I was reading this CNET article about the W3C (Web standards authority) and the IDFP (EPUB authority) will merge to create a "Portable Web Publication" format which should make it easier to embed rich content in ebook format as it would be a pure website instead of a bastardised one.
What called my attention was not the news article itself, though, but the top comment:
Then, in another news piece, I read this:
It's true that it would seem that ebooks have reached a plateau, and that Amazon seems to keep a stranglehold in the market. However, the point that "design is an afterthought" and that "ebooks are ugly" made me think. When we talk about "design", it's necessarily about "creation" of a thing. However, when we read a book we're usually not trying to read a created experience, are we? Is there simply no way for eBooks to be beautiful without things like the font type being chosen for us?
What called my attention was not the news article itself, though, but the top comment:
Quote:
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Without any competition on e-readers, there's little motivation to make the experience better for the end-user. The standards for maximum portability has sucked the art and soul out of everything that makes a book a book. No wonder most still prefer a print version -- design is a complete afterthought. I also didn't notice any specific mention of the publishers in the article. From what I can see, the content creators and artists have essentially left the delivery of their finished work in the hands of hardware and software programmers. |
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Mike Perry, Inkling Books
Ebooks arent growing more popular because ebooks are ugly. It is that simple. Even worse, with but one exception, nothing can be done about that. The standards (epub, mobi, and KF8) are awful and dont allow ebooks to be attractively done.
And behind much of the problem is the vile Palm Pilot Syndrome (PPS). When ebooks first began to appear on Palm devices, their appearance on that tiny LCD screen was awful. Seeking to make the best of a bad idea, much was made of the fact that someone could change the font size. Yeah, you could choose to have that ugly book in a little font size or a large one, as if that made something bad into something good. PPS then locked the ebook creating and reading mentality into various bad ideas: 1. Ugly is OK. Ugly is normal. Ugly is not to be fixed. Ugly is. 2. The reader determines the formatting not the publisher. Yeah, that meant they get to change one ugly to a different ugly, including later changing the font rather than the font size. People like that? When I get a book, I want to read it not klutz with how it looks. |