Quote:
Originally Posted by pittendrigh
It is possible to display an entire book on a website using pure HTML and javascript, complete with Next Page and Prev Page buttons. Even with a Last Read Page button, and a searchable index.
Making a page turning system isn't all that hard, and it makes book navigation an order of magnitude more convenient.
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A recurring topic here is people wanting page numbers in an ebook, typically corresponding to the page numbers in the printed book. Which then brings up the question, the hardback book or the paperback book, and if the book has been updated and reissued, which edition?
In the case of an html web page book, what is a page? Is it everything I can see? That would be smaller for a phone and bigger for a tablet or desktop computer. And for me, there's always the problem that I'm too cheap to get a data plan and my phone is only connected to the internet when I'm at home or where there's public wifi, so how would I read a book when I'm not connected? And I'm old and can't read on a phone so a tablet would be necessary, which would mean it has some sort of phone data plan, which I'm guessing isn't typical.
For many of us who read ebooks, reading them on an ereader (Kindle, Kobo, etc.) is much more pleasant than a tablet or phone because of the e-ink display.
So for me, if there was a book I wanted to read on a web page that wasn't also available as an ebook the first thing I would do is download the html and convert it to an ebook. I did that a few times with some books on the defunct University of Adelaide site, which had a web page book setup like you're wanting. They also had available the epub format of the book, which looked to have been automatically generated by software.