Quote:
Originally Posted by foghat
^ I think the page numbers are great and don't understand why you can't have both. For me, I don't change font sizes or orientation and read on one device. I really like knowing how 'big' this new book is in relation to the one I just finished. Gives me a sense of how long it is going to take me to read - something that is much harder to get with just a percentage.
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Ideally there would be options to accommodate everyone's preference, but Apple's tendency is to simplify the UI to supply the one "right" way to do it and thus eliminate confusion. So naturally I want them to simplify it in the way that I prefer it, and to heck with anybody else's preference.
I may feel differently once I get to do some serious reading on an iPad, which has a lot more screen real estate, but now most of my ebook reading is done on an iPod Touch, and I don't want to waste any screen space. I love how Stanza will let me fill the whole screen with text. No page numbers, no title bar, and the only progress indicator is a very narrow, almost invisible bar at the bottom of the screen that shows how far into the book I've gone. I wouldn't want to give any more screen space to a persistent page number, but I do occasionally take advantage of the fact that a single screen tap will generate a pop up bubble with page and percentage information. To me, even with a print book, page information is not something you pay attention to on every page, but when you do look for it, you want it to be there, so physical books have to keep that information on just about every page just in case. But on an ebook, it makes perfect sense to me to hide that information until you want it. It seems to me to be a clear advantage of the electronic medium, and including page numbers on every page is to take a limitation of physical books and force it into electronic books where it doesn't need to be.
But, again, that's based on the sparsity of screen space on my iPod, and a more generous screen might change my mind.