The Digital Book: Design, Structure, and Annotation

Navigation and Structure

By Natalie Hendren & Cody Moncur

Pagination and Content

In the context of the book as an object, the key difference between Formless and Definite Content is the interaction between the content and the page. Formless Content doesn't see the page or its boundaries. Whereas Definite Content is not only aware of the page, but embraces it. It edits, shifts and resizes itself to fit the page. In a sense, Definite Content approaches the page as a canvas something with dimensions and limitations and leverages these attributes to both elevate the object and the content to a more complete whole. - Craig Mod

Craig Mod writes about the process of dividing content amongst pages, referred to as pagination. In print books, pagination determines how content will appear on numbered pages and which content appears on which pages. With digital books, pagination is complicated by different screen sizes and navigation properties of e-readers and devices An eBook (such an ePub or Kindle file) is usually designed to flow with indeterminate or formless pagination in order to accommodate a variety of devices and the ability of the user to adjust font sizes. EPub3, newer versions of Kindle files and the more traditional PDF, can, however, be designed with defined pages or pages with a specific layouts of text and image.

With eBooks, publishers may work with two kinds of content: formless content and definite content. Formless content allows text to flow freely and is undisturbed by images and other media content. Definite content allows for multiple types of media to be assembled in a meaningful and readable format.

Platform to platform however content will shift and flux. This is important to consider when deciding what type of content to use to digital literature. Novels and short essays may be better suited in to formless content. , while textbooks and readings with specific media content, could benefit from definite content. Definite content allows various media to relate to text in specific layouts that improve and embellish the reading and learning experience. In print textbooks, diagrams and images may be used to further explain a subject. With digital eBooks, this option is further expanded to include videos, audio, and gifs. For example, an online textbook for a biology class may have images and videos explaining how parts of the body function on various levels. This type of content is useful in learning environments. Definite content may be further appreciated when used to create hybrid texts.



Formless content does gain advantage in flexibility and ease of production, nonetheless. For example, formless content may be read on any device and retain all of its original meaning as long as the original flow of the text is maintained. Definite content, on the other hand, must be designed page by page in order to maintain the integrity of the intended layout. In this way, formless is certainly easier to publish in a shorter amount of time.



Formless and definite content have their advantages and disadvantages. Moving forward, it would be wise to view the eBook as a canvas for new and unexplored ideas and approaches. Books no longer need to be seen as a two-page spread. Much more is possible with digital publishing.?

Navigation's Relation to Pagination

When books were being shifted to digital, publishers created digital literature that closely resembles print books even including a feature allowing readers to "swipe" pages. Consumers may initially have enjoyed and been drawn to this feature. However, this approach is a step short of progressive. Digitizing books and publishing digitally is moving forward in today's digital age, yet eBooks were not given the chance to be anything other than a digital replication of an antiquated form of literature. Readers still hold print books dear in their hearts, but digital texts have a wealth of untapped potential that is limited vastly by the constraints of making eBooks so similar to print books.

Pagination in eBooks may affect and influence the style in which chapters and pages are navigated among various platforms. Definite and formless content may be navigated in similar ways. However, there is still room for discussion in regards to vertical and horizontal scroll and horizontal swipe in page navigation. Overall, preference between scrolling and swiping may seem as though it comes down to personal preference. However, the differences of these navigation styles are worth discussing.

Scrolling through a text may allow for a more continuous and less disturbed reading experience. Readers can see what is coming next further down the page while also being able to track their progress by looking at how far down the scroll bar has traveled. But if the text is too long, without breaks or headings, scroll can cause a reader to get lost. Definite content may work better with scrolling navigation as readers may travel down the page with the text and media that are chunked is such a way that the reader can find their way. With swiping navigation, content may be more restricted making definite content not as flexible as formless content between various reading platforms.



The integration of horizontal and vertical styles of navigation can create a logical structure for the reader experience. For example, swiping could be employed to navigate between chapters and scroll?to navigate a single chapter?s content.

Swiping through a text, however, allows for better readability of formless content by providing natural breaks in continuous texts. Long texts can be difficult to read through when scrolling. When deciding what type of content to publish, styles of navigation should be considered and discussed in conjunction with determining pagination.

Ultimately, scrolling does allow for more ease of flexibility between devices regardless of content pagination. For example, look through any of Craig Mod's essays on his website. His content combines formless flow of text and definite layout on a website with scroll navigation. It is the layout and design of text and image that make his works easy to read and understand.

As digital publishing progresses, publishers may look to new and alternative forms of page navigation. The benefits of horizontal and vertical navigation vary from text to text, depending on the content and the targeted platforms as well. Scrolling seems to offer more possibilities in styles of content. However, there is room for creative and alternative styles of navigation with horizontal navigation if publishers use platforms that are more adept at handling such formats. Perhaps, it would also be wise to cease referring to horizontal navigation as swiping as this mental frame may also grow to limit further innovative approaches to this style of navigation.

Formless Content

In the mobile realm of the present, it is possible to seamlessly download almost any text, and read through it on almost any device, anywhere, at anytime. Although this makes publications far more accessible, the process is not without issue. Assume a reader had downloaded Dante Aleghieri's "Inferno" on an Android phone, for example. Upon opening the poem and reading through the cantos on a mobile phone's small screen, it is immediately apparent that the overall frame of the work was not suited to display lines or stanzas of a poem in any user friendly manner. If the reader reduces the size of the text so that a whole line as it was written by Dante could fit on one line of text on a mobile phone, the characters on the page are simply too small to read. If the text is enlarged so that it is legible from a comfortable distance (anything more than two inches from the face), the lines and stanzas appeared broken and disfigured, which makes reading and especially following the rhythm of the poem a particular challenge.




