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The Back button works for links within a page, incidentally.
by pg 14y ago
The Back button works for links within a page, incidentally.
- vnorby 14y agoIf you'd like, you can drop in the JS code at the bottom of the page and it will make your footnotes easier to read automatically. It's not the jumping that's as much the problem as losing the context upon jumping.
- cwe 14y agoNot so well on iOS
- bbx 14y agoSimple trick for iOS: use the "Reader" feature of Safari to scroll to the footnotes while maintaining your current scroll in the main window. Switch back and forth whenever you encounter a new footnote (scroll positions are kept in both windows).
- raldi 14y agoIt's nice to be able to see the footnote and the main text at the same time. (I usually open side-by-side windows to read your essays.)
- diminish 14y agoI was also thinking about the footnote problem, while reading PG's most recent essay [1]. Maybe, it is time to kill or supersede footnotes on the web which are one of the examples of the paper text format skeuomorphisms, more common in scientific writing. Footnotes give the serious feeling of a well planned and well thought attire to essays where the main point is elaborated and the distractions are left out, for a delayed, independent, optional reading. However they make the deep readers'[2] experience worse; mainly they prefer to follow the true thought-flow of the writer, and evaluate each footnote in its context rather than separate from the main text. [1] How to get startup ideas http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html [2] By deep readers, I mean people who don't want to miss a single idea in the essay.
- kami8845 14y agoHey pg, if I give you a self-contained light piece of JS that does this, would you consider including it in your website? This would also work on mobile.
- qu4z-2 14y agoWhile I'm aware that works, I generally prefer footnotes with a link back to the source of the footnote. Just my 5 cents.