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

[Eugene Chen]

There might be some reason to consider inline expansion. This would work
basically the way people use parthenseses.

"The monkey peeled the _banana_ [a Banana is an oblong shaped fruit] and
smiled mysteriously"

Of course this interrupts the text, but has the least eye movement of all.
Unlike popup layers, none of the original text is obscured. I've seen this
done in some help systems, usually clunky, but with the right visual design
(possible use of dimming, animation) it could have it's place. Would be nice
to be able to collapse by clicking in the exact same location, no mouse
movement. Just another thing to consider. Also, it may be fruitful to
combine some of the approaches that have been mentioned, especially if the
annotations fall into a few different classes.

It would help to understand the tasks a bit better. e.g. is the user
exploring these annotations for serious research, or exploratory play and
discovery. Do they need to come back to them later, etc.

Eugene


Eugene Chen  |  User Experience Design, Strategy, and Usability
main 415 282 7456  |  mobile 415 336 1783  |  fax 240 282 7452 
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> I'm considering something that splits the two panes and that 
> when you click on an area of the "text itself" pane, the 
> "explanatory" pane jumps to the footnote that best 
> corresponds to that location of the text. And vice versa: you 
> can browse the "explanatory" pane from footnote to footnote; 
> when clicking on the footnote (or cursor-ing over it?), the 
> "text itself" pane jumps to the portion to which that footnote refers.