Design Discussion: Zoom-in and Next Page

August 14th, 2009 by CourseSmart

CourseSmart uses image files to display true digital equivalents of the textbook pages. As you will learn, this has a big impact on the “eTextbooks for the iPhone” application.

Using the Swipe Gesture to Scroll and Pan the Page

In many places on the iPhone, a swipe gesture is used for next/previous page. But when you view a “resized” image file, swiping “pans” left-to-right or “scrolls” top-to-bottom.

The app automatically zooms the image file to fit the screen width. This improves legibility immensely. That’s why you can’t swipe to get to the next page.

What’s the Best Way to Zoom-in?

People who use mobile Safari for web browsing expect double tap to zoom-in and zoom-out. This works well for html pages, but does not translate easily to image files.

Some photo sharing apps use double tap to zoom-in to a predefined or calculated level. This is hard to get right and is slow on everything except the newest iPhone 3GS.

What would you like to see in CourseSmart’s “eTextbooks for the iPhone” app?

Join the discussion below. Tell your friends to review CourseSmart’s “eTextbooks for the iPhone” on the App Store.

How about two finger swipes for page turns?

A quick google search suggest that “touches” and “changedtouches” properties within the API might be used to implement this?

John Murphy

Added on August 14th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

This is my final quarter of classes and I’m taking them all as distance learning while I complete an internship in Florida. I thought it would be really easy having access to my textbooks thru my iPhone, however, I can barely make out the text. To me that is my only problem with this application.

Ashley M