My feedback to Kindle Direct Publishing:
I’ve just paged through my multimedia novel with Kindle Previewer and I’m excited that we’re getting closer to the point where a reader can experience a media-heavy eBook as the writer/designer intends. I think of the multimedia novel as an entirely new medium that is situated between standard novels, movies, games and apps and can utilize aspects of all of them. Because a multimedia novel is primarily text, it doesn’t work well as a fixed-format eBook, but the current state of eReaders doesn’t allow for careful formatting to flow along with reflowable text. However, the ePub3 file format does, and it’s just a matter of getting eReader developers to utilize all of the features available in the ePub3 format.
A standard novel is displayed beautifully on most eReaders, and that doesn’t need to change. But the features available in the ePub3 format are just too tempting for a very visual writer to ignore, and in the multimedia novel, the writer/designer asks the reader to relinquish some control over the display of the novel so that the writer/designer can provide a unique experience. Some readers would, of course, react with something like “I don’t think audio or video have any place in a novel,” and they’re right regarding the standard novel. The multimedia novel would exist side-by-side with the standard novel and not influence its design, but the multimedia novel shouldn’t be squeezed into the parameters of the standard novel.
After some research, I’m still not clear on where the KF8 format and the Fire eReader fit in with ePub3. I used Sigil to create my multimedia novel, and the Sigil preview panel displays it with all the features I’ve written into the xhtml except audio autoplay. Sigil doesn’t paginate, and so I don’t know if it observes page-break-inside:avoid. Kindle Previewer displays most of what my xhtml includes, and additions I would like added to it are discussed below.
A small thing, but I would like the book to open with the cover rather than page 1. Most cover designers put a lot of work into designing the cover and would like the reader to see it as more than a thumbnail image.
I would like the option to have no margin imposed on the display of the eBook. Designers of eBooks would like to have option to bleed images to the edge of the page that print designers have.
I don’t know if portal dimensions apart from the physical screen dimensions are used to calculate the layout of a page, but I would like a width of 100% to refer to the edges of the actual glass of the device, or its physical display area, if different from the glass. The aspect ratio of full-bleed images should be retained, of course, and not stretched to fit the screen, but using the physical dimensions would seem to provide consistency with image bleeds on devices with different dimensions.
When I choose text-decoration:none, I would like an underscore not to be imposed on the text. In my table of contents, a light background color indicates the live aspect of the links, and the imposed underscore degrades the page design. When I include a link in the body text of the book, I underscore it in the CSS.
I’m happy that small inline images and large images behind body text are displayed correctly. Thanks! Well done.
I’ve designed a few pages so that video behind text and audio will autoplay on page-turn. Please enable that. As a notice to the human reader, I’ve included a symbol at the end of the previous page that audio will begin on page-turn. I’ve also included a play-pause button at the top of the page with audio/video so the reader can stop the playback if desired. Instead of the default controls, I provide an inline play-pause button whenever audio and video are available. In a context like this, I think the concerns regarding misuse of autoplay are addressed.
When returning to a previous page, the amount of text displayed is sometimes different than it was when the page was initially viewed. It seems that it would be good if the layout of each page were frozen when first displayed. The reflowing of the text going forward is good, but, assuming there have been no changes to the text or layout, having the text reflow on paging back isn’t really necessary and could lead to confusion.
Please allow for the alpha channel of .png files. Currently, the transparent areas display as black.
When an image behind the text appears at the bottom of a page, it can be displayed cropped on the page and then uncropped on the next page. The test for page-break-inside:avoid should probably occur earlier to avoid displaying the cropped image.
Thanks for incorporating @font-face and allowing changing the color of portions of body text. I haven’t encountered that often with other eReaders. Some of my text I’ve reformatted with font-family:sans-serif, but it displays as serif like the surrounding text. I would like it to render as the device’s default sans-serif font.
Please enable transform:rotate(), filter:drop-shadow(), and window.navigator.vibrate().
Please enable changing the background color of the body tag and disabling the selection of background color by the human reader. This change from the norm is probably the one that is the most important in educating the reader that the multimedia novel is a different platform and the reader is asked to relinquish some control over its display. When used judiciously, background color can significantly enhance the reader’s experience.
I positioned a video behind the body text with margin-top:-5em, and the result is that five lines of text overlap the text above it. An odd glitch occurs in the same chapter. The last two paragraphs are displayed about 20 paragraphs early, overlapping part of the text where they appear, and the chapter ends without those paragraphs. In the xhtml, those two paragraphs are preceded by an audio file and a JavaScript script controlling the playback of that audio file. Two other scripts appear earlier in the file and the text renders correctly, except for the first overlapping text. In total, the file includes a background-color change in the body tag, two images behind the text, scripts for two audio files, and a script for a video file behind the text.
Some of the subsequent chapters exhibit similar misplaced paragraphs and incorrectly positioned .jpg images.
In the Conversion Log, the message “Please remove the audio/video tags and ingest the source” appears frequently. I don’t know what is meant by ingesting the source. The audio files are stored in an Audio folder and referenced with ../Audio/someaudiofile.mp3. The video files are referenced in the Video folder similarly.
Including an image within paragraph tags is useful for vertically positioning a floated image, but it inherits the paragraph’s margins. Please support negative margin values with the CSS float property.
I appreciate very much your interest in feedback from users of Kindle Previewer.
