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Multi-Touch Page Flipping eBook Concept Shown on an iPad

next big thing of 2012 will be Apple launching iPrint, the digital printer printing content on the iPad.

fan will scream innovation while waving their iPad 2 with iClap installed.

seriously. if you really like the books, you should read paper, instead of trying to replicate the experience without coming up with new ideas.

the only new thing here is the "browse to a page by writing the number on the screen" type of function.
 
Many good, some bad

Imitation, with Improvement, is Innovation.

It may be an improvement, for example, to allow the user to tilt the device signify "bending back" the book (to prepare for page thumbing). But going through an EXTRA step such as swiping is not an improvement.
 
ChristianJapan said:
Endless scroll bars are better ? How would you present the content equal to 100 pages of a book ? Like Egypt papyrus rolls ?
Click to expand...

As put on marco.org, imitating real world objects is not always the best idea. On a computing device, there is often a better way to interact with data more suited to the platform.

His best example is the calculator.

Apple's calculator app looks like a calculator. It is easy to grasp because it looks like areal world object. But using it can be gross and clumsy:

20100311-01-overdoing-the-interface-metaphor-1.png



And Soulver, a program more suited to using a computer.

Ahhh, much better! :)

20100311-01-overdoing-the-interface-metaphor-2.png
 
Ability to add tabs...

The whole point of this is finding what you need to refer back to. I think another "real world" way to do this would be a quick way to add those yellow plastic tabs to your pages. Much faster than this patented visual way of leafing through the pages or going to the table of contents to find the bookmark.

What I imagine is pushing your "page" from the side to see the rest of your book and all the tabs you've added. You've spaced them from top to bottom evenly and know that the chapter (or whatever page) you're looking for is the 4th tab from the top. Click that tab. Boom. There. See attached...
 

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ChristianJapan said:
Endless scroll bars are better ? How would you present the content equal to 100 pages of a book ? Like Egypt papyrus rolls ?

A paged presentation (in shape of paper or it's close relative: the album view) is not too bad. Very traditional, but well established.
Maybe not reading anymore and switch to audiobook ? (actually I like those)
Click to expand...

Clearly you are not an interface designer. Saying that you are familiar with a media doesn't mean automatically that it's better than something else.

Endless scrollbars are not a good thing certainly, but neither animations simulating paper are the next big thing, in my opinion. Tablets are great, but as reading platform they still lack of someone capable of setting the bar for the standard, as Apple did and does with the iPad for the digital-media consumption part (movies, music, gaming).

Reading books on a tablet (iPad, Kindle, etc) is not a great experience and it is a fact. More you see these things, more you ask yourself what's the point.

Of course tablets are great because you can store 1000 of books in 150gr. but still.
 
Apple should adopt PDF grid behaviour

While I think it's interesting to adopt a real-world approach to finding a page that you're probably within 10-12 pages from, I don't think the real-world way has every been the best way. Why, because you're guessing and hoping to see, in a fraction of a second, something on a page that you're familiar with. Very hit and miss. It's engrossing to see this company has replicated the look, but in practical application it will be even less effective than in real life, in my opinion...

HOWEVER... (please read on before hitting the MINUS button, as I have a point I'm making)...

What I think Apple needs to adopt for iBooks so benefit the students is the iBOOKS "TABLE OF CONTENTS" feature for PDFs (or "the PDF Way")...

... the difference is when you push that Table of Contents button in the PDF viewer for iBooks, instead of bringing you to the front of the book or a linked list of pages like a typical eBook, the PDF feature zooms out to show you the page you're on in a thumbnail view along with about 11 other pages in onscreen. With a flick of a finger up or down, you see dozens more in a second. Spot the one you need and tap to bring it into place.

This easily would be the best way to go in order to hop to a page you know you're fairly close to but just not sure exactly where because you can see the whole page. This works better than even this multi-flip concept, in my opinion, because while the multi-flip is showing you more pages at a time to hopefully scrub past the one you're looking for, it's (1) doing it too quickly and (2) you only see part of the page. The PDF Way shows 12 pages at a time and shows you the whole page for as long as you need to study which one you're looking for. Again scrolling with a finger-flip, you can navigate dozens of pages in no time.

Now -- because you always need a real Table of Contents, this need to show both would force Apple to add a button at the top and something like the Safari TOP SITES Grid button would be perfect because it shows the representation of multiple pages. This approach would work terrible with a regular book that has 99.99% text and no graphics but for the text books that are presented visually with lots of charts, photos and illustrations... this would be the best possible solution.

Side note: My only criticism of the way Apple does this now is way to much grey. I would add a way to adjust how many pages you see (like an iPhoto slider) and how dense the pages are to one another.

(See attached iPad screenshot of my portfolio in this view)
 

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Look guys, a troll!

ombrenelcielo said:
next big thing of 2012 will be Apple launching iPrint, the digital printer printing content on the iPad.

fan will scream innovation while waving their iPad 2 with iClap installed.

seriously. if you really like the books, you should read paper, instead of trying to replicate the experience without coming up with new ideas.

the only new thing here is the "browse to a page by writing the number on the screen" type of function.
Click to expand...

Look everyone, I caught a troll!
 
ombrenelcielo said:
next big thing of 2012 will be Apple launching iPrint, the digital printer printing content on the iPad.

fan will scream innovation while waving their iPad 2 with iClap installed.

seriously. if you really like the books, you should read paper, instead of trying to replicate the experience without coming up with new ideas.

the only new thing here is the "browse to a page by writing the number on the screen" type of function.
Click to expand...

You know you have been in Finland too long when you no longer correct people who say MAC Donald's. :apple:
 
gibbz said:
That's pretty slick.
Click to expand...

