"The paperback format will wither"? A modest proposal. Books are not recordings.

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John Watson mentioned the "Forward Chess" app in passing, and it prompted me to download and try the app...

http://www.theweekinchess.com/john-watson-reviews/john-watson-book-review-112-ki...

Android free app, a Review:    "Forward Chess" (v1.3.6)

Overall assessment:  The Forward Chess app is favorably impressive; although there are several easy but important improvements that should be made.

I only view ebooks on my smartphone. Only rarely do I view ebook on a larger pad. So my review assumes a smartphone context.

Areas for Improvement:

1. Default should be to Allow landscape display when phone is so oriented (with respect to gravity). This is the only way we can see enough text to make the format plausible. I found the format implausible to use in portrait mode (on my smartphone; on a larger pad portrait would be okay).

2. The format should replace the static position diagrams in the text with tap-able links that open the regular active diagram to the position. This would eliminate the awful vertical spreading by useless space between the before-diagram text and the after-diagram text. The spreading makes it hard to read the text, obviously.

3. A fully "reversible" notation is needed under the live board. LAN plus Captured-piece is one option. I dislike advancing the game by one move (not move-pair as in two moves), and being given no information about the ORIGIN square of the moved piece, nor about what type of piece was CAPTURED. There is nothing else about the app design that would be damaged by using a fully reversible notation instead of mere SAN or even LAN, under the live board.

4. No scroll thumb. In a long chapter it is tedious to swipe up and up and up, instead of swiping once and then touchHolding the fleeting transient thumb on the right edge and dragging it up to the location I want.

5. No Exit option in the app. I dislike how so many smartphone owners sheepishly accept that so many app abuse them. They don't exit, they require access to your Contacts list, they drain your battery with lots of web service calls for adverts, and so on. Forward Chess app is mostly good in all these areas, but it lacks an Exit.

6. Stockfish engine is good, shows top two choices. But I wish the app would enable me to tell Stockfish to calculate the best move as if it were White's turn to move again, even when legally it is Black's turn to move. Sometimes that feature can help me understand the threats better. Also, where Stockfish's calculating lines are displayed, there is too much space wasted on the fully spelled out "depth=12" on the line that could otherwise show me another move at the end of the visible variation.

7. No way to organize your large number of book titles (I downloaded many samples).

8. Unfortunately, bookmarks are invisible. While you are reading along there is no way to know that you wrote a note about this paragraph. In a paper book it would be as if ink would not stick to the margins, and all your personal notes about a paragraph on page 42 had to be written on the inside of the book's back cover.

9. The digitized format is proprietary to the point that no other app can read the ebook. Each book appears to be composed of a set of .html files full of encrypted gibberish. If Forward Chess fails financially, their ebook will eventually become obsolete or unavailable. All the $ you spend on Forward Chess ebooks will be lost. Forward Chess makes financial deals with chess book publishers, and you buy ebooks by clicking on your favorite publishers. The buying through the app looks easy (certainly was easy for "buy" the free samples).

At Chess.com from July 2014 there is another favorable review of v1.3.3, as used on a pad (larger screen than my smartphone),
http://www.chess.com/blog/SamCopeland/app-review-forward-chess

(From my use of Stockfish in the Foward Chess app, I did not experience the crash problem that Chess.com reported.)

Thanks.
GeneM , 2014-08-16
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