Before I start, let me state that I’m not a fan of the page turner. But my issue wasn’t about the use of the metaphor, rather the crazy concept of passing a pdf through a convertor script and expecting the reader to interact with two A4 pages reduced to the size of their monitor. If you plan to get someone to engage with your content — make it easy for them to access and read!

My initial statement would have been dangerous a few months ago — back then my work was in providing variations on the theme of the Flash-based pageturner. However, I’ve moved on, but I actually like the concept of using containers to manage chunks of well designed editorial content. And  the use of this visual device to indicate a movement from one portion of text to another has established itself over hundreds of years and, despite Microsoft’s patent, will probably be prevalent online for a few years to come.

Why?

That’s simple — people love print. Absolutely love it, and most people I come across would — everything else being equal — prefer to receive information direct to paper rather than screen. In fact I suspect if web content could be delivered directly and instantaneously to paper then my job role would be very different.

However, the truth is that we cannot send content to sheets of paper and so we rely on electronic devices to display this rapidly updating information and, because of this, content providers aim to make this as simple a transition as possible.

Of course a web purist will say that the visual page turn isn’t appropriate online. But, what on earth is wrong with transitional metaphors? Change is always a lot easier to deal with when it has some home comforts!