Slick but honestly how truly useful are they. With ebooks we often don't know how many pages we need to go ahead so many of those 4 page flips are just pretty looking but perhaps not that useful outside of perhaps a multi finger swipe that jumps you to the next chapter rather than some arbitrary page count.

That said, they do touch on a couple of ideas that could be brought into even ibooks. Better access to the TOC to jump sections and easier bookmarking. Those are two things that in ibooks are sometimes a pain because they are in a hidden menu bar. What, for example, you could tap two fingers down on any page in any area to make a bookmark for that page. What if a three finger tap would take you to the TOC or back to where you were if you decided not to change spots. And you could four finger tap to close the book. All are way easier than the whole tap to get the menu etc. Even a double tap in these styles is easier.
 
Risco said:
This is has clearly been made with the sole intention of Apple buying up the patent.
Click to expand...

Who says they have a patent on it. They might not be able to get one with the tech being someone else's (by their own admission).

And even if they do, Apple might not have to buy it to use the same gestures given that they are a natural extension of current ones. All Apple would have to do is develop their own tech for making such gestures work. And since these were already done off Apple's own APIs that won't be a hard one to do either.

But on the flip side, since they admit that they used Apple tech they might not be able to use the gestures without incurring a law suit for IP violation (cause you can bet that Apple has all that stuff patented, copyrighted etc as needed and possible). So even if they try to go the Cydia route they could lose.

----------
gloss said:
Just like all the three-, four- and five-touch gestures that are already on the iPad, right?
Click to expand...

They are rather simple. But the beauty is that they aren't the only way. They are an alternative for those that want something more slick. Even in ibooks you can choose to set page turns to just be a tap rather than the swipe.

every alternate these folks have given seems complex (aside from the write the page number but how well is that going to work when you have pages flowing around based on orientation, font size etc)
 
budakpisang said:
Look everyone, I caught a troll!
Click to expand...

haha.

So what do you suggest? To praise every piece of stuff they throw us?

My point here is that, as many others posted above, pages as in the books are not optimal as way of browsing for informations. It's messy, relies on memory / notes / it's slow / it's distracting.

We are supposed to push innovation forward, do you think we would have come so far if we remained stuck with mechanical movable type printing?

Look, I don't say this is not cool or not handy, it's a great effort and exercise.. My concern is "do we really need this"? Do we seriously really still need to browse to the first page on an "electronic" book to get to the TOC when we browse daily a resource like internet? Or not to mention PDF way to handle TOCs, that' 10 light years better than this technological exercise, I can find informations at one sight, and it is always available when I need it.

In many ways we try to innovate but we often run in the problem of trying to invent something that already exist, not to invent something new that's more efficient of what we have today.

I'm not trolling, I'm discussing.
 
Edsel said:
This is proof that with 1000+ years of publishing technology, the humble book is still the preferred physical medium.
Click to expand...

Actually less than 1000, about 1440 was the invention of publishing with the printing press, but agreed a book is a hard item to replace, although I'm pretty sure we will do it in the next few years. ideas like these if implemented properly could be a good step in that direction.
 
ombrenelcielo said:
Clearly you are not an interface designer.
...
Endless scrollbars are not a good thing certainly, but neither animations simulating paper are the next big thing, in my opinion. Tablets are great, but as reading platform they still lack of someone capable of setting the bar for the standard, as Apple did and does with the iPad for the digital-media consumption part (movies, music, gaming).

Reading books on a tablet (iPad, Kindle, etc) is not a great experience and it is a fact. More you see these things, more you ask yourself what's the point.

Of course tablets are great because you can store 1000 of books in 150gr. but still.
Click to expand...

I did my part in GUI design some decades ago in early days of Windows and Atari TOS or even SAPGUI. I always tried to keep the information organized and grouped/aligned in (oops) on page. Worked well at that time. But I agree that I'm not a graphical designer as it's needed today able to implement some of the awesome UI we see. I tried with some iPad app but kind of failed.

Even because of my own experience I really appreciate the effort the designer and developer doing these days bring us better UIs compared to 20 years ago.

The simulation of paper, agree, is a gimmick; not a game changer in textbooks but still a well made / well placed reference to real world.
I read lots on my Kindle app ... And as a fact: I like it.
 
Winni said:
Because the old physical analog interface is amazingly efficient and it has served our civilization extraordinarily well over the last centuries. People are used to it and like it. Well, at least those who are older than the MTV, YouTube and Facebook generations...
Click to expand...

Well parts of it did and other parts just got in the way.

While the swipe gesture feels very natural as a flick back and forth at least in a limited fashion. I do kind of wonder if we've already traded the most valuable part of paper to get variable font sizes and style. So does adding more fancy swipes to the system really do anything when the reason they'd be valuable is already gone.

Paging to me is an incredibly useful thing in any media, especially in group situations even if the document has an other form of tracking built in. The page seems like a digestible chunk that the brain can lock in on and once there use visual clues to lock in on something. eBooks don't have a reliable paging concept.
 
harmonix23 said:
Actually less than 1000, about 1440 was the invention of publishing with the printing press, but agreed a book is a hard item to replace, although I'm pretty sure we will do it in the next few years. ideas like these if implemented properly could be a good step in that direction.
Click to expand...

Well there were monks copying texts in a religious fashion which goes back a lot further than the printing press. Those works weren't for release to the public so not published but still books.
 
Soooo are we going to get this?

so I'm really impressed by this! but can somebody clear this up for me:
they said this won't be approved by the app store? so does that mean we will never get to do this?:(
 
Mr.DD216 said:
so I'm really impressed by this! but can somebody clear this up for me:
they said this won't be approved by the app store? so does that mean we will never get to do this?:(
Click to expand...

As far as I know Apple does not allow Developers to use private Api's so I think it won't be available to the App store.

It looks nice but is it usable, that's the question.
 
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