Reading a book

Opening a book puts you in Simple View — one page at a time, with a caption below and a few big buttons for the things people actually want to do. You don’t need to learn anything; just use the arrows.

Turning pages

A left arrow and a right arrow sit on either side of the page. Press them to move backward or forward one page at a time. On a touchscreen, tap the arrows or swipe left and right on the image.

The Simple View toolbar

A small strip at the top of the book tells you where you are and gives you the most useful buttons.

• Browse Pages — opens a grid of every page so you can jump straight to one. You can also type a page number into the “Go to page” box.
• Rotate Left / Rotate Right — spin the current page 90° if it came in sideways. (Admins: this saves for everyone. Visitors: it’s just for you.)
• Cover (inside Browse Pages) — jumps to the very first page.

Jumping to a page

Press Browse Pages. You’ll see every page as a thumbnail. Click one to jump there, or type a number into “Go to page” and press Go.

Full-screen view

Click the page image to open it full-screen. From there, use the arrows at the edges or the close button (×) at the top right. Escape closes it too.

Reading the caption

Every page has a caption shown below the image — a title and some body text describing what’s on the page. Names in double square brackets (like [[John Reed]]) are clickable links to that person’s profile.

If a page belongs to a journal or another authored run, a reading sequence banner may appear above the caption. Open it to read that page range as one continuous text while keeping the original scan visible.

There’s a whole page about this: see Captions & page text.

Top-of-screen buttons

Two buttons stay visible at the top of every book: Home (back to the book selector) and Chat (ask the book a question — see Chat with the book). Everything else lives behind the menu (☰) in the top-right corner:

• What’s New — recent family-visible updates like new comments.
• Expert View / Simple View — switch layouts (see Expert view).
• People & Faces — organizer/admin only.
• People — the People Directory (see People directory).
• Admin — admin-only tools.
• Help — opens this help.
• Logout — sign out.