We're talking about scrolls and cards, and about apps like Pocket that give you a choice between scrolling and going page-by-page. They also let you choose text size, color, spacing—all sorts of stuff!

But I have a problem with this: I believe deeply in the power of composed text, text that "knows" where it falls on the page, how it's appearing—text that, in fact, resists the flexibility that these read-it-later apps afford!

Should I just give up & go with the flow? (Pun intended, maybe?) Or is there a future for composed text?

P.S. Mostly this is just an excuse to try Branch.

Please don't give up. It's what you said in the stack on Contents that proves the point. Controlling the rhythm is so powerful. Scrolling is too lazy of a motion for text in an age of such scarce attention. This gets to Fish issues, too.

If you're reading this conversation and don't get my references, check out the neato links down there. ⬇

There is a future for composed text. Maybe we need to start by thinking about the precedents in print: books, of course, but also card sets like Brian Eno's Oblique Strategy cards IDEO's Method Cards.

Yes—children's books, too. And print magazine layouts! Of course it's not that we should be aping any of these formats. Rather, we just ought to recognize that there is such power—like we are talking nuclear fusion here—available when you're able to put words & images in particular places inside uh, large bounding rectangles.

Uh-oh… do we all just agree?

Not sure yet. I might have found a potential disagreement we could have if we wanted.

Does the screen space *have* to be bounded in order for the experience to work? I'm not sure it does, but I don't know why I'm not sure.

Robin, I am curious about your choice to remove a back button from the Contents stack and Fish. An accidental click/tap means having to start over or wait for a second read to get what I've missed. Did film lose something once we were able to pause and rewind on the VCR?

RE: "Of course it's not that we should be aping any of these formats."

Digital expands these in all sorts of ways, it not only allows for more control, but less. Think about Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch en.wikipedia.org) (Rayuela) as a stack that can be explored linearly or randomly, just as the book is meant to be explored.

While I agree with composed text being awesome, some of the experiments with things appearing / disappearing in long vertical scrolls are also quite nice. They have a different feel from Robin's cards, though: his feels solid and punchy, and the others feel a bit ethereal or slippery.

This reminds me of a design element on the cover of McSweeney's # 2 (or maybe 1, or possibly 3) that read "If words are to be used as design elements, then let designers write them." And so I'll play devil's advocate.

More often that not, if you are talking about a large chunk of electronic text and meant to convey a large amount of information, it is more useful to let the reader find the layout and pagination method that best suits his or her own pace, style, and feeble or very strong eyesight.

It is only in very particular cases, such as when you want particular words to have a particular impact, or if you want to really call out an idea, that cards and composed text become more useful than not when we are talking about screens. True?

Re: no back button in Fish:

I can't say that the choice was the result of any deep theory of reading, but it's now one of my very favorite things about the app. People have told me that it made them read with more care. I think it also lends the experience a sort of… riskiness? Like picking a path through a pitch-black forest, not sure you'll be able to find your way back.

That's one of my biggest beefs with scrolling: it's very hard to SURPRISE a reader, because—by definition!—you always see things coming.

Although you're right Allen: there's a new generation of more composed (!) scrolling experiences now that do introduce a bit more surprise.

Accessibility is another consideration.

Sorry to agree again, but I think Mat makes a pretty good point about large chunks, which I might be so bold as to call articles. It's better to have those formats be flexible. Cards suggest speech, as Robin wrote, but that's not always appropriate. Though there might be a lot of pixels spilt on articles that would be more effective at the pace of speech.

Roberto's accessibility point is critical, but I guess it's no greater a concern than any other kind of interface that needs tapping or clicking.

Allen, do you have a nice example or two of the kinds of scrolling works you're describing?

Mat, I think that’s true, and it’s what most good designers have been pushing towards for most of the web’s history: fewer pictures of text, more accessibility, etc.

However. The cases where we “want particular words to have a particular impact” are not necessarily rare. There’s room in the world for a lot of text that’s as plain and reconfigurable as possible, but also for a lot of text that’s used in deliberate, heightened, performative, visually artistic ways.

There’s something – I don’t know what – to be learned from all the “infographics” going around these days. They seem to be the main form that composed text takes on the internet this year.

Oh, another genre: slide decks.

(It's funny how long of a scroll this conversation is going to be.)

flickr.com

One quick example of composed text being highly rad: Tufte's Beautiful Evidence. With maybe one exception, every sentence is completed on the page it starts on. Extremely useful when text refers to a specific graphic, obviously.

Tufte draws admirably on the traditions of hand-composited printing. They had a number of interesting tactics to do with flow: for example, the catchword/reclamans (en.wikipedia.org), which you could interpret as a forcibly paged medium trying to act like an unpaged one.

I’d argue what Robin is arguing for is something akin to printed poetry. In poetry, we’ve seen how line breaks, positioning, typography, all of these matter to the reading experience of poetry. It also, I think, plays to the length inherent in a lot of poetry. As mentioned above, things of length (articles, books) require something more flexible, or opportunities for both cards and scrolls.

"With maybe one exception, every sentence is completed on the page it starts on." I LOVE THAT. Why do I love it so much? I'm not even sure. I've become more & more conscious of the way text flows on screens, the way lines break. I'll routinely edit blog posts for no other reason than to improve the visual rhythm.

I even cringe when a tweet breaks badly on the screen. (Realizing, of course, that this is TOTALLY irrational, because tweets are rendered differently everywhere, and it's probably beautiful on somebody else's screen.)

The biggest issue I see with “hey, cards work. let’s keep using them” is that scrolling isn’t always lazy, it’s just that most have been lazy when using them. Things like King & Coyle’s Nike Better World site reveal that scrolling can also be beautiful...and perhaps flexible too. There’s a potential for fine-grained control, flexibility, and experience that I find fascinating in scrolling.

nikebetterworld.com

Not just comic relief: Have you seen this *stack* of shit? Check out how the final page offers a "print version". I see that feature as something like sharing code for remixing.

Robin, are you familiar with Minsky’s “The Society of Mind” and McLuhan and Fiore’s “The Medium is the Massage”? These are what I think of when I think of stack-like paper books.

Charlie: Yes, absolutely. Those are great examples. I gotta dig my "Medium is the Massage" out of its box & give it another read. As we were talking about up above, I think one of the things that really makes it work is… SURPRISE!

In regards to “sentences begin and end on the same page,” might I ::cough::cough:: ask that we look at hybrid models like Inkling or Baker as best of both worlds? Book sections broken up into chunks so that content doesn’t break when undesired, but scrollable so that the amount of content per card can be adjusted to say exactly what needs to be said—no more, no little.

inkling.com
bakerframework.com

Charlie, it's funny you mention "The Medium is the Massage" today. I ran into a large version of it at the library yesterday. I had not idea such a thing existed.

Robin, while you're giving it another read, read "The Electric Information Age Book" too — they back story.

Jon, to go with Derrick's scroller example from Nike, see Frank Chimero's "Everything was made."

The digital definitely offers an advantage over books in reaching SURPRISE! There's no accidental reveal. I remember how carefully I had to turn pages when reading "The Monster at the End of This Book" to my kids, in the hope of not revealing anything.

Of course, with the kids surprise (of a different sort) was still there on each successive reading even when it was *the* book in rotation. I think that presents a wonderful challenge for writers: How can you write a book that is familiar, yet still surprising each time you read it again.

Speaking of "The Monster at the End…"—I think we've had a good chat about this. Thanks for joining my first branch, everybody!