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murg · 12-21-2012, 05:44 PM

This is an ebook design thing.

The well-paid design experts at the major publishers don't actually read ebooks, especially not on ereaders. Because, well, they're ebooks and not real books. And such things are just not done by proper people!

Actually, this is a deliberate design decision. However, I think it is made worse by the following facts (which may not have any relationship with reality):

Ebook design is done on real computers, so flipping around the text and the footnotes is fast and easy.
The designers are testing the ebooks on tablets, like the iPad, so flipping around the text and the footnotes is fast and easy.
The designers may even be using automated tools that harvest the footnotes. So they just end up at the end of the book.
For flipping around purposes, it really doesn't matter if the footnotes are at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book.
Due to the flowing nature of ebooks, the designer doesn't know where the end of the page is. Yes, if the tags existed and the rendering code handled them, the ereader could figure out that a footnote belonged at the bottom of the current page, and would render the page as such. I don't think that these tags exist (a quick check shows that they don't).
Footnotes in ebooks are just HTML links. So really, they aren't footnotes, they are just another chuck of text you can jump to and jump back from.
My favourites are the ebooks with the jumps to the footnotes, but missing the jumps back to the code.
Another favourite thing is that the footnote indicator (in the text) is usually superscripted so it is small. And being one character, it makes a challenging target for a finger that is many characters in size.

When I reformat a book with footnotes, I generally move them to be after the paragraph that contains the footnote, formatted in a way that makes the footnote look different (smaller text, different font, blockquoted, bordered).

Luckily, most of the books I read don't have footnotes.

I think that the 'rules' for formatting ebooks haven't settled down yet, so many designers are using the physical books rules modified for flowing text and just not getting it right. And there is definately missing technical stuff as far as HTML and CSS is concerned.

12-21-2012, 05:44 PM	#2
murg No Comment Posts: 3,240 Karma: 23878043 Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Australia Device: Kobo: Not just an eReader, it's an adventure!	This is an ebook design thing. The well-paid design experts at the major publishers don't actually read ebooks, especially not on ereaders. Because, well, they're ebooks and not real books. And such things are just not done by proper people! Actually, this is a deliberate design decision. However, I think it is made worse by the following facts (which may not have any relationship with reality): Ebook design is done on real computers, so flipping around the text and the footnotes is fast and easy. The designers are testing the ebooks on tablets, like the iPad, so flipping around the text and the footnotes is fast and easy. The designers may even be using automated tools that harvest the footnotes. So they just end up at the end of the book. For flipping around purposes, it really doesn't matter if the footnotes are at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book. Due to the flowing nature of ebooks, the designer doesn't know where the end of the page is. Yes, if the tags existed and the rendering code handled them, the ereader could figure out that a footnote belonged at the bottom of the current page, and would render the page as such. I don't think that these tags exist (a quick check shows that they don't). Footnotes in ebooks are just HTML links. So really, they aren't footnotes, they are just another chuck of text you can jump to and jump back from. My favourites are the ebooks with the jumps to the footnotes, but missing the jumps back to the code. Another favourite thing is that the footnote indicator (in the text) is usually superscripted so it is small. And being one character, it makes a challenging target for a finger that is many characters in size. When I reformat a book with footnotes, I generally move them to be after the paragraph that contains the footnote, formatted in a way that makes the footnote look different (smaller text, different font, blockquoted, bordered). Luckily, most of the books I read don't have footnotes. I think that the 'rules' for formatting ebooks haven't settled down yet, so many designers are using the physical books rules modified for flowing text and just not getting it right. And there is definately missing technical stuff as far as HTML and CSS is concerned.