The importance of appearance in the design of ebooks was the subject of the Visual Book and WEB Book experiments, with two main themes emerging as fundamental to usability:

• The legacy of the paper book metaphor, and the wisdom of adhering to this, where appropriate, in the construction of the electronic book.
• The different set of requirements arising when the reader interacts with the new medium; in particular, the effectiveness of presenting material electronically in short, scannable chunks rather than a long, linear flow of text.

EBONI's students have confirmed these findings, with the following guidelines emerging:

Guideline 1: Cover your book
Guideline 2: Include a table of contents
Guideline 3: Include an index
Guideline 4: Provide a search tool
Guideline 5: Treat the book as a closed environment
Guideline 6: Use hypertext to enhance navigation and facilitate cross-referencing
Guideline 7: Design typographical aspects carefully
Guideline 8: Use short pages
Guideline 9: Provide content clues
Guideline 10: Provide orientation clues
Guideline 11: Choose a readable font
Guideline 12: Use colour to create a consistent style and aid scannability
Guideline 13: Break text into short chunks
Guideline 14: Use non-text items with care
Guideline 15: Use multimedia and interactive elements to engage users
Guideline 16: Provide bookmarking and annotating functions
Guideline 17: Enable customisation

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