EXPLORING CONTENT

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A handheld device can be used for reading the introductory and editorial content of this site.

Convenient study of downloadable text-based material (e.g. files of type PDF, CDF)1 needs plenty of screen real estate.

The site (BPfS) relies on freely available readers or players.2

Non-text-based content like videos will be uploaded to free sharing sites and linked to.3

1. The scientific book is obsolete. Electronic publications containing text and diagrams or images can eliminate the flaw of books that different, related parts of content cannot be kept simultaneously in view when needed, for example, when the discussion of a figure on an odd-numbered page extends to the next. Such elimination is simply achieved by collecting different types of content from a single publication — text, figures, notes, references etc. — in separate files, and viewing these files in several windows on one or more computer monitors.
2. As is generally known today, PDF is the acronym for portable document format. The most advanced free PDF reader is Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Its recent version enables multiple copies to be run at the same time on a single device so that different content-type files (see previous note) belonging to a single publication can be displayed next to one another, given sufficient screen space. The acronym CDF refers to Wolfram Research’s computable document format. Wolfram Research, whose flagship is the computer algebra system (CAS) Mathematica, distributes a free, powerful player, Wolfram CDF Player, for viewing documents made in that CAS, including complex objects like interactive animations.
3. YouTube and Vimeo are obvious examples here, but in the near future more sophisticated or dedicated hosting services (some demanding an affordable annual fee), may take over their first place in popularity for science videos, e.g. BenchFly.