't turn fast enough. But LCD screens could do this, and anything that can support video could support a flip-through feature: start at the beginning (or any bookmark or chapter break) and scroll or turn *quickly,* 15-25 pages/second, with a halt feature so you can stop at chapter breaks or images or poetry or whatever else catches your eye, the way you can with pbooks. 3) Coded bookmarks. Not just bookmarks, but tagged bookmarks--like color-coded post-it notes. I want to use yellow tags for "quote this" and red ones for "historical details" and blue ones for "point for rebuttal" and green ones for "re-read this section later." Or, in the case of black-and-white readers, symbols could be used for those--a square, a diamond, a dot, a star, whatever. Coded bookmarks would help with both academic research and casual reading, although the casual codes might be "share this with spouse" and "google for more info" and "typo; write to author" and "hot & sexy scene starts here." It'd be an invaluable feature for beta readers; four separate types of bookmarks would make it easy to note "typo/grammar" and "fact-check this" and "inconsistent story detail" and "dialogue needs touchup." 4) Picture fills the screen. I'd love to be able to have any image shown at my choice of "full original size" (if small) or "fills viewing screen", preferably switchable between landscape & portrait. Image support in ebooks is far enough behind physical books (200 dpi max?!) that this could help cover the gap until we get print-quality displays, which I suspect are not happening soon. Or at least, not happening soon & cheap. 5) Open to a random page. Or at least a random chapter. When I pick up a pbook in a store to decide whether to buy it, I don't open to Page 1 & begin reading; I open to somewhere in the middle & see if the prose style catches my attention. Usually, I start at a chapter break (which is easy to spot in a physical book; may or may not be marked in an ebook). When I pick a much-loved pbook off one of my own shelves, I may not start at the beginning; I may flip halfway through to start at "sometime after the abduction but before the plane crash." This is the feature that would allow ebooks to replace/supplement the "bathroom book of trivia" books--two-minute mysteries, collections of aphorisms or quotations or jokes, even newspaper editorial books, which are generally published chronologically but people may not read them that way. It'd also be useful for magazines, especially if combined with the flipthrough option. ETA: Most of these have been debunked; I didn't do enough research before posting. "Coded bookmarks" may be the only one actually not available. Thanks for letting me know, folks; I'll try to do more checking next time. (In the meantime, I found out that some of my most-wanted features *are* available, so yay!) Last edited by Elfwreck; 09-08-2010 at 10:05 AM. Reason: Fact-fixing. |
09-07-2010, 09:09 PM | #2 | |
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I really like the idea of an advanced bookmarking scheme. Even the ability to label bookmarks would be great, especially for those who like to bookmark typos in the text that we intend to go back and fix. One day. Maybe. |
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09-07-2010, 09:10 PM | #3 |
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Elfwreck, my Astak EZReader has a separate list of the last ten books viewed.
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09-07-2010, 09:11 PM | #4 |
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The quick page flips and colored bookmarks are current deficiencies of eReaders. Supposedly faster refresh rates and color are around the corner. The big unknown is how fast can the screen refresh rate reach before hitting a wall because of the physics of eInk. I suppose in time anything can be overcome.
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09-07-2010, 09:17 PM | #5 |
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09-07-2010, 09:22 PM | #6 |
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My Sony will open to a page number randomly chosen by me! Or you can slide the little page number thingy along to a page in the middle of the book. That's nearly your number 5.
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09-07-2010, 09:29 PM | #7 | |
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09-07-2010, 09:38 PM | #8 |
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PocketBook devices do all of those except the coded bookmarks. Onyx Does them as well.
PocketBook allows you to access the 10 most recent right from what you are currently reading and jump directly to one of those books. Boox you have to go to the main menu to find recently viewed. Pocketbook allows you to fast forward 2 ways- by holding the page forward button you can skip 10 pages at a time. Or you can turn full refresh off and go thru the pages quite quickly. Onyx you can do the same thing PocketBook and Onyx both allow FIt to page or height or width as well various percentages. I was reading manga this weekend on the Boox. The Manga are folders of jpgs that I viewed in portrait or landscape fit to width, depending on the readability of the font size. in landscape it shows the top half first then bottom half with atouch of the page turn then switches to the next jpg in the folder. Boox also has selection zoom which allows you to selct any image or section of text and zoom it to fill the display. open random page or chapter- you can just go to the TOC and pick the chapter or open the goto page option and enter a random number. The Next Papyrus PageOne i was using recently can do all of this as well(except the coded bookmarks and selection zoom) Last edited by Dulin's Books; 09-07-2010 at 09:41 PM. |
09-07-2010, 09:42 PM | #9 |
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Only one on your list that I'd be interested in, besides what I've got (Kindle sorts by most recent) would be coded bookmarks. That would be nice.
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09-07-2010, 10:45 PM | #10 | ||||
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I'm aware that something like these features are available in some readers; I'd like them to be more common, and I'm *very* happy to find out which devices come closest to them. (When I bought my Sony, it was flip-a-coin between it & Astak's EZReader. Had the PocketPro existed, I wouldn't have looked twice at the Sony.) I've got no idea why bookmarks are pretty much universal, and coded bookmarks are nonexistent. |
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09-07-2010, 10:53 PM | #11 | |
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At least the K2 and K3s allow you to sort by: Most Recent First, Title, Author, or Collections. |
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09-07-2010, 11:41 PM | #12 | |
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it was 32 books with the 2009 releases of Astak FW (I have not tried any 2010 versions) Newly, FIRST VIEW books get put at the top of the "recently read list" The list does not re-order itself if you jump around in the list. It does remember the logical page in ADE (those little numbers everyone gripes about) for each book. return to the book later, and it jumps to the start of the logical page. There is no "purge from list", if you accidentally view a wrong title or version. The list does purge, if you load/delet books via the USB cable. It does NOT purge if you load the card via a card reader. ( Says:"file missing") |
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09-07-2010, 11:50 PM | #13 | |
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Irex created that first for ereaders. but for some reason didnt include it on the DR800. PocketBook has done something neat with the PDF viewer on the new models which i hope to see in the upates for previous models. They already had great zoom and reflow support for PDFs but have added something new for reflow- now when you select reflow the images are reflowed with the text. you get a paragraph of text then the image then more text etc. I haven't seen any other reflow include the images before. |
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09-08-2010, 03:37 AM | #14 | |
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09-08-2010, 03:40 AM | #15 | ||
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