Quote:
Originally Posted by WS64
How can page numbers work when you have differnet font sizes/landscape and portrait mode/adjustable words per line/other settings?
There is no thing like a page on ebooks. This is one of the advantages of an ebook!
|
We have "Page turn" buttons for a reason.

When you bookmark a page, you get a dog-ear in the upper-right corner...
If you read up on engineering or software interface design, you'll see why it's smart to stick with the page metaphor, but at its most basic, pages are both transparent and intuitive to the user.
Locations cannot be, even after people get "used to" them, because, by counting markup, they aren't transparent or predictable. As formats of ebooks become more sophisticated, this will become more of an issue.
It doesn't take a degree in software or web design to know Locations aren't optimal from a usability perspective. Amazon is the only reader, TMK, that doesn't offer some form of page display, for better or worse, and I think it's safe to say locations have caused more user dissatisfaction than anything else about the Kindle, except maybe file management.
Screen savers are up there too, and that something so quick and easy to fix hasn't been - even the simple removal of "Emily Skeletor"

- kinda makes one wonder if they need a little new blood in the software department.
Quote:
I don't care how exactly the locations work as long as I can be sure to come back to the same place when I choose for example location 500, no matter what setting I use to display my book.
|
Locations' functions as spot-markers would remain, regardless of whether the user sees a page number or a location number displayed, because they're a basic aspect under the hood of the .mobi system.
All Amazon did was make the internal odometer visible to the user. (Which itself wouldn't be as much of a problem, except that they don't even count the same "road" the reader is actually traveling.)
I see no reason to remove the option to display locations as is, but I see a lot of reasons why they should also provide a paging option for all those who prefer it.
What perplexes me the most is that anyone would begrudge offering a feature so many others wish for, just because they don't need it themselves.