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Originally Posted by kennyc
Wrong, I don't care for the way it's displayed on Kindles, with pages there is intuitive understanding of where you are in the book and tables of contents should reflect them. This is not the way the kindle/mobi system works.
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I agree. To me a 'page' number corresponding to an actual screen of content (determined by the current font size, etc., and therefore dynamic) is what I want. It's closest to what I'm used to with a lifetime of paper books while also taking advantage of (or working with) the ebook reader's ability to scale font size and spacing.
To me, "Screen 230 of 480" tells me pretty much everything I need to know. I know roughly my progress (just less than 50% - I don't need to know exactly), and I can intuitively understand how much more reading I have to do based on a 'page' (i.e. screen) of text, just like with every book I've ever read before.
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Just a friggin location 1238765 means NOTHING, there is nothing to relate it to, it is not used in relation to the end of the book or story and is not used for chapters. It is worthless the way it is implemented. The Sony method of implementing page numbers in epub is the way to go.
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On my current book I get:
Loc 3095 71%
Apart from knowing I'm 71% through the book I know little else. From that information I can't tell how long the book is, how long it might take me to read that extra 29% - is that half an hour of reading to go or 1000 screens of text? And the location number tells me nothing except what is essentially an arbitrary location that is only useful when telling someone else where I am in a book, which is not something that is useful very often. It too gives no indication as to the overall progress.
As for end matter - in a paper book I usually have a quick look at how much of that stuff is there, or I sometimes will use the index and/or notes during the course of reading and have a fair idea of how much of the book's thickness is 'after the end'. That's a lot trickier with an ebook as it involves fiddling around. The Kindle could easily implement a solution (e.g. bring back the progress bar and shade the end matter section darker or something to indicate that material is end matter).
Take advantage of this new medium to make the reading experience better! Your mention of stories and chapters brings up another point: why can't the Kindle also have separate progress indicators for individual stories in a collection, for example? What about those public domain collections of, for example, all the Oz books? Show me 'Screen 50 of 2000 (Current story screen 50 of 243)" or something.
I'm on my 3rd Kindle now, and I think it's about time Amazon started innovating to make reading on the Kindle better than paper books in every way imaginable.