The design is getting closer and closer to what I’m looking for. I’ve gotten the sidebar to look pretty good, and even figured out how to automatically generate a table of contents (sort of pointless for a short story). The t of c project really reached the bleeding edge of my programming capabilities — getting it to display in the correct order was a major accomplishment for me. It made me realize why I’m most definitely not a programmer.
In the same vein, the entire book now automatically loads in the proper order (that was accomplished with a kludge before). I think I’ll be able to start posting the actual book sometime next week!
if:book has now given the Moby Blook a little writeup. Ben Vershbow doubts the reading experience will be the equivalent of reading a paper book, but gives it the thumbs’ up as an interactive text project.
I think if all I’ve done with this project is create a nifty way to have a collaborative reading experience, that would be swell, but it’s not what I intended to accomplish at all. The goal is to have a reading experience that is as satisfying reading a physical book — or possibly more so. I want to demonstrate that an online interface need not merely mimic the printed text, and that the printed interface is not necessarily the ideal way to present a narrative text.
The experiment is by necessity a personal one. If others join me for the ride, that will be great, but for me the key thing is developing my own way of grappling with a significant text.