Saturday, July 25, 2020

Dear eReader developers

My review of the Kindle iPad app on the App Store:

As time passes, there will be increasing demand from users for the full implementation of HTML5, CSS3, and ePub3 in reflowable-text eReaders. The features that users could be experiencing as they read include video, audio, JavaScript, background images, embedded fonts, and much more. The current requirement that eBooks with embedded media use the fixed-layout format is inappropriate when text-based eBooks include media designed to flow along with the text. That requirement can result in many consecutive pages of fixed-layout text that can’t reflow or be resized. Fixed-layout is for magazine-type eBooks. The current implementation of reflowable text is for text-only eBooks, like traditional novels. There should be a third option available that utilizes all the features of ePub3. Currently, the display of media in reflowable-text eReaders is very haphazard, with images or video halfway off the page or not displayed at all. Scripts in JavaScript are ignored or appear as text in the body text. If a user pays extra for a multimedia eBook, they would like to experience the media they paid for. Please provide users and designers a third option, multimedia-text, in addition to reflowable-text and fixed-layout. Thinking that reflowable-text eBooks don’t need video or audio is like Norma Desmond saying she’d had the eyes of the world but they had to have their ears too. Was she right? Movies don’t need soundtracks? Please allow the eReader to continue to evolve.

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