[IxDA Discuss] UI design for digital books with extensive footnotes

[Juan Lanus]

Hi Steve, All,

I'm joining late, but I have read it all. Almost all what I was
willing to say is already said.
In the vein of taking the foot out of "footnotes."
Also, leveraging the lack of page limits a web application provides.

My first idea is a two-pane with a moveable division, so the reader
can adapt the real estate proportions according to the content's. I
recall some applications that have an option for to switch between
vertical and horizontal division, maybe useless with today's screens.

Second, a means for to slightly highlight the text related to the note
in the right pane (left pane for RTL readers?). There must be a visual
clue telling that the displayed note refers to "this" piece of text.

Third, a highlight on all clickable pieces of text that have notes.
This poses an interesting problem, when some words participate in more
than one "link". For example when there is a comment on a paragraph
and also a comment on a word or two that belong to the same paragraph.

Another question is what to do to the right pane when the referenced
text is scrolled out of sight in the left pane. IMO, nothing. But this
calls for panel synching controls, case when the user is reading an
interesting note and would like to know what text is it applied to.

Related is the search thingie. Search original, notes, both ...
Because of course there will have to be a searching tool.

 - - - - -

All this is up-front design. Assuming one can do it with the bare
brain. But users are another thing ...
The best would be to talk with somebody knowledgeable, one who reads
or writes such books, and have an antropologic interview for to find
out some scenarios and then build a use case on it.
Usually there are surprises, things are not what one imagines before
having a chance for to grab them in real.
Sometimes in simpler, almost always is nuch more complicated, and
seldom it's exactly as imagined. Specially if one is "user-sensitive."
--
Juan Lanus
TECNOSOL
Argentina