Quote:
Originally Posted by jswinden
I've not yet encountered the popup window for footnotes. But it seems to me that for the popup to be good it should render the whole text of the footnote in a scroll-able popup window superimposed over the book page window. They really wouldn't need a link to return to where you were reading if they did it right. They would only need to allow the popup to close when you touched the screen outside of the popup box boundary. This method would mean you never left the book page or position on the page. But we are talking about Amazon here, so I suspect they will do their best to muck it up!  |
My torture test for footnotes is Infinite Jest. It has multi-page footnotes, and footnotes with footnotes, and they are all essential to read.
If the footnote is relatively short and the reference is on upper 2/3 of the screen, it will display in a box at the bottom of the current page. Else it will go full-page and display up to a full page (at current font/margin/line spacing settings), but does not scroll, so it will truncate longer footnotes and you have to tap the Go To Footnotes link to read the rest. But that is not necessary 95% of the time (of course it depends on the book and your Tt settings). Once you Go there, there is a little arrow next to the start of the footnote that you can tap on to go back (I think this works even if there is no back-link, but would have to find a book formatted without back-links on each footnote). And Page Flip knows where the previous location was if you turn the page, after which the arrow is gone.
Overall, it seems pretty reasonable, though scrolling in the pop up would be a nice enhancement, especially once it has gone full-screen. One still might want to Go To Footnotes (to read several at once) but then it would be more optional.
I haven't used other reading apps enough to see if any of them support pop up footnotes, and how. Pretty sure iBooks does but I don't happen to have examples to throw at it.