iPhone Comic Reading UI - Your thoughts wanted!

[Simon]

I have been thinking about and experimenting with different UIs to make reading full page comics easier.

The iPhone screen has a resolution of 480x320 in landscape mode. Often, scans have resolution in the 1500-2000 pixel range. Resizing the scan often results in loss in quality. What quality level are you willing to accept?

There is also too much scrolling around, and sometimes you can get 'lost' in the middle of a page, as you don't have the spatial awareness of where you are on the page. Is this a problem for you, or are you willing to accept this?

What are your favourite iPhone comic apps so far? What do you like about the UI, what don't you like?

[Comic Book Guy]

I'm happy enough to read full pages in landscape mode - much easier to just scroll down the page - though I'm sure others would prefer panel-by-panel. Have you looked into a pattern recognition algorithm for automatic zooming?

ComiXology's Comics app is nice how it animates zooming between panels, but of course the comic needs to be built like that from the ground up - it couldn't really be replicated with existing CBRs/CBZs.

Incidentally Simon, are you now focusing on the iPhone and not the desktop version?

[Simon]

Scrolling down is fine if the page fits the width of the screen. With landscape mode, it would be 480 pixels across. However most comics resized to this width look bad. If the page is wider than the screen, you end up scrolling to the left or right accidentally and having to correct that.

Panel by panel is possible but would require a decent algorithm which even then gets 80% right. However, a panel may still be wider/taller than the screen, so the problem of scrolling is still there.

The good thing about comics which have been developed with mobile viewing in mind is that it's possible to move from one panel to the next with just one touch or swipe, which makes viewing very easy and fast. However, dealing with existing comics is a much harder challenge.

iPhone & Desktop are both important!

[Simon]

HI Comic Book Guy, can you repost your comment about ComicZeal setting the width? I was trying to cancel one of my replies but accidentally deleted your comment. Sorry!

[Dan]

Have you tried ComicReader Mobi yet? It's my favorite bar non. However, it has some issues best summed by a poster on the forum. Let's just say the creator is not your typical Mac developer.

ps The 'lite' version [iTunes link] is a bit hard to find.

[Comic Book Guy]

Comic Zeal does downsize images, but they're still bigger than the screen resolution, allowing for zooming in without loss of quality. And it automatically resizes a page to fit the screen when you first open a comic or switch orientation.

[Kevin Yank]

I enjoy the reading experience in ComiXology best, and would actually go to the trouble of drawing pane bounding boxes for my favourite comics if this were supported in the desktop app. Perhaps these "reading guides" could be shared online and downloaded by other ComicBookLover users in some slick manner?

That said, ComicZeal is what I use for reading my own scanned comics on the go, and the reading experience is perfectly fine for casual reading of scanned comics. The reduced resolution of the converted-for-mobile files it uses is the perfect compromise. Any bigger, and the files would occupy too much space on the device. Any smaller, and readability would suffer.

[Kevin Yank]

To be more precise, the ideal iPhone reading experience is the tap/swipe-to-advance you get with ComiXology, with the ability to use pinch/spread gestures to zoom in and out of the panels to see more detail or to obtain a larger overview.

[Pigumon]

I tried copying some jpegs over and viewing them in the photo app, it was hell. I don't see myself reading comics on the iphone/touch. There seems to be huge negatives no matter which way I try.

I'm assuming this will be easily ported to the now 90% for sure Apple Tablet. I just hope Apple won't limit its customer base again by limiting the built in memory.

Anyway, I'd like to see what you come up with eventually, but I'll probably just wait for the tablet.

[Jaison Biagini]

i have comicreadermobi for my iphone. while it's still not ideal based on the size of the screen, it's a well done program.nice tap zoom features. i am a total mac geek, so i'm drooling over the prospects of the iSlate from mac! i really wish that it can have phone service not just a data plan, pretty much everyone carries bags now, so the tablet would be fine as a phone with either wired or blutooth headset. but as a reader, at 10" it will almost be as big as a comic book, but you'll still have zoom! i REALLY can't wait to see steve in his jeans and black turtle neck on jan 27th!!!