iBooks 1.1 out for iPhone and iPad

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by lilman

+1 Goodreader > iBooks for pdfs by a large margin

Don't you mean iBooks with a large margin?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ATimson

iPhone version needs some work, IMO - the smallest font size is still too big. (And I think there's too much space between lines, but maybe with a smaller font that wouldn't be such a problem.)

Margins are too larger too on the iPhone screen. You lose a lot of text that way.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Margins are too larger too on the iPhone screen. You lose a lot of text that way.

I lose some, but depending on how obnoxious the original book's styles were it still can be less than in a CSS-respecting reader like txtr.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Margins are too larger too on the iPhone screen. You lose a lot of text that way.

how much do you really lose? how many more page turns does it translate into? you lose and gain pages when you change font sizes too. the concept of a page in an eBook doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it, there is no actual paper, so why would there be a page? documents should be broken up into chapter/section with a ToC referring to the chapter/section header. may take another 50-100 years but one day pages will be history.

[Bremen Cole]

Margins in books are where you put your thumbs as you hold it. There is no need for that to be forced onto electronic readers. For those that do want it, it's fine, but there should also be an option to scale it for those that don't need the book imitating features.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

Margins in books are where you put your thumbs as you hold it. There is no need for that to be forced onto electronic readers. For those that do want it, it's fine, but there should also be an option to scale it for those that don't need the book imitating features.

Exactly. I don't hold whatever device I am reading by touching the screen. SO the margins are wasted screen space. I prefer to have little to no margins.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by scottjl

how much do you really lose? how many more page turns does it translate into? you lose and gain pages when you change font sizes too. the concept of a page in an eBook doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it, there is no actual paper, so why would there be a page? documents should be broken up into chapter/section with a ToC referring to the chapter/section header. may take another 50-100 years but one day pages will be history.

It's not a matter of how many extra page turns or such. But by having just large margins, it makes iBooks look not all that wonderful when full justified. If you have more text per line, you have less change of overly large spacing per word. But because of iBooks huge margin, I do have to turn off full justification since I do get larger spaces between words too much of the time. This is with the iPhone. It's actually more important to have smaller margins on a smaller screen. On the iPad, you get lots of extra pages due to the margins.

[foghat]

Originally Posted by scottjl

how much do you really lose? how many more page turns does it translate into? you lose and gain pages when you change font sizes too. the concept of a page in an eBook doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it, there is no actual paper, so why would there be a page? documents should be broken up into chapter/section with a ToC referring to the chapter/section header. may take another 50-100 years but one day pages will be history.

Call it a page or call it a section, same difference - you need some way to break up the content. I think the concept of page numbers is very relevant - especially when trying to compare the length of one book to another.

With such large margins in ibooks for iphone, the line of actual text is so short I actually find it a little difficult to read (though I'm sure I will get used to it).

I bet there would be a significant savings in page turns if they made all four margins smaller and got extended the page over the clock/battery.

A lot of the 'stuff' that works well on the ipad and gives it more of a 'book' feel, is superfluous on the iphone and contributes to the 'lost' space. Items such as displaying the title at the top of every page, the book 'spine' on the left margin and the illusion of multiple pages on the right margin.

For comparison, reading the same chapter in Stanza (same font and size) vs. iBooks, Stanza reads 22 pages, ibooks reads 25 - that is a significant enough difference for me over the course of 30 or so chapters.

[scottjl]

But my point is, if I use the smallest size text in iBooks (which may be a different size than the smallest available in another application) a book might be 100 pages. When I zoom it to the largest font size, it might be 250 pages. On another reader, with different fonts, you're going to have different page counts as well. How do I tell someone reading a book on a Kindle "Look at the diagram on page 25," when his page 25 might be page 37, or page 21?

I didn't say we don't need section breaks (or whatever you want to call them). Sure, we need section breaks just as we need paragraphs and sentences. But what is a page when you can have an arbitrary length of scrolling text?

[foghat]

Well, I only use it to read novels and I don't mess around with the font size or style once I find something that works. So for me the number is a decent way to gauge the overall size of a book.

All I am trying to say is that, imo, there is a lot wasted space on ibooks for iphone that would be better used for text vs. aesthetics.

[scottjl]

lol. this is apple we're talking about.. style over substance ya know.

personally, i'd rather see a % instead of page numbers. has more meaning if i know i'm 50% done than on an arbitrary page number.

[Bremen Cole]

Originally Posted by scottjl

lol. this is apple we're talking about.. style over substance ya know.

personally, i'd rather see a % instead of page numbers. has more meaning if i know i'm 50% done than on an arbitrary page number.

I agree. A percentage would also be consistent across platforms, as well as let you know about how much book you had left. As I always say, I just want the options. The more options, the more each person can customize and get what they want. With dead tree books there were not options, now we should have them....

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

I agree. A percentage would also be consistent across platforms, as well as let you know about how much book you had left. As I always say, I just want the options. The more options, the more each person can customize and get what they want. With dead tree books there were not options, now we should have them....

There are a couple schools of thought about options and feature development.

One school says that every feature you do should be considered 'done' by the time you release it, and that includes all the polish expected of it. It should be something you only go back and change based on feedback or it needs an addition on it as part of another feature. Do the stuff with the biggest impact first, even if it means you leave out some users for awhile.

The other school says that you should get as many different features into the schedule as you can, in order to cater to the largest group of people possible. There is no reason the polish can't come in towards the end of the schedule once you have the "core feature-set" done and you are moving onto fixing all the bugs in the code.

Take a guess as to which camp Apple considers themselves to be in.

And there is nothing inherently wrong about either camp. You can do it terribly wrong both ways, and you an do it right both ways.

The catch with the first is that it is easy to create a product that carves out a niche and quickly dies if you are too laser focused on a bare bones feature set. The upside with the first is that your schedules are a bit more realistic in terms of features, when they will be properly debugged, and so on. So if the unexpected happens, perhaps you slip a few smaller features instead of slipping the release date, or worse, feeling like you don't have time to fix bugs before you have to ship.

The catch with the second is that it is easy to create a product that has a long feature list that can please anyone on paper, but once they have it, they realize it does none of them particularly well. These products tend to die off quickly because they are buggy, lack any sort of focus, and don't do anything in a way that sets them apart from the competition, they just do more of it. The upside here is that you are less likely to ship the product lacking in functionality. More people are willing to give it a try, which if you play your hand right, means you reach more people. If you can control the rough edges well enough, you can get a customer base willing to wait for the polish to come along.

[foghat]

Originally Posted by scottjl

lol. this is apple we're talking about.. style over substance ya know.

personally, i'd rather see a % instead of page numbers. has more meaning if i know i'm 50% done than on an arbitrary page number.

Not me. Not having a total number of pages was one of the things about stanza that drove me crazy.

Plus with ibooks, you can infer a loose approximation of the % when viewing the progress bar that displays when you tap the screen.

I like page numbers better because:
1. I can get an idea of the 'size' of one book relative to another
2. Knowing that I am on page 10 of 100 has more meaning to me than 10%. I know that in 90 more pages I am done. Whereas with a %, I may have some idea of how long or how many page turns it took me to get to 10%, but I really don't have a real good handle on how much more of the book I have to get through - other than I have 90% left.

I could see where % might have more meaning if you are constantly changing font sizes or reading on different devices, as the page numbers will change, but the % should remain constant - this just isn't the case for me.

And even if I was reading on both the iphone and ipad, I'd still prefer the page numbers.

[foghat]

Kolenka,

I am happy that Apple made ibooks looks so good - and really that is their thing. I trust they will add at least some of the functionality I am looking for. That said, sometimes style does win out over substance.