A New Kind of Book has posted a couple of examples of how ebooks might add supplemental content like footnotes without interrupting the reading flow. If you’ve experienced footnotes or endnotes on the average modern ebook (at least on the major retailers’ platforms), you’ve probably noticed how clumsily this has been handled to date. It usually requires clicking to a “back of the book” section, then pressing a return button—all the shuffling of print with none of the helpful spatial cues like keeping your finger between pages.
The two examples he shows include a pop-up window that hovers over the text, and collapsed block of text that flows inline with the primary text but remains hidden unless the user activates it.
Read the full post at A New Kind of Book.
I think the pop-up footnote is the perfect solution. Once again, a little clear thinking provides the answer to making digital texts better than print.
Clearly it’s the publishers’ faults that this hasn’t been implemented from the beginning. Another example that they are trying to halt progress of ebooks. Oh wait, that’s right. The publishers have no control over the devices….