How to put a lot of text online without using pdf's ??

Carsten,
That’s a very good question. I have actually written an article against using PDF’s on web pages for the reasons you say. ??

But although I enjoy using the web very much, I definitely dislike doing a very large amount of text reading there. So strangely enough, I think PDF’s may be a good method in this one rare case. A person could download it, then read it comfortably on their laptop, Ipad, or other device.

Another thing you might consider is some kind of eBook scenario, and there are various ways to do that.

I suppose you could get WordPress set up to do many pages per Post or something, but I really wonder if anyone would read 50 pages online without total exhaustion. And especially with the increasing use of smart phones for web surfing.

So sorry, no good WordPress ideas for you.
Dave

Hi Dave

Thanks for your reply ??

Regarding the iPad, there’s not much difference there compared to another digital screen ??

And i think in the future we’ll be reading much more online than we do now – i’m not a fan either – but if you get a good screen so your eyes don’t suffer so much, then it’s perfect – think og all the text and books on just one little tiny flat iPad ??

I have asked the question on a webdesign forum as well, and they gave me the idea of doing it magazine style, so i’ll do a search on plugins for that – there has to be one, there is for Joomla..

And the eBook thing must be same kind of software/plugin as for the magazines, but will do a search on eBook plugin too ??

Best regards
Carsten, Denmark

Carsten,
Sounds like a plan. I’ll admit, I truly detest Joomla, but if it has an app you like, and you don’t mind a system that’s extraordinarily difficult to navigate and customize, then it might be great.

There will definitely be more online reading, it’s going crazy already. Where I disagree is that it will be webpages at all. Not unless you can make a webpage look like a Kindle or Mac reader thingie. And in fact, somebody may have made something like that. I have seen photo galleries for WP like that, but not book reading stuff.

btw, here are some WP news themes, but again, people using them write with the web in mind, which is short articles, for generally zero attention span people have now, and reading comfort.

https://techpp.com/2009/02/19/27-stunning-yet-free-premium-wordpress-magazine-news-themes/

Hi again Dave

I have no intentions in using Joomla, no way, and you have said why, so i don’t need to repeat it ??

On the webpage thing i think there will be some new designs that works like iPad or some other eBook reader, and in the end i think we’ll see that the ordinary day pc/laptop will be an iPad like thing, i know that others are heavily developing in that direction – and i think it’s great – i would love to have an iPad – but i don’t like Apple controlling how much space i can use, and i think they cost to much too..

I have looked at a lot of those magazine themes, but haven’t found any that i liked enough to use it, but i think that gallery eBook reader look-a-like thing, i’ll have a look at that, and maybe there’s a magazine plugin og eBook viewer thing out there ??

Best regards
Carsten, Denmark

Carsten,
Yeah, those themes aren’t really too “booky”.

Gee, now I’m wondering if maybe HTML5 and CSS3 might help with this. I’m too busy in the trenches to be doing much of that, but I know it’s getting sexier for columns and a few other things. But that’s in the future, I suppose.

https://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/html-5-and-css-3-the-techniques-youll-soon-be-using/

Cheers to you in Denmark,
Dave

Carsten,
Just in case you’re still viewing this thread, here’s an article that you should find interesting. I may have been hasty, underestimating people’s online reading interest:

https://www.niemanlab.org/2010/07/smart-editorial-smart-readers-and-smart-ad-solutions-slate-makes-a-case-for-long-form-on-the-web/

Hi Dave

Thanks a lot, i’ll have a look at right away ??

Best regards
Carsten

Well

Have bin searching around now, there aren’t many book/reader style themes, and the few i found wasn’t even reader style, like the magazines, and the magazines i found was not that good either, those i tried couldn’t focus on just reading one page at a time, like ebook readers can..

Might have to put that project aside for e moment, and from time to time check html 5..

It would be really nice if the reader thing could be integrated into the webpage, can’t figure out why any hasn’t build anything like that yet..

Best regards
Carsten

I believe we will be using PDF and other “advanced document formats” in the years to come on mostly all computer and computer-esque devices (as pointed out above.)

However, that doesn’t mean one HAS to use one specific document format. There are others, such as DjVu which is, in my opinion, a lot smaller than PDF documents. This isn’t always the case but its made for scanning documents and supports layers. While many devices today need an app/plug-in to view it, as DjVu isn’t as well known as PDF, it uses layers so you get the “text” version of the page then the visual version, which is something I haven’t seen on PDFs.

Unfortunately, I believe that there’s no way around these documents. What is comes down to is just what “container” you would like to use. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t combine all the magazines in one folder and 7z them so they are small and portable.

Until the day comes that someone makes it possible for one to “load” the container as many pages that can be controlled by HTML/CSS/PHP/JS we probably won’t have a “decent” solution.

Hi Zyline

I’m not that interested in the formats, if people would like to download it will be pdf’s..

The thing that interests me is how to integrate the reading into the webpage so it looks like a book, or if you use zmag, or some other software, where you can flip pages – but it needs to look just like that when you click and wanna read an article – not showing you the rest of the page/blog – and of course there needs to be a back home button, or next article..

If there isn’t a theme, i don’t know if it would work iFraming adobe reader on a page, then you still could keep the top menu for navigating..

Best regards
Carsten

Well

Have now tried the Google doc embedder, but that was of no use, can’t handle those large documents, very odd, the one tested was only 8mb, and the plugin seams to be able to handle up to 33mb…

Best regards
Carsten