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Similar products

Similar products

There are some other people making similar stuff

  • The obvious:
    • Amazon Kindle
    • Apple iBooks
    • EPUB
  • HTML-tech

Readability

.... The most popular technology for reformatting Internet articles earlier on was the "Readability" script, a piece of JavaScript that through heavy use of heuristics can identify the most important elements of an Internet article and create a simpler, more readable version of the article.

While the script is open source and still available, an updated version

As a result, several technologies have been forked from this project, including the

  • Readability
  • Apple's Safari Reader

Bits and pieces of the script can also be found in other products, which will not be expanded upon here.

I'll call these techniques static and dynamic pagination.

Static pagination

These pages are laid out and typeset statically by a designer in advance

The most popular format found today, and the only one I'll address in this report, is the ubiquitous PDF file.

How the text is to be rendered is dictated by the designer. The designer carefully chooses how each block of text is to flow, chooses appropriate fonts and properly positions images. The main advantage of this is that the designer is in complete control of how the document looks like in the hands of the user.

PDF

...

These files are made for print.

While not in wide use today, the PDF can include dynamic content. For instance, PDFs are able to evaluate JavaScript declarations (source). This is disregarded in this document, as the pagination itself is still static.

Semi static pagination

Additional static formats are typical word processor documents, such as Microsoft Word. I'm not addressing these types of documents, as they share most of the characteristics of the PDF file described above. Additionally, word processor documents are not made for general consumption in the same vein as the formats I am addressing are (even though such documents often are read directly through a word processor).

These types of documents are not completely static, as the user is able to adjust the pagination rate by changing the paper format – and could create documents tailored to a standard screen. One could argue that slideshows (such as PowerPoint), are paginated like this, by being tailored to the standard 4:3 format one finds...

Dynamic pagination

The actual text itself is stored separately, supplemented by rules that dictates how the text is to be displayed by the device. The device is thus the ... for typesetting and render the text.

Dynamic pagination uses various technologies and techniques to present the document dynamically, making it possible for the text to flow dynamically in adherence of the device that displays it.

This is not to say that the technologies are not able to produce statically paginated texts, where the designer is in complete (note: not actually complete) control of how the pages are laid out when the technology renders the text.

The separation of text and style makes it so that a designer is able to create a boilerplate document format that one can funnel any text into, making it easy to update and supplement existing texts, as the text will now dynamically reflow to suit the edited content.

The main advantage of dynamically flowing text is that the user is able to use the device of his or her choice to consume the document. Among the disadvantages we find that because the designer is now not able to completely control how the text is rendered, there is the possibility to introduce bugs in the document itself (where in the static document, the bugs are (disregarding that modern static document formats can include dynamic elements) found in the rendering software or the creation suite). The designer now has to comb the rule set for bugs and comb the resulting text for edge case scenarios where the rules does not work as intended – bugs and edge case scenarios that might only exist in specific screen size and/or resolutions. There are also differences in how a text is best displayed on different devices, differences that has to be accommodated for if the text is to be as usable as possible.

Ebook formats

Several competing formats for formatting ebooks exists, the most popular at the time of writing being the open source EPUB standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (in use by most ereader hardware and software including the Apple iBook platform), and the Kindle Format 8 by Amazon (only used by the Amazon Kindle ereader hardware and software). The differences between these two formats are arguably neglible, and will not be detailed here. In short, what they offer is a HTML5-based rendering engine that authors and designers use to typeset and format their books for consumption on compatible platforms.

There are several tools that helps authors export their texts to the various formats, as well as tools for converting documents between the standardized formats (for use by either the authors or the end users).

Flipboard

Released in 20XX for the Apple iPad, Flipboard quickly became a popular method to

, emulating the look and feel of a glossy magazine where a user can skim and browse through, as well as providing

Pagination of articles is only provided to content partners, content from third party sources are re-formatted to remove .... , but are scrolled.

A version for Android tablets was made available in late 2012.

