#hover box fic

Okay, I’ve decided to definitely finish the hover box fic. I’ll create a version that makes all my hover box dreams come true (which people will be able to interact with on computers), and I’ll create a mobile-specific version that will give the story (though without the interactivity) to folks who only have access to mobile devices.

Thanks! I’m pretty excited about it! I’ve got much of it written already, but it will require a lot of html coding to make the hover boxes work, so I didn’t want to get started on doing that if people won’t be able to read the story on computers that allow hovering.

The story is going to seem like one thing if you read just the main text, but something rather different if you hover over the places that cause the boxes to pop up … so people who can only access the fic on mobile devices would get what appears to be a complete (but perhaps simple and plotless) story without ever realizing that there’s this whole other level.

I want to avoid two things here:

1. Me doing hours of tedious html coding work for no good reason

2. Lots of readers being excluded from enjoying the story because they only read fic on mobile devices that don’t allow for hovering

I have a post for people to indicate if they wouldn’t be able to use the hover boxes because they are unable to read fic on a computer and use exclusively mobile devices. How about this one instead be an indication of the amount of interest in the hover boxes idea? Because if there’s enough interest in the concept, then I’ll do it anyway.

** So like THIS post if you would be able to (and want to) read a funky experimental fic on a COMPUTER so that you could hover the cursor over different parts of the text to cause boxes to appear with additional elements of plot. **

Okay, so I’m working on this sort of experimental fic which will use “hover boxes” to show additional text that communicates important parts of the plot. These “hover boxes” require readers to be using a computer, so that they can hover their cursor over certain words in order for the “hover boxes” to appear with additional text.

My worry is that more and more people are relying purely on mobile devices for their fic reading, and these “hover boxes” would not be accessible on those sorts of devices. I don’t want to create a story if it won’t work for a large portion of my audience.

So my question is this: how many people interested in reading my fic do not have access to an actual computer? How many of my readers rely exclusively on mobile devices?

I’m trying to decide whether to abandon this fic project as something that would exclude most of my readers, or spend a bunch of time trying to find some other way to convey the same basic story in some other way specifically for mobile users. Or whether I can just write it as planned and hope that most people will be able to use a computer to read it.

** So LIKE this entry only if you would be UNABLE to read my fic on an actual computer and rely purely on mobile devices. **

Rather than making assumptions about what devices people are reading on, I’m just trying to get a feel for the reality out there.

I created this whole story as a way to use the hover boxes creatively … and only after I’d formulated it and started writing it did I get a sinking feeling & research hover boxes and mobile devices … and find that they are unmixy things. So I’d already come up with this idea that exists entirely to take advantage of the hover boxes as an interactive element, which can’t be done on mobile. I’ve been brainstorming ways to create a mobile-specific version of the fic, but there’s no way that I could really tell the exact same story, since the whole point of the initial story idea was its interactivity.

For mobile users, I could just insert the hover box text into the main text by putting it in brackets, but the whole point of the hover boxes was for them to be like this secret interactive insight you were getting into what was going on, and that effect will be lost if it’s all just straight text, even if some of it is in brackets. They’ll still get the story, but not the intended experience.

But I wouldn’t like it if somebody was writing a fic that couldn’t be read on Apple devices. I’d be like, “Well, screw them then, if they don’t care about me with my iMac and my iPad and my iPhone!” But this story has no reason to exist if there aren’t many people who would be able to read it with the hover boxes. That’s why I’m just trying to get a feel for how many people would have access to the hover boxes and how many people wouldn’t. If most people are reading on mobile devices exclusively, then this story has no reason to exist and I shouldn’t bother to spend hours coding it.