| Hey thanks for the awesome thoughts on the book! > 1. Please, please use the metric system units ... 1000mph (1,674.4km/h). Absolutely. Will do! > On the Sun's chapter, you drew it yellow. Oh yes, it's actually bright intolerable white once you're outside the atmosphere. I wrote this book for my nephew and he totally loves sitting next to me when we do these creatives. So I'm gonna leave it like that for now and revisit later in the day (it's 5:30 am here in DC!) with him. > There are too many links that forces the reader to constantly deviate from what he reads ... I realized it midway that traversal would be more-or-less linear and then reduced the number of anchor links per page later on. I guess I'm gonna leave it on the writers to choose what's best for their book. Will come back on the look_up feature later, but thanks for sharing your insight here. 4. No love for Pluto :( There will be love for the dwarfs very soon! :-) ===== Meanwhile, to those who are unhappy about the idea of having books with flipping animation on the browser, here's a little note: A lot of kids, especially my nephews, love it. It might be that you are not the right audience for it, but kids really love flipping the page as it is. And they love the animations and visuals within too. There's a reason why Apple chose to have flipping behavior for iBooks - cuz otherwise it'd feel more like a slideshow. Fast/performant is another thing, but books must have a bifolia experience that flips comfortably at a soft reading pace. There is no doubt about that. While I understand the passion with which people want to impress what should or shouldn't be on the web, but there's no point making it a turf war. There have been several occasions where exactly the same thing - i.e. books - have been appreciated by hackernews on the browser itself. By the very same people who at other times chose to batter the idea. For example, this book on Startup School Doodles from my friend Greg Koberger was loved invariably by all of you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8449652 So it's all a matter of context and audience. |
I don't doubt that some like it, and that it's an important option to have, but likewise it is important to offer the ability to turn it off, or you will lose people like me that will outright refuse to deal with your books if I have to suffer through page flipping animations. I've discarded dozens (and this is not an exaggeration) e-book readers over page-flipping behaviour, because when dealing with e-books, page flipping behaviour is one of the most noticeable UI behaviours.
I car about pretty much these things in an e-book reader: page-flipping behaviour, speed, text-zoom/reflow, ability to set contrast freely (including invert to light on black background), and well rendered/readable fonts. Everything else is secondary. Animations and interactivity can be fun, but a reader that fails on any of those items is a reader I'll never use.