I just finished reading the author's book "And Then I Thought I Was a Fish"[0] where he uses footnotes quite liberally.

I wish Amazon's ebook reader showed the footnotes in margin as his blog does. They weren't even shown on the same page.

Instead you had to follow a hyperlink to the last appendix of the book. You could then read the footnote w/o the original context; then you click a "back button" to get back to the text.

I hope more ebook readers find a use for the gigantic margins on widescreen displays. -- I would've preferred marginalized sidenotes over seeing two pages[1] of content.

[0]: http://www.amazon.com/And-Then-Thought-Was-Fish-ebook/dp/B00... [1]: This is what Amazon's "kindle cloud reader" does when you maximize it on a 1080p display.

Very much agree. Much more natural way to get additional information. I really like how Livefyre is doing something similar with Sidenotes: http://web.livefyre.com/streamhub/#liveSidenotes

Completely agree. I first saw this on the Grantland.com site. I loved it the moment I first came across it there.

Margin notes.

Except they're invisible if you have JS disabled, as I do for normal browsing.

A similar effect can be achieved using just CSS: float the marginal note left or right, set the width and apply (negative) horizontal margins to move it outside the main text block, and if required use relative positioning to shift it up so the baselines of the body text and the marginal note align.

Except margin notes are not a web innovation. They are common in textbooks.