Readable Web » Software

To Kindle Or Not To Kindle

Richard Fink — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:43:52 +0000

Decisions, decisions.

Today my wife the doctoral candidate asked my advice on whether to buy a book she needed as a P-Book or the Kindle edition. (We have the Kindle DX.)

The name of the book is The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. (Strangely, I remembered both the book and the author’s name. I think I might have read it a long time ago during my history-of-technology phase.)

Anyway, here were the considerations:

Delivery: Kindle is instant versus having to wait (and pay extra) for the P-Book.

Price: $9.99 for the Kindle versus $13.80 plus shipping for the P-Book.

Payment Method: Both instant – quickpay or autopay or one-click or whatever Amazon is calling it.

Intrinsic Quality: Print is print is print. Expectations will be met. There will be a Table Of Contents, there will be an Index. You can flip through it. However, there’s no equivalent to a “flip through” on the Kindle. And Kindle books can vary in quality depending upon how the digital file is created. This usually means problems navigating through the book. How widespread these problems are with Kindle books produced by commercial houses, I don’t know. But the fear flashed through my mind – and that’s a problem for both Amazon and publishers of titles for the Kindle. I wonder what the return policy is.

Miscellaneous Pros For the P-Book: You can resell it. You can loan it to a friend who doesn’t have a Kindle. It’s just as easy to scan and OCR parts of it as it is to try and copy and paste from the Kindle. (Can that even be done? …gotta work on my Kindle-skills.)

Miscellaneous Pros For the Kindle Edition: Nothing to carry, it travels with the device. It also travels with the iPad via the Kindle app. Is there a desktop version of the Kindle app? I don’t know.

Bottom Line: This book is a must-have, not discretionary. (The local library could, in this instance, be an option since the course requiring it won’t last forever.)
But on the logic of, “Well, ten bucks more or less isn’t going to break me”, the Kindle edition won. Later today, I’ll check out the quality issues and report back.

Transitions, transitions.

[ UPDATE: A Few Hours After First Post ]

The book indeed has a table of contents. However, when you first “open” the book on the Kindle, for some reason it jumps to the Preface, not the TOC. Don’t see much logic in that. Plus, who reads the damned Preface anyway. I know the author is grateful to their family, to God, and to that first-grade teacher who put them on the path to authorship. There should be a “Start Reading” option that takes you straight to the meat. Or, start with the TOC, for heaven’s sake. But anyway….

Part of the reason for this post was to display, unashamedly, my own ignorance of what’s up with Kindle books. From what I can see, the best thing about the Kindle is the iPad Kindle app. Much, much more usable. And in Naples, Florida, where I live, it’s too damned hot in the sun, anyway.
In a comment on this post, Joe Golton of FilterJoe, who’s not ignorant says:

“Richard – You’ve already pulled the trigger on this one but there’s a few things that would be helpful for you to know before purchasing any more books from the Kindle store:

1) There IS a way to flip through a book, but only if the book is formatted with “waypoints.” Waypoints are the little dots you see at the bottom of the Kindle’s screen for books that have them. Look at the Kindle DX User’s Guide for an example. Just flick the controller to the right (or left) flip forward (or backward) through the book chapter by chapter.

2) You can usually download a sample to see if the book has Table of Contents and waypoints enabled. You will want to do this for any book that has chapters, to see if it is set up to take full advantage of the Kindle formatting.

3) Nonetheless – a sample will usually only show you the first 5% or so of a book. So you may not get to preview whether graphs were done correctly.

The Nook from Barnes and Noble has the advantage of allowing you to browse the entire book while you are in the Barnes and Noble store. The Nook also has another “flip through the book” option – a slider that can be used on the touchpad to jump to different parts of the book.”

So there you have it. And me, too.

E-Book Formats: The Mad Scramble

Richard Fink — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:37:40 +0000

I haven’t been reporting much on developments in the e-reader biz lately. Simple reason: I can’t keep up and I don’t think it pays at this point to even try. I’m enjoying the shake out, though.

The mad scramble is being driven by two factors:
1) Screen technology has gone mobile in a big way – with the Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, Android, and so forth and so on.
All the stuff you could possibly have the time to read can now travel with you. And if that isn’t enough, even more stuff you’ll never ever have the time to read can be sent wirelessly to you.
2) These screens do provide a satisfying reading experience. And they are getting better all the time.

