{"id":1423,"date":"2010-12-09T15:37:32","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T15:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2010-12-09T15:37:32","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T15:37:32","slug":"a_defense_of_pagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2010\/12\/09\/a_defense_of_pagination\/","title":{"rendered":"a defense of pagination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Pearson of Inventive Labs, the developer of Monocle Reader<\/a> and Booki.sh <\/a>recently wrote an eloquent explanation of why we should bother to maintain some form of pagination even in the digital era. [this originally appeared on the private Read 2.0 list serve, re-posted here with permission.]
\nI’m perplexed by the suggestion that we chose pagination “for the sake of tradition”, since pagination is the one and only difficult problem with building a browser-based reader. It’s actually the only thing Monocle does, and I didn’t waste this year doing it without reflecting on it.
\nI’m delighted by the proposal that someone should build a serious scrolling browser-based reader, because I’ll have somewhere to send people who ask this question. And I’m greatly amused by the idea that we should inplement both modes and make it the reader’s choice — as if a responsible software designer COULD actually shrug their shoulders and say “Damned if I know, you decide.”
\nThe software designer has to make the call — has to ask: “what is the best way to read content with these characteristics?” I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. Back in March I wrote up some notes on it, but didn’t publish them. I’ve pasted them below.
\nNb: Monocle has a scrolling mode for “legacy browsers” that attempts to get around the problems with scrolling described here. Open a Booki.sh book in a recent Opera to see it. I’ve been told it “sucks” (thanks Blaine!), which is probably true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Pearson of Inventive Labs, the developer of Monocle Reader and Booki.sh recently wrote an eloquent explanation of why we should bother to maintain some form of pagination even in the digital era. [this originally appeared on the private Read 2.0 list serve, re-posted here with permission.] I’m perplexed by the suggestion that we chose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}