e-Novels vs. e-References

[athelind]

It's funny; when people first started talking about ebooks, there was a feeling that they'd catch on more for reference books than casual reading, that it woulkd take a long time for newfangled gadgetry to make inroads on the comfortable, traditional feel of curling up with a good book

Comments

[bfdragon]

For me though it's also just the physical 'muscle memory' of where something is in a book. Having a physical place in a book I am familiar seems to be easier for it to occupy a place in my head.

[the_gneech]

What is Wikipedia if not an electronic reference book?

-TG

Ahhh, now this is GOING somewhere!

[athelind]

The exception that proves the rule! It's extensively (exhaustively) hyperlinked; it operates in a browser, allowing for multiple tabs and windows (at least on a proper computer; not so much on tablets/phones); incorporates media and graphics smoothly and dynamically ... in short, it's what a digital reference book SHOULD be.

(Unfortunately, it requires a continuous internet connection, and if you've got an e-paper style ebook reader, you're SOL.)

I will note that I never bothered to pick up the 3.5 edition of D&D. I found The Hypertext d20 SRD to be far MORE usable than physical books. It's also available for full download, so you don't need a continuous internet connection to use it -- I think you're still out of luck with e-paper readers, but it's a situation where laptops are really more convenient than a tablet-shaped device.

Again, though, it's an exception that proves the rule. It's a fan-created work taking advantage of the Open Game License. When RPG companies release "digital editions", they're invariably PDFs,

[notthebuddha]

Unfortunately, it requires a continuous internet connection, and if you've got an e-paper style ebook reader, you're SOL

ISTR several budget ebook readers that came with copies of Wikipedia aboard. Why would e-paper in particular have a problem?

[athelind]

I was under the impression that it didn't handle web browsing well. My only ePaper device was a Pocket eDGe, and it shunted any web browsing over to the tablet side. If I'm wrong, then bonus!

Still, I think some interface tweaking needs to be made for electronic reference books, on the actual devices as well as on the digital files. Ebook readers are currently optimized for linear novels, at least from what I've seen.

[foofers]

Tangent rant: you've also nicely summed up the nature of design.

At a prior job, though it wasn't my official job title, I'd sort of adopted the role of de-facto user interface designer for many of out projects.

Nothing in the world made me want to punch babies more than someone bringing me a nearly complete piece of (usually crappy) software and asking, "Can you add a nice user interface to this?"

What they were asking for wasn't design, but decoration...or colloquially polishing a turd.

The actual, underlying design is about how the conceptual pieces fit together and interact within your gray matter. Ideally it's the first step, before a single line of code is written, and not an afterthought. But people dwell on the curves and pixels and blinky lights as "design" because...I dunno...they think it's sexy or something. OMG look I put blue LEDs on it!

Rant. Sorry. :)

[athelind]

Travelling down that tangent and taking one from there

[bfdragon]

I've adapted to the ribbon on Word or Excel, and with screens as high as resolution as they are, the wasted space is annoying, but fine.

However in AUTOCAD, which has hundreds and hundreds of commands, it's just silly. Blocks of icons are fine for those oft-used commands. But for the rest of them, ones that you use once a week, month.. year, a list with a short description is what you want. In fact, many commands simply aren't in the ribbon at all unless you add them yourself. So the fact is that with the ribbon I find myself using the GUI less and the CUI more. That sounds like a failure of a GUI to me.