Quote:
Originally Posted by b.tarde
I don't think the epub specification would have to add anything particularly exotic to support pop-ups: just expand the amount of CSS covered to include :hover and related stuff. You can Google how to use pseudo-classes to produce pop-up footnotes in a web page, but I don't know of any reader that supports this.
And, if I can bang my favorite drum just a little more, epub will have to include support for footnotes and other things if it is ever going to be suitable for textbooks and scholarly publications--a big market just waiting to be addressed.
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Hover and its ilk are not good solutions for eBooks on devices without a touch screen. I do not think CSS is the way to solve the problem. However a solution does not have to be complicated. A simple thing like a new tag, for example <ref> would be adequate. This is the way wikis do it. This way the application could identify this as something different from a href and do an appropriate thing.
I agree that a solution is needed for text books and scholarly publications. I would have a type option to the <ref> tag that could identify bibliography references from simple notes. This way the reading application would have the option to display them differently.
Dale