iRex Forum

daniel · Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:07 am Post subject: Bookmarks

How do you guys want the bookmark feature to be implemented? How should the GUI for this feature work? Any hints are appreciated by the iRex development team.

jacob000 · Joined: 07 Aug 2006 Posts: 21

One "add bookmark" button in the menu bar.

When on a bookmarked page it will be black. Pressing it now will present a popup window "really delete bookmark? Yes/No". (focus for the hardware "ok" button would be "yes")

When pressing it on a non-bookmarked page, it will present a popup window "add bokkmark: [text entry field prefilled with first 20 words of page] add/abort" and enable the popup keyboard. (focus for the hardware "ok" button would be "add")

When opening a book that has bookmarks, present a menu (just like the normal folder menus) with all bookmarks (reading "Page 42" on the first/bold line and the text entered when creating the bookmark on the second line) in page order. First entry should be the "last read page" auto-entry. Selecting a bookmark should open the book on that page. The menu bar should have buttons for "delete" and "edit" (edit should edit the bookmark text only).

(Mmmh, maybe not auto-showing this menu but making a menubar button fir it would be better. Opinions from other users?)

Pressing the "one level up" hardware button in a book with bookmarks should also open the bookmark menu when used at top level.

ali · Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 119

Hm, this is too much interactivity and too much stylus usage for me.

I prefer using the up/select/down-buttons:

long click select: bookmark / un-bookmark current page
long click up/down: jump to previous/next bookmarked page

tribble · Joined: 04 Aug 2006 Posts: 645 Location: Bonn, Germany

I like Alis way of handling bookmarks. In addition there should be a bookmark icon.

You should be able, to add a note to the bookmark.

i would like a few "finger bookmarks": Use long click on the newspaper/etc buttons to store a quick bookmark. short ones to jump to the bookmark. Like putting your finger in between pages. Show pagenumbers above buttons (maybe short tag you can enter; i know it will collide with page number bar.)

maybe even an auto bookmark for the last page, before jumping to another bookmark, so you can get back to the page you were reading last by pressing the back button (step thingy).

And please prerender all "thumb bookmarked pages" and maybe all bookmarked pages, if not too many.

Add a bookmarkpage, where you can see all your bookmarks, with note and first line of text and pagenumber.

Have an indicator on the devicemanager, that shows the number of bookmarks to a document, the total pagecount and the current page number.

And please bring back the "jump to page by entering pagenumber in keyboard" feature.

DokterBibber · Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 48 Location: Heidelberg, Germany

I used eReader for two years and loved their funktion of setting/unsetting bookmarks: It was just a tap in the upper left corner with the pen and it set the bookmark (shown by a symbol in the corner of that page) and tapping again removed it.

For showing the list of bookmarks they had an icon on the bottom of the page. By tapping they have shown a window containing all pre-set and user-created bookmarks.

I like that very much. It is clear in usage and intuitive.
_________________
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ali · Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 119

firekat · Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 23 Location: Oakland, CA

My question would be are existing bookmarks in PDF's going to be supported? My documents/manuals/content PDF's use bookmarks (as in the bookmark tab that would be shown when viewing the PDF with Adobe Reader).

I guess for implementation having a button for them on the toolbar would be ok. It would then take you to the bookmark pages - I am sure that some documents would have a number of pages of bookmarks. I have "stacked" (directory type structure) bookmarks - such as chapters with further bookmarks for specific sections. This would need to be implemented as well.

To my manner of thinking the best way would be to use the currently un-utilzed hardware keys. Use of any of the unused hardware buttons would be great as the stylus would not have to be pulled out and power consumption would remain low.

The UP key the arrow keys, and the select key (the dot) do not function while reading PDF's now. The UP key could be used to access the bookmark home directory. The icon printed on it also tends to represent a directory type structure. The arrow keys could have the dual purpose of navigating through the bookmarks while in the directory structure. While reading the document in the page structure they could be used to "jump" to the previous and next bookmark. For standard book kind of reading you can think of it as hot keys to jump to previous and next chapters. The select key could again be used for it's specific purpose when navigating the bookmark directory. When in the document page structure it could be a key used to pull up the current or last used bookmark directory or sub-directory.

Use of these keys in this manner would represent a common methodology of hardware button usage. At least it makes good sense to me!

Adding additional bookmarks could be done with the stylus, pullup keyboard, etc. Keeping the user added bookmarks separate is preferred and seems to be typical to most other implementations. It would probably be best to have access to user created bookmarks through a button on the screen toolbar. Once they are pulled up you should be able to navigate through them with the hardware buttons as outlined above.

ElaHuguet · Joined: 04 Aug 2006 Posts: 61 Location: Mallorca, Spain

I think that Ali's idea for using the hardware buttons is cool, and using the "step" icon to go to the "previous page" from Tribble is a BIG plus, and having one extra icon beside the keyboard one for those who are using the stylus at the time is not a bad idea. A "jump to page number X" function also gets my vote. Very Happy

BTW my iLiad is trigger-happy on the long-click of the page turner bar, so I keep jumping five pages ahead, makes for jumpy reading, hehehe.

ath · Joined: 09 Aug 2006 Posts: 19

Haggi · Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 15 Location: Zurich, Switzerland

I also would strongly prefer not to include the stylus for bookmarks whenever possible (exception: for additional bookmark text, if this is really necessary).

Using the confirm button to toggle a bookmark, using the up/down buttons to go backward/forward one bookmark seems to be intuitive. Any idea how to differentiate between document and user bookmarks?

Why not use the menu button to show the list of bookmarks? And doing this consistently for every document: menu button shows document-dependent context menu/form/information.

Small excursion into long clicks:
The devices' setup menu which I will use once and then almost never again can go into a long click on the menu button. From a usability point of view, this would lead to a consistent generic pattern: Short clicks do the common thing, long clicks do the extended things. Other example: Short click on download button connects to my PC, long click connects to iDS (or some other preconfigured download site).

I wouldn't misuse the News/Books/Docs/Notes buttons for jumping within a document, or at least not by default, maybe configurable.

ath · Joined: 09 Aug 2006 Posts: 19

morpheus_bd · Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Posts: 1 Location: Toronto

Just thought I would through arround some Ideas for Bookmarks.
1. Have book marks show up as small arrow heads or some other tiny icon to show location in the page bar on the bottom of the screen.
2. Clicking on one of these tiny icons. can ither go to a list of bookmarks near the area in which you clicked on the page bar. or go to the one you clicked on.

2. a. Clicking on one of the tiny bookmark icons would popup a window that will show the user the name of the bookmark with button to go to that bookmark. This window could also show a graphic that could have been drawn by the stylis.
Note: I was thinking of this feature that would mimic the behavour for the people that like to stick sticky notes into there books. where these could contain drawen images or text depending on the notes that they would like to keep for that section of the book.

Just thought I would throw arround some Ideas on how the bookmarks could be implemented.

Brent

ynceraj · Joined: 10 Aug 2006 Posts: 86 Location: Maryland

Any support for books marks should support adobe's native bookmarks
so any file with bookmarks in it the PDF reader should be able to see them.
It should also support user created bookmarks while reading a document

How about
if pressing the menu key under the up key will take you in a pdf to the existing bookmarks. And from any page being able to create book marks by just pressing and icon on the bottom or a buttom shortcut by using the confirm key(the one with the circle) will bookmark the current page.
If this icon is unmark then the bookmark will not be present.

ynceraj · Joined: 10 Aug 2006 Posts: 86 Location: Maryland