I'm honestly shocked at how few people use two-page mode.
This is the ONLY way I read manga.
Manga is printed in book-form, where two pages are visible at all times, so reading it this way preserves the original format, making the experience most similar to how it would be when reading a physical book.

It preserves authorial intent, decreases the number of times I have to hit "next page", and retains better balance with page sizes (essentially what I mean by that is... two-page spreads are less jarring when they appear).

There's also some clever things that authors do with the two-page format, such as:
- similar looking panel in the same place after you turn the page (in single-page mode you'd have to hit "next page" twice, which would ruin the "overlapping" effect)
- Even if two pages are not a spread, sometimes they can have elements that work together, perhaps thematically. (An example would be two characters in separate panels on left-hand & right-hand pages, but they appear to be staring at each other.)

There's probably more that I can't think of right now, either... but the point is that by changing the format, you may end up changing some of what the author intended.
Whether I'm reading on a tablet or a computer monitor, I'd like to retain the original experience of reading the physical book as much as possible, and two-page format is the only way I can truly do that.

Of course, if I did read webcomics that were created with the vertical scroll format in-mind, I would read them using vertical scroll. But I don't read them at all, since I generally haven't enjoyed any of the ones that I've read in the past... so my answer remains "two-page format".

Last edited by vigorousjammer at 2:01 pm, Oct 11 2021

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Eh… No.
Sure, the top part of a panel may be visible, whilst the rest of it isn't, whilst scrolling, but…
So what? How is that an issue?

No.

You are claiming here that people are "often inclined to" outright skip panels.
In both regular manga, and webtoons.
…
You may be, but…

You claim it is relevant to page layouts, but…

Aside from the more book/manga-like feel of holding my e-reader (which would also apply to tablets), and the e-ink display (which is soooo much nicer! Can't handle colours, though), I agree that reading on a computer is generally the best

…but if the smartphone that is big enough to show a whole page at once, there's generally no problem (I can't, for the life of me, understand how people can use smartphones, instead of computers. When my computer wasn't working, and I was stuck on my smartphone… it was driving me mad! …but for reading manga…)
…except, I agree, when it comes to spreads, where you get forced to scroll.

I imagine spreads could be fine on a tablet. Depending on the size, perhaps.
They work well enough on my e-reader, if I flip them on the side.

Last edited by zarlan at 4:32 am, Oct 12 2021

Classically, too many 1-2 page displays take time to load between pages, old readers imbedded on translators groups were for long the only 1 page display that started loading the next pages before you read them.

thank you for typing out my comment