Archive for the ‘Navigation’ Category
Friday, March 13th, 2009
A couple of recent commentaries, excerpted below, suggest that the best sort of books for eBooks are ones that are intended to be read linearly, navigating through pages consecutively (i.e. most notably fiction). Both observers say that books whose usability is increased by flipping back and forth from one section ...
Posted in Navigation, Pageturners, PicsNo, Uncategorized, eBooks, kindle | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
When a link is clicked to a specific page in GBS Mobile, the page that always opens is the entry page for the book. There doesn't seem to be a way to link successfully to specific pages. I've tried this in several examples, and have had the same experience in ...
Posted in Google, Google Book Search, Mobile, Navigation, PicsYes, Uncategorized, eBooks, iPhone | No Comments »
Thursday, December 11th, 2008
Until now, books with pictures, especially color pictures, have been a relatively small part of Google Books. But the addition of highly visual, popular magazines changes this -- The titles added so far are filled with pictures!
On one level, more pictures in Google Books is gratifying -- a theme ...
Posted in Google Book Search, Image Search, Magazines, Navigation, PicsYes, Thumbnails, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Maps and newspapers, because they're rich in graphic information, benefit greatly from a zooming and panning interface. Text-only books, because they're more linear and because text is easily searchable, don't benefit from this sort of interface as much, but books with pictures certainly do.
zKimmer.com has recently implemented Google Maps technology ...
Posted in Google, Google Book Search, Magazines, Maps, Navigation, Newspapers, PicsYes, Uncategorized, Zooming & panning, eBooks | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
Looking at Google Newspapers has got me thinking that the same sort of zooming-panning interface that's used in that, and in Google Maps, could also be used for viewing books. An example of this is shown in the screenshots from videos on Seadragon linked below.
Seadragon is a zooming-panning technology, owned ...
Posted in Maps, Microsoft, Navigation, PicsYes, Seadragon, Uncategorized, Zooming & panning, eBooks | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
A useful thread in exploring panning and zooming is the concept of the zooming user interface (ZUI). Demos of this are especially valuable because they give a detailed view of the power of panning and zooming for navigating an online environment that integrates text and pictures. An elegant example of ...
Posted in Navigation, PicsYes, Uncategorized, Zooming & panning | 1 Comment »
Friday, September 12th, 2008
Google recently announced the launch of Google Newspapers. The first issue (and apparently the only one up currently) is the 1969 We're on the moon edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
What caught my attention here is the ability to pan -- to move around on the large newspaper page with the ...
Posted in Google, Navigation, Newspapers, PicsYes, Uncategorized, Zooming & panning | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
For the most part, DjVu is well-documented (DjVu.org | Wikipedia). I'll add a few comments though, especially regarding its use for viewing books with pictures.
It's widely acknowledged that the DjVu format excels in the online presentation of images/pictures, when compared with PDF, but this is not emphasized as much as ...
Posted in DjVu, Internet Archive, Navigation, PicsYes, Thumbnails, Uncategorized, eBooks | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Suzanne Chapman, at userslib.com, has the interesting tag Pageturners. This term has been used to describe eBook systems that allow the user to have the feel of actually turning the pages of a print book, by clicking an icon or by using the mouse to mimic the motion of turning ...
Posted in Google Book Search, Navigation, Pageturners, PicsYes, Uncategorized, eBooks | 2 Comments »
Friday, September 5th, 2008
Finding a heavily illustrated book that's in both Google Books (GBS) and Internet Archive (IA) gives a good comparison of the strengths and weaknesses in the way illustrated books are presented in these systems.
Shown below are the "intro" pages for the book in the 2 systems. The clear advantage of ...
Posted in DjVu, Google Book Search, Hardin MD, Internet Archive, Navigation, PicsYes, Thumbnails, Uncategorized, eBooks | 1 Comment »
