• Page Flips Are Better Than Infinite Scroll

[update: this post is about page flips in iBooks on the iPad, not scrolling in general]

I've noticed a few comments about how "page flipping" in the iPad's iBooks application feels clumsy and outdated.

The page flipping animation in the iBooks app though? Super cheesy. It's like in the early days of cars where they built them to look like horse-drawn carriages. Can't we just scroll?

This morning my friend Ben said:

I have to say I've come to dislike page flipping on the phone. I'm not certain why, but at least part of it might be the small punt of content per page. Another part might be the horse-head-on-front-of-a-car curling page animation, when a simple slide would be less intrusive.

And the widely-linked article from Craig Mod said:

The metaphor of flipping pages already feels boring and forced on the iPhone. I suspect it will feel even more so on the iPad. The flow of content no longer has to be chunked into ‘page’ sized bites. One simplistic reimagining of book layout would be to place chapters on the horizontal plane with content on a fluid vertical plane.

And he posted this graphic as a better idea:

And I disagree heartily. But first let's talk about areas of agreement.

The Page Flip Must Be Extremely Fast

If you're going to use an animation, the page flip most be almost instantaneous. If you're going to have to flip thousands of times, a too-slow animation is going to feel like a little papercut every time.

But this demo shows that the animation completes extremely quickly.

The Page Flip Must Not Be Visually Fancy
There should be no explosion of little stars on the screen on a successful page turn. There should be no distracting sound effects. It must do its job without getting in the way, and I think Apple did alright here too.

The Page Flip Must Be Easy

Forcing a user to drag a finger to initiate a flip every time is unacceptable. I experienced this with early versions of the Kindle iPhone app and it was maddening. A page flip must be triggered even in the case of a single tap on the side of the screen. Again, Apple got this right.

Page Flip on iPhone Is Overkill

The iPhone's screen does put it in a new category. You're doing it so often the animation needs to go by so quickly that it's basically a page reload, or else it will be obtrusive.

But the iPad is larger, meaning less page turning. It also utilizes a "real-world object" design approach, where the page flip is just one more visual cue amongst many that the device is trying to feel tangible and physical.

Done Right, Page Flip Beats Scroll Every Time

Now that we've discussed the ways page flip can fail, how can it succeed?

Easy: page layout and never having to wonder where to continue reading. Each page can be designed as self-contained units, with precise placement of copy, columns, spacing, and media such as images and video. The integrity of the page layout is kept intact, and when your eye reads to the bottom right of a page, you press a button and always know to look at the top left to continue reading.

The scrolling fans argue that you should be able to know where you are. You should never blink, or accidentally flick the screen causing your place to be sent some number of pages back. You should precisely drag the text to the exact place where you want to keep reading, carefully, each time.

This isn't my first time at the rodeo, but I find my success rate with tracking my scroll position of long form content less than 100%. Page flips, on the other hand? I have never lost my place*, so I'm at 100%, and 100% is preferable to less than 100%.

Page flips, when done right, are more usable than infinite scroll.

* I have mis-tapped plenty of times, but the errant tap only ever takes me one page forward or back. Compare this to the "ice cube on the counter" slide that happens when my son reaches for the screen and I don't pull away in time. There's no contest.