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Taustin,
On my readers the search function is next to useless. It doesn't seem to recognize, ANDs or quote marks. Multiple word searches act like ORs. There are definitely no advanced operators or regexp.
Furthermore, when I want to 'flip' back and forth between pages to skim and find something it just doesn't work quickly. In paper books, the chapter number is often at the bottom or top of the page. I can open the book in the middle, see the chapter number and flip a bunch of pages to the left and right and quickly get to the correct chapter. When it is section numbered, the sections start with the chapter number also.
With ebooks navigating virtual keyboards is slow, for me at least. And, if the table of contents work, that's great, but that just gets me to the start of the chapter, and its much slower to leaf through to a particular page. However, indexes on ebooks aren't so great.
Bottom line, is that for textbook navigation I would want to rethink the paradigm. No need to stick with the old outdated ways of doing things. I can think of a couple of alternatives already. If we optimize for ebooks, I think we can be better than paper. If we try to emulate something that we aren't (paper) we will always be a little short of the pure paper experience.
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