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Show HN: Alice in Wonderland

bookses.com

38 pointstrong22 comments

I am terribly confused by the interface, although I assume its intention is to sort of remind me of rap geniuses "explain" feature, but for Alice in Wonderland. I love the idea, but the execution needs a bit more UI work :)

Hmm. I looked at this first on my iPad and I was all "why is this person linking to the Project Gutenberg edition of Alice".

Now I'm looking on my laptop and it's hard to even begin to savor the illos - they're all overlaid on each other.

Cool idea, though!

I cannot understand how to use this, images are loaded as I scroll down, but if I mouse over text, I sometimes get different images overlaid on top of the already overlaid images. It is very confusing.

I love the book and its gorgeous illustrations, so I welcome this project.

However, the interface needs a lot of work. The current version is really difficult to view due to the way overlay is handled. Also, there is a reason why pop-up comments are activated on click on RapGenius, it's a major distraction otherwise.

Can't wait for the improved version!

This is a really fantastic idea, and really needed - I would enjoy showing these to kids. The illustrations of these classics now in the public domain have so much character (one day the work of Quentin Blake will go alongside these).

Wow thank you so much!

Interesting UI.

On a side note, I wonder why Project Gutenberg books are all encoded with CR-LF. The first thing I do whenever I load one is get rid of them so that the text can be reflowed properly as paragraphs instead of lines.

Thanks! Good point. I was thinking there might be poetry so I just replaced the CR-LF with regular new lines.

I didn't think about the poetry aspect, that's a good point. Maybe it could be a toggle in user preferences.

Work needed. Specifically: overlapped images are a mistake, and the typography is not well done. Recommend checking out medium.com for optimal type handling, and Gingko which has gone further towards a sane UI.

https://gingkoapp.com/hyperloop

Gingko discussed here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302825

IMO, novel interfaces like these have a fundamental problem - they're better for creating or combining content than actually consuming it.

Interesting. Seems like a significant improvement over highlighting and margin-notes, and more collaborative.

For a while now I've been thinking that something like this would be great to have on e-readers. Maybe someone here knows of one that has it / is capable of general programming for it? Specifically e-ink, I'm still not a fan of regular screens for lots of reading.

"Unless you are craigslist." Isn't that the crappiest design ever?!? And isn't it the greatest website idea...and even more interesting since it's so good and it looks like (what he said) :=)

Alice has a right to be skew and whacked out. It is odd, though. Still, ravishing. Thanks for posting.

Seems similar in theory (if perhaps not in execution) to the open source epub.js project[0].

[0]http://fchasen.github.io/epub.js/

This has big potential although it immediately reminded me of Rap Genius and how they've already expanded into other written media. Keep at it and good luck!

Rep Genius annotations for books, cool.

"The best book on computer programming for the layman." --Alan Perlis

“… but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.”

This looks like a pile of shit. Sorry. It might be a good idea but it looks like a pile of shit. Unless you're craigslist, if the design sucks no one will use it.

Subtle.

Nice constructive criticism there. If you think it's shit don't apologise, but at least offer constructive ways the creator can improve upon it.

Just trying to get the ball rollin.

if something really _does_ "look like a pile of shit", then it's not "criticism" to say it; it's just the honest truth.

"looks like a pile of shit" implies "make it look better" as the "constructive way the creator can improve upon it".

and if that's still too vague, then "find something that looks better, and then copy it" is a very good beginning.

since the intent here seems to be to offer an annotation capability, i'd suggest "medium.com" as a thing to emulate.

but since this developer, in one of the f.a.q., indicates a familiarity with medium already, that'd be unnecessary.

but i can go farther, if you like. try these on for size:

1. don't overlap the pictures; it defeats the purpose.

2. eliminate the project gutenberg legalese. it's ugly.

3. the headings should be formatted as headings.

4. give the paragraphs some decent formatting.

5. the all-uppercase words are supposed to be italicized.

6. improve the formatting of the text-annotations.

7. give incoming users an explanation of the purpose.

all of those should have been very obvious, and thus completely unnecessary, as well, but you asked for it.

-bowerbird

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