This presents a larger problem when considering the way digital works are published. For an overwhelming majority of novels, especially those that follow in a linear fashion and are written in paragraph form, the work is flexible by nature. This simply means that the raw text can be taken and placed upon a template, and is almost immediately ready for publication on a variety of platforms. By way of comparison, if the reader had instead opened one of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" novels, the experience would be far more seamless, because the form of the text itself does not dictate the tempo. Text can be enlarged or reduced in size to the reader's content, and the experience likely wouldn't change. In a poem, the form most certainly has an impact on tempo and rhythm.

It is a marvel of engineering and ingenuity that we now have the ability to bend and mold almost any digital content to our will and benefit, across multiple platforms. However, the takeaway from the example above is that, while formless content has its place, it is not universally beneficial. The publisher must consider how the text and structure will appear at any size and on any device. The publisher must also accept that reader experience may vary depending on those aforementioned variables. While many texts might allow for near immediate publication using a cookie-cutter template, some will undoubtedly require further consideration, and will need to be tailored specifically for certain devices.

Consistency through Different Mediums

The dream of all (or most) publishers is to ensure that their publications reach as many souls as possible. Consequently, limiting a publication to only one end-user medium will surely limit the overall outreach of the work. After all, while some irrationally interested users might purchase a device for the sole purpose of reading one work, an overwhelming majority will not. This isn't 1993, where if an individual wanted to play Mario Bros. they needed a Nintendo system, and if he or she wanted to play Sonic the Hedgehog, they needed a Sega system. We're living within a day in age where users, players, readers, and viewers, expect the same content to be available on whichever platform is confortable to them. Hell, even Valve develops their games for Linux platforms now. Very few individuals are willing to run off and purchase an XBox 1 just to play one game that hasn't been released on PC, no matter how great the game is. Publishers should not expect their readers to do the same for them. It is a lazy and unreasonable expectation.

Overcoming the hurdle of publishing for multiple mediums, as it currently stands, is tedious but necessary. However, a lot of parallels can be drawn between the gaming development industry and the digital publishing realm, which is why the above example is a particularly relevant one. More and more nowadays we see tools that aid developers in "rising to the challenge," so to speak. Unity is a perfect example. This is an engine that allows developers to create games an apps that can seamlessly be ported to Apple, Android, desktop computers, and even Blackberry devices. Unity is also open source.

The underlying issue is that digital publishing is still a new and rapidly evolving discipline, and while there are available tools and applications that allow publishers to "port" content from one platform to another, no such tool existst for the digital publishing realm that is as seamless as Unity. The good news is that great strides are being made to make this happen for digital publishers. Adobe InDesign, for example, has greatly evolved over the course of the last few years, expanding formats by which it can publish to. It's certainly not the be-all, end-all of digital publishing tools, but it serves an example of the progress being made to ensure digitally published works are more universal. InDesign serves as a somewhat weak comparison, however, because it requires a membership to Adobe's CreativeCloud to use. Open source such as Scribus do exist to rival InDesign, but the time and resources available to make a comparable product simply don't exist -- yet.

One thing to keep in mind is that eBooks and digitally published works are becoming exponentially more available, and exponentially more demand manifests for them. Surely as time goes on and demand increases, the tools available to publishers will grow and mature, allowing for a more seamless transition of works across multiple platforms.

Front and End Matter

With the onset of the Kindle, iPad, mobile phones and cloud readers, navigation through a novel or text has surely evolved. The experience of reading on a digital device is drastically different than flipping through the pages of a tangible printed book. The way we navigate and search text on a digital device has been rethought and optimized, so does this also make tools like indexes and glossaries obsolete?

While the use of an index, glossary, or even table of contents surely needs to be remediated to account for the platform by which they are utilized, they are not quite yet obsolete. For instance, while one might think that an index is entirely dwarfed in practicality by the implementation of advanced search features, it might still serve some purpose yet -- in particular cases. In the case of a large college textbook, for instance, some readers might not really be sure what they're searching for, and as a result, search tools are rendered ineffective. There is an overwhelming amount of information in these textbooks, and an A to Z listing of key terms can still serve to aid the student, especially if the page numbers are hyperlinked beside the keyword, allowing the reader to seamlessly navigate to places within the text where the keyword appears.

A table of contents within a digital text might be a different story, however. In many cases, a table of contents is entirely unnecessary in print as well. Table of contents are practical in magazines, where the reader may not know the publication's entire contents a priori, but novels are a different entity. Novels are generally meant to be read front to back in a linear fashion, and most readers will not be skipping bits of the story, in fear of missing out on important details. In fact, the table of contents can be incredibly frustrating when the chapters listed within them are given names. If a reader sees that a chapter is named, "Conan's return to the throne," they instantly know what happens in that chapter. Conan reclaims his title as king. The chapter has now been spoiled, and consequently the reader's desire to read the text has drastically diminished.

It is for this reason that the table of contents is in dire need of remediation. Table of contents are necessary only pending the text's content and overall nature. Within Apple's iBooks Author, a table of contents is automatically added to every exported work, unless manually disabled. Digital publishing in itself is a remediation of printed text, and should allow for a greater flexibility of content. It publishers are still bound to the same standards that held true within printed text, how can we expect to progress? Instantly we're harboring an environment that limits the author's and publisher's ability to think outside the box and discover the affordances of digital publishing, and binding them to obsolete constraints.

Main Points

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