> but more for admiring an illustration or a diagram
Consider the aspect ratio of most monitors. It's ideal for side-by-side viewing of pages. Also, most books that have mixed illustrations, pictures, and text are designed for side-by-side viewing.
This, and all of the other shortcomings I mentioned, are technically very easy to accomplish. For example, Foxit does support side-by-side display, but if you switch it to full-screen display, that goes away. It's almost like they had to work extra hard to make side-by-side not work.
Side-by-side is also very useful for "flipping" through a book. You can do it literally twice as fast as page-by-page.
Yes, I agree, but they're just lack of features, has little to do with the nature of an ebook vs paper book. People is nostalgic biased and that quickly goes away once you give them the convinience.
Consider the aspect ratio of most monitors. It's ideal for side-by-side viewing of pages. Also, most books that have mixed illustrations, pictures, and text are designed for side-by-side viewing.
This, and all of the other shortcomings I mentioned, are technically very easy to accomplish. For example, Foxit does support side-by-side display, but if you switch it to full-screen display, that goes away. It's almost like they had to work extra hard to make side-by-side not work.
Side-by-side is also very useful for "flipping" through a book. You can do it literally twice as fast as page-by-page.