To Scroll or Not to Scroll …
Although I prefer scrolling as the method of choice with e‑reading devices, I’m forcing myself to re-evaluate this decision. Seems the swiping page by page method is popular with e‑Readers like Stanza, and Kindle. ( Certainly, Amazon, being the super-sized company that it is, must have placed much effort, time, and money into researching this issue; and they’ve opted for a “next page” method as opposed to continuous scrolling ).
Likewise, Olive Tree is working on a side swipe option in addition to it’s existing scrolling method for their iPhone Bible Reader. Many will welcome this feature, especially those familiar with this method from other readers. Some notes found in Olive Tree’s forums expressed a dislike for continuous scrolling due to momentarily loosing their place during the scrolling, and thus have to reorient themselves before continuing … possibly causing headaches!
So, before I exclude this method, I want to give it an fair attempt by forcing myself to use it exclusively for a period of time. Many times if one forces himself to stick with something, their preferences can change. Case in point, the virtual keyboard on the iPhone. After seeing the advantages of not only spell-checking, but key proximity checking to assist with auto corrections, I find that I do not need to be as accurate as a tactile keyboard — and therefore, I can type faster … and even weirder, that I find myself to have become a person who actually loves text-ing … I used to disdain such persons! This experience seems akin to motion sickness, and those are certainly valid concerns!
After having used previous versions of their software and switching to this method exclusively, one of the obvious things you’ll notice is that the title bar will only have the top-most verse of each page — which of course, is the ACTIVE VERSE. Remember that with scrolling, the title in the title bar was always changing according to what verse the scripture reference of the first line for the display window. Olive Tree makes use of this “Active Verse” with menu functions operating on that verse.
For example, if you want to add a bookmark, just hit the GUI “+” symbol at the bottom, and the active verse is most efficiently entered, in one-touch fashion.
The secondary method is to touch hold over a scripture number reference until a sub menu pops up. Next you must select which option you wanted to perform on that verse, bookmark, add note, etc …
Since on average, with a working font size of 24, Times New Roman, each page hold about four or five verses, you’ll only have a 20% to 25% chance that the verse you’ll want to bookmark is actually at the top of the page, thus being the “current active verse”.
Seemingly, at first, this does not seem to be a big deal. After all, one can just hold a finger over a verse number and see the same menu slide upward from the bottom. But it becomes more of a problem than one would first realize when sticking to this as the primary method! For example, if using the ESV with all those references loaded in, or the NET Full Edition, with just as many references, then undoubtedly, sooner or later, one will find themselves running into the situation where they have a small superscripted note reference right next to a verse number. There’s a very touchy art to doing exactly what you intend in those situations. Will a quick and non careful tap access the “Add A Note Options” ‑or- will it pull up the reference from the authors of the translation? With scrolling, this is easily avoided as you would scroll to place the verse at the top and then select the plus symbol along the bottom.
These are my initial thought after one day of staying with this method as the primary method of use. More may follow.