How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other • Hacker News Board

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#11

Post by criddell » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

wanderingstan wrote: post #10

criddell wrote: post #8

I've just started reading this book. As an object, it's pretty neat. My big complaint is that all of the stuff they've put into the pages can fall out and that ruins the experience quite a bit. I wish they had an index for all the cards and other things so that I could put the book back together. Edit: if the site doesn't link for you, go to Amazon and search for Ship of Theseus . That's the book the article is about…

Thankfully someone did make an index for the all cards and inserts in the book and where they belong: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1589916-insert-inventory To my knowledge, the "meta book" is named "S". That's the name on the book cover. OTOH, inside the cover is "Ship of Theseus" which is the made-up book that the made-up meta characters are writing in the margins of. It looks like Amazon now allows you to se…

Thank you for posting this.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#12

Post by Xoros » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

Had anyone read The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski ? A book in a book in a book. I feel some similarities with this one.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#13

Post by AkirIkasu » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:38 PM UTC

kodfodrasz wrote: post #7

sp332 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I could only read the first paragraph. No other text showed up. If I scrolled back up, the first paragraph was gone too.

I experienced the same thing. Then after reopening the page the content showed up, but I was no longer interested in the content, only wanted to see the page source to see how can a page be so broken, and it was no longer broken. So if you are still interested in the content, you should try opening the page again. It may work.

The only solution that worked for me was to scroll down a page and reload.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#14

Post by lvoudour » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:38 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #2

Fancy site... too bad it takes 30 seconds to load. I almost jumped ship.

I didn't believe it so I timed it. Took 15s for me, which is still absurd given the fact that civ 5 takes about the same time to generate a new game. Fancy or not it's just a website. I'm not an expert on the subject (web dev) so could someone explain why more and more websites have significant load times when all they do is load a few images and text? Is it a server issue, a dev issue or a browser issue?(pretty sure it's not a bandwidth issue)

On the subject, the whole concept reminds me of House of Leaves, only the later is definitely more weird

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#15

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

combatentropy wrote: post #9

It amazes me that they could make it in bulk for $20 ( https://www.amazon.com/Ship-Theseus-J-Abrams/dp/0316201642 ). Among the pages are cards and other items that the two fictional readers shared or saved.

The Cover price is $40; typically publishers charge half of the cover to retailers; amazon either cut a deal or is taking razor thin margins on that.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#16

Post by forgotmysn » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:45 PM UTC

Xoros wrote: post #12

Had anyone read The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski ? A book in a book in a book. I feel some similarities with this one.

The Shadow of the Wind did the same, iirc

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#17

Post by munchbunny » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:45 PM UTC

Arzh wrote: post #5

This website has a reading experience unlike any other, by that I mean it has none since it work load.

I thought it was just a video buffering, but then I scrolled down and the loading wheel followed me.

Why can't the text just load first?

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#18

Post by ashurbanipal » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

Like Bats of the Republic, similar idea.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#19

Post by munchbunny » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:47 PM UTC

lvoudour wrote: post #14

EpicEng wrote: post #2

Fancy site... too bad it takes 30 seconds to load. I almost jumped ship.

I didn't believe it so I timed it. Took 15s for me, which is still absurd given the fact that civ 5 takes about the same time to generate a new game. Fancy or not it's just a website. I'm not an expert on the subject (web dev) so could someone explain why more and more websites have significant load times when all they do is load a few images and text? Is it a server issue, a dev issue or a browser issue?(pretty sure…

Back in the day this would happen because somebody needed to load a whole Flash applet. Web 2.0 was supposed to take us away from that.

I suspect the main reason people do it is because progressive loading has the potential to leave your page half-rendered, which looks bad. So you block the whole thing until you can present it in its entirety.

But it's the web. We're used to pages half-loading, and we're used to starting to read text before everything has been loaded. The right way to fix that problem is to make your design more lean, not to stick everything behind a 15-30s loading spinner.

Re: How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other

#20

Post by briga » Fri, May 12, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

'Unlike any other' might be a stretch. Writers have been playing these sorts of meta-narrative games for decades now. Nabokov's Pale Fire comes to mind. House of Leaves is another example.