Posted By: scobleizer | Apr 20th, 2004 @ 12:33 PM | 36,513 Views | 21 Comments
Bill Hill talks about the difficulties in making the reading experience on the screen good enough so that people will read entire books on the screen. (He claims that ClearType got people interested in reading long passages on the screen for the first time).

What will get you to read a book on the screen?

Will it be a 200 DPI monitor? (Bill showed us an IBM monitor that costs about $8500 today). Will it be a more comfortable form factor (like the Tablet PC?)

Will it be a new font? (Bill's group is working on some for Longhorn)

Or will it be something else?

By the way, if you're using Windows XP, did you know that you can "tune" ClearType? Visit the ClearType tuner and see what works best for you.
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For me, the readability of the on screen font is just fine.
My big problem with reading a book is the usability of the reader.
Most books are designed to be read as if printed on a page. That means that I spend a lot of time scrolling through a page, then I have to fish around for the "next page" button.
Just like Pubb said, you spend too much time using the computer instead of reading the book.
Some simple rules for me:

1. Use large type and put less on a page so that I can see everything on a page without scrolling (i.e. make the page horizontal, not vertical)

2. Allow the user to set two buttons on the computer for going foward and backwards. This will help replace the need for "thumbing" through the pages. That is probrably the number one thing that bugs me is not being able to easily thumb through the "pages" of a book.

3. Yeap, a table PC would work wonders (but then we are back to making sure there is an easy way to thumb the pages. Sorry, I don't see using the pen to push a "button" on the screen as an easy way to do it. It would have to be  physical buttons properly placed.)
Edit: Nevermind! I retract my silly comment.
BTW, Bill, what is the shape of the pixels on the Dell Inspiron 8500? Are they the traditional square, or are the a hex shape.

Do you think changing the shape of the pixel will help make the screen look better?
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