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Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)Posted Nov 17, 2012 1:01 UTC (Sat) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75)In reply to: Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) by nix Parent article: Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times)
Maybe this will discourage page-turn animations. They are *ferociously* annoying. Absolutely. They're a needless distraction. I like being able to advance the text one page at a time instead of line by line, and I guess there should be some kind of transition rather than a sudden change in the text, but copying a paper page turning is just unnecessarily slow and showy.
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Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) Posted Nov 17, 2012 2:41 UTC (Sat) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
This page turn animation is only used in iBooks, on iOS (so only iPhone/iPad/iPod), not the desktop. It works _very_ well with a finger interface, it makes more sense than any other sort of transition. I absolutely loathed using readers without any subtle animation... they were far too jarring an experience (something that apparently doesn't impact some people at all).
Apple's implementation is actually quite nice, very well thought out with subtleties that aren't immediate obvious how useful they are (being able to pull down a corner is actually very nice... much nicer than swapping pages, even though you'd never assume that). Being able to get a /patent/ on it is still absurd, but I'm long past looking down on the companies for applying for them, it's the patent office's fault for granting them, and the governments for not having any problem with it (you could eventually get back around to the company, but they're just exploiting a broken system, just like happens with every other broken system in the world).
Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) Posted Nov 17, 2012 10:29 UTC (Sat) by cyanit (guest, #86671) [Link]
Or you can just consider the "book" as a large 2D surface made by tiling pages that the device is a window on and use a simple sliding transition.
No 3D required, fast, simple and more intuitive for people who have never seen a physical book (which hopefully will be the majority at some point).
Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) Posted Nov 17, 2012 14:25 UTC (Sat) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
Why have pages at all.
Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) Posted Nov 17, 2012 17:31 UTC (Sat) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75) [Link] No matter how you manage things, you'll still have a screen full of information as a basic presentation unit, and that "screenfull" becomes the new page. My experience is that it's easier to read if you replace the whole page rather than trying to scroll by an arbitrary distance. I suspect this is because replacing all the text lets me move my eye to a well defined place on the screen to continue, while scrolling the text requires me to either track the text as it moves or hunt for the last thing I read if I can't. Neither tracking nor hunting is as efficient as moving my eyes to a defined position on the screen, so I find them more of a strain. Hunting for the last read text is especially bad because it can be slow enough that I lose the flow of the text and wind up having to backtrack a short distance to recover it.
Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) Posted Nov 18, 2012 13:54 UTC (Sun) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
Okay. I personally rely on smooth animations that make it possible to track the display update nowadays, so I find no difficulty with partial updates. On the other hand, when such smooth animations aren't provided -- which is all too common in some operating systems -- then there's some hunting involved before the reading can resume.
Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) Posted Nov 17, 2012 16:00 UTC (Sat) by bokr (subscriber, #58369) [Link] Or you can just consider the "book" as a large 2D surface made by tiling pages that the device is a window on and use a simple sliding transition. I like that. Left/right for next page / previous page. Then up/down slide can be to next major section. Diagonal slide gestures can go to obvious special places, NW to beginning, SE to end, NE to undo, SW to redo. Obviously multifinger slides can do special things, to navigate between other elements of a document: TOC, index, tables and illustrations, footnotes (NE to go back we already established), and other helpful things for presentations. For fancy transitions between illustrations, an animated cartoon graffiti artist from Brazil could spray over the old and paint the new ... Patents galore ;-/ Sheesh, this autocratic granting of privilege to extract tribute is so feudal. Couldn't we instead invent a way to establish rights to actual revenue from putting actual things in the market, with no restrictions on using patented ideas, just a right to claim a share once real money is being made? RMS could invent a new patent license, so anyone could make a claim as easily as writing (c) now -- maybe (p) instead: a claim to have established prior art in the publishing of it, and claiming a right to a fair share of benefits. "You are free to use this patentable prior art, which I hereby claim under <RMS legalese ;-)> ..." Maybe people or companies would want to elect to convert their existing ordinary patents to the revenue-sharing form, rather than trying to promote with venture capitalists, especially if they are clever but more interested in tech and science than in financing. Imagine being able to give away your idea and hoping all kinds people "steal" it and use it without restriction to create a variety of products. Just go on with your fun work and wait for it: The inevitable robocalls ... "Do you have a (p) patent in force? We can offer services to find who is using it and making money. We have experienced lawyers. Our fees are reasonable ..." IOW, invent a new game without scaring the old players too much. ;-)
Apple Now Owns the Page Turn (New York Times) Posted Nov 17, 2012 16:55 UTC (Sat) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
> Or you can just consider the "book" as a large 2D surface made by tiling pages that the device is a window on and use a simple sliding transition.
You could. The question is if that's a more pleasing experience than Apple's design of emulating physical pages. I doubt there's been any real studies done trying to figure that sort of thing out (simply designing such a study wouldn't be easy). For now, all we can do is go by personal experiences. I've used both iBooks as well as Android apps that did something along the lines of what you describe, and just in my personal experience I've found Apple's approach to be less intrusive (because it acts as my brain expects something physical to act).
> No 3D required
> and more intuitive for people who have never seen a physical book (which hopefully will be the majority at some point).
How many people have never seen a book that own an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (or any smart phone/tablet)? I'd be rather shocked if the number of people that owned one and that could read, was a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the population of the entire world. Designing a product for a demographic that doesn't exist, and likely won't for 50-100 years, seems quite weird to me.
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