Handheld versions

Flipboard was later ported with a slightly different user interface for iOS based phones, as well as Android based phones.

Notable differences between the tablet and handheld versions include the direction the pages flows in. Navigation in the tablet versions is done horizontally by swiping left to right. Navigation in the handheld versions is done vertically by swiping bottom to top. The reason for why this is the case is not known, but a plausible rationale is the available space for swiping.

Craig Mod chonicled the development of the handheld version of the application in his essay The Digital-Physical.

Instapaper

Developed by Marco Arment

To navigate the text, in addition to the traditional scolling movement, a user can use scroll the text by tilting the device or paginate the text.

HTML based

MagicScroll

Introduced in early 2013, Richard Wallis,

His rationale is described in his introductory text, I want the world to scroll this way. His main gripe with scrolling text is that scrolling moves the text, that lacking the stationary nature of paginated text, the user is more likely to be distracted. This is researched in

mimicing, not copying, book like interaction by creating a page and scroll metaphor hybrid.

Here, the text is presented in layers, where the user when scrolling the text, peels the layers from down to top. MagicScroll also lets the user navigate

Treesaver

Treesaver is a JavaScript library that paginates text.

With Treesaver, you can publish a richly featured digital magazine, a news publication—or, soon, a book. Content is divided into pages, and layouts adapt automatically for to fit any web browser.

While being an open source plugin that can be used by anyone, the company behind it provides a service to convert texts for others for a nominal fee.

Google Books

Monocle

Monocle is a web based technology that lets a user read ebooks in a familiar, paginated interface, realized through JavaScript. Monocle is web based, and is available for nearly every available browser for the most popular desktop and handheld devices. The books are embeddable on regular web pages. Monocle books are created from epub files, where the content is extracted from the file through JavaScript, the content is renderered with JavaScript and styled with CSS.

To navigate thought a Monocle powered books, one must swipes across the screen or by tapping the virtual page's left or right margins (to navigate to the previous and next page, respecively). The page then slides with a simple animation to illustrate the action taken, revealing the next page.

Monocle is digital books for everyone. You can use it on any device with a modern web browser: the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad, Android for phones and Android for tablets, the Kindle 3, the Nook, and of course a Mac, Windows PC or Linux-powered device using Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera.

The Monocle technology is the basis for the booki.sh ebook library service. Here, you can store and read your ebook collection by uploading your (DRM-free) collection to their servers, where they algorithmically convert the book to their format for free. This implementation adds features

Flash based tools

The Norwegian national library uses a

Newspaper -

Why a paginated view is used is likely to be because of the nature of the source material – books and papers formatted for print, or scanned print material. – in addition to the book metaphor emulation.

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite family

http://www.adobe.com/products/digital-publishing-suite-family.html

Creating paginati

Safari

Safari is an interactive magazine ...

Powered by a framework created by bigFIG Digital Media Ltd created with Adobe Flash, the digital magazine is readable anywhere where Flash is available, including in apps for devices not supporting the Flash browser plugin (such as the Apple iPad and Android based devices).

Why am I even mentioning it?

  • Also paginated
  • While implemented in Flash, this could very well be done with modern web technologies, and would probably be better off for it (as one could then easily embed additional stuff)
  • Actually quite cool

Differences in the implementation of the metaphor

  • Plain pagination, with and without animation
    • The CSS standard proposal supports different animation styles
    • Mimic, not emulation
  • Book emulation
    • Ears
    • 3D animated page flip
  • Newthing
    • Appliness
    • MagicScroll

Summary

What seems to be evident is that a paginated view of long form content is, at least by developers, preferred. The variety of applications and technologies implementing this navigation method points to the choice not necessarily being a techincal limitation (as it might be in the case of the Amazon Kindle and similar electronic ink based ebook readers), but rather something that enhances the reading experience in some way.

Wether or not the (perceived) preference is due to a , it could very well be due to being a known metaphor, nostalgia?