Where do I go to read?
You can jump to your bookmarked page or to any chapter in the book by clicking on the logo in the top-left corner of the site. (You'll only have a bookmark link there if you're logged in and you've placed a bookmark by clicking on the bookmark icon at the top of one of the book pages.)
How do I use this site?
The old buggy tour was recently replaced with a slideshow; you can also consult the following captioned screenshots for a quick overview of the site's functionalities:
Screenshot 1: Highlight words and phrases by clicking and dragging. Type in an annotation related to that highlight (comment, interpretation, question). You can add tags to the annotation to help readers filter in annotations that help or interest them, and filter out annotations that aren't useful for them (some tag examples).
Screenshot 2: You can read annotations left by other readers by clicking on any of the highlights. Deeper yellow highlights mean a word or phrase has more than one annotation on it.
Screenshot 3: The sidebar initially shows random annotations for the whole page. Clicking on a highlight makes just the annotations tied to that highlight appear in the sidebar.
Screenshot 4: In addition to adding tags to annotations, you can up- or down-vote them, favorite them (you can see a list of your favorites on your account page), or report them for moderation. What highlights are displayed on a page can be changed using the filters for annotation text, author, and tag. When a highlight has more than one annotation tied to it, you can prioritize which annotations appear on top in the sidebar by creation date or the annotations' rankings.
What can I do on this site?
For now, I'll be updating this page with a list of things this site currently lets you do. It's my hope to design the site such that each feature is easily discoverable, so let me know if you previously didn't know a feature existed (or can't find it now that you know it exists).
- Read an authoritative text of James Joyce's novel Ulysses
- Click on highlighted text to read annotations left by other readers (these appear in the sidebar; if there's more than one annotation for a given highlight, you can use the sort feature to prioritize what you see first)
- Highlight words or phrases in the text and leave "annotations" on them (questions or comments, plus tags to help other readers find and filter for them)
- Customize what annotations you're shown to your reading needs and interests (e.g. filter what highlights are shown on a page by words in the annotation, author, or tag; prioritize annotations displayed in the sidebar user rating or recency)
- Favorite annotations (they'll be added to a list visible on your account page)
- Manually move a single bookmark to the last page you read (a link to the bookmarked page is available on your account page)
- Flag annotations for moderation (e.g. spam or abusive language)
- Annotation ratings (click to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down depending on whether you feel the annotation is a useful contribution to the site)
- A backend system tracking quantity and quality of contributions to the community by awarding points for creating annotations and comments, and for every time an annotation or comment you authored got a thumbs-up
- Submit feedback about the site (bug reports, feature requests, questions, comments, and reports of community abuse)
Planned upcoming features
- Change customization settings via your user profile or in the page header, and have these choices persist until you next change them
- Add comments to pages (instead of highlighting the entire text of specific page you wish to discuss) and comments on annotations
- On logging in, be redirected to the most recent page you bookmarked
- Building on the existing favoriting annotations feature, curate your own edition. You will be able to visit a custom URL to read the novel with just your favorited annotations displayed (useful for teaching or making an argument about the book).
- Mark annotations as comments or questions; questions will be added to an "unanswered question" queue so that other readers can easily see questions they might be able to answer
- Visualizations of site reading activity (e.g. a heatmap of where the most high-rated annotations occur)
- Tablet-friendly theming and touch interaction
You can read more about what is and isn't included in the site in the evolving Scope document here.