The smart folks over at Berg London have thrown together a prototype of a new magazine reading experience. I’m a little ambivalent on the whole e-reader thing, but it’s worth taking a look at. So do so.
Back? Okay.
There’s a lot to like here, and a lot to dislike.
I appreciate their thoughts re: scrolling, but I feel like it’s misguided. When reading a large amount of content, I prefer something with paging. I agree that the weird faux-page pull-corner paging thing they reference is awful, but I like the side to side page they show for switching between articles, and would prefer it as a means of progressing through an article. Perhaps some sort of pull down table of contents in place of the side to side could be used for switching articles.
I really like their use of multitouch to allow controls to be called up from the sides of the screen, but I’m so-so on the “heat up the contents,” both as an idea and as a gesture. A protracted touch would be sufficient to call up the menu they show.
