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

[Jeff Howard]

An analysis of TS Elliot's "The Waste Land" made the rounds a few
years ago. It combines the poem, cross-references, notes, comments
and navigation into a multi-pane interface.

http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/exhomef.html#select

The visual design could use some polishing, but there were six (6!)
different interfaces that might give some insight into the pros and
cons of each approach.

4 frames in one window (1 over 2 next to 1)
4 frames in one window (1 over 1 over 2)
4 frames in one window (2 over 2)
3 frames in one window (1 over 2, Notes in separate window)
Plus 2 line-wrap variants.


As to why upper/lower divisions are more common in interfaces, I'd
say it's because lines of text in western languages run
horizontally, not vertically and column depth influences readability
less than line length. If you only have room for a few lines of text,
they can still be separated into upper/lower panes with no line-length
problems. Horizontal divisions aren't nearly so flexible because once
you drop below about 55 characters, readability starts to suffer. You
also can't resize the horizontal divisions without reflowing the
text. Vertical divisions don't have that limitation.

I don't think screen space is as much of an issue now, but text
still runs horizontally in western cultures, so the divisions still
follow those lines.