The New iPhone’s “Retina” Display

I checked out the new iPhone with it’s ultra-sharp Retina display the other day and it was amazing, really. As an iPhone user, I was very skeptical about it being worth the hassle and expense of an upgrade, but to these tired old eyes, it definitely is. I’ve simply never seen a display with text as crisp and sharp at small sizes as I saw on the new iPhone. I did a side-by-side comparison with my current phone and all I could say was, “Wow”. The next day I was using my wife’s iPad for something and I couldn’t help but try to imagine what it would be like if the iPad had the same quality screen as the new iPhone. Wow++. Only a matter of time, I suppose.

E-Reader? Got One. It’s Called A Browser.

And so, everybody’s scrambling to establish themselves as the dominant platform or format or application, or something or other for the burgeoning market for “books onscreen”.

Here’s a simple fact that, for me, stands out: All day long I read from an application called a browser. You’ve heard of them, right? Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome – those guys. But yet, when it comes to paper books that have been ported onscreen, I’m being asked to use some other application called an E-Reader.

Why? What’s wrong with this picture? Are the words in a paper book different than the words on a blog?

As you ponder this question, check out the free browser-based Ibis Reader. (Yes, for the iPhone/iPad it’s an app. A matter of screen real-estate, I suppose. When will mobile Safari support full-screen mode?)

I’m also keeping an eye on Blio, new e-publishing software that seems to be a little different from the rest of the pack, but we’ll see when it soon debuts.

Wanna e-publish? Jeffrey Zeldman posted a nice, brief roundup with some juicy links a couple of days ago.

Readable Web At AnEventApart, Boston

Richard Fink — Sun, 23 May 2010 16:05:23 +0000

Boston, Massachusetts Readable Web is getting out of the office this year. I’ll be attending and reporting on a wide variety of events.

Starting with:

AnEventApart, Boston

I’ve never attended one of Zeldman & Meyer’s traveling road shows before and I can’t wait. The event kicks off tonight with a meet and greet at the Westin Copley Hotel sponsored by Extensis who is here to preview their new web font service WebInk.

Over the next few days I’ll be posting pics, twittering, muttering, commenting about just how tall Jeff Veen really looks in person, and reporting on everything and anything that happens to spark an idea in my brain.

Details on this conference and upcoming Event Apart conferences here.

Update: After-Conference Thoughts

Call it what you want: web design, digital publishing, whatever – the problems exist on two levels.

Problem 1: Cutting The Bullshit

This problem is not unique to digital publishing but to all publishing: staying on message, staying focused, writing clearly, keeping it brief – all the trite truisms are just as true today as they were when David Ogilvy wrote Ogilvy On Advertising in 1983 and Rudolph Flesch wrote The Art Of Readable Writing in 1949. Nobody is going to give you or your product more than a passing glance. At least at first. Waste people’s time and they’re gone. Click.

This is why I perked up when Luke Wroblewski argued that you should design your small-screen mobile experience first and build your desktop experience from that kernel. I agree. Working from the inside out like that imposes a discipline that would probably not exist if you started with the desktop experience. And if you can’t seem to cut it all down to it’s essence for an iPhone or Android, it’s time to ask yourself why the site exists in the first place.

Problem 2: Re-Tasking Content For Different Devices And Screen Sizes

It used to be that the difference between user agents (browsers) was the thing that drove web authors crazy. Yes, there are still issues, but it’s easy to envision a time in the near future when that won’t be anything more than an occasional and minor annoyance. The monster facing us now is different devices and screen sizes. This is a tough one – and the mental tools publishers need are just beginning to coalesce.

Recently, on Typophile.com, designer John Hudson made the observation that, to him, websites in general resembled scrapbooks. For some reason I’ve been thinking about that comment a lot and finally realized why: minus the negative connotations of the word “scrap”, they are scrapbooks. Chunks of information being fed in and out from disparate sources on the network and placed together on the same “page”. The equivalent of taking chunks of five or six pages of a book or magazine and pasting them together. Even in an era of relatively high resolution screens this will still be the case. Content must be chunked so it can reflow into its container. And connectedness is a requirement – the idea of an “e-book” on an “e-reader” disconnected from the net is already preposterous – even though we’ll be living with that situation for some time to come.

I got a new TV delivered today. It’s connected to the network, too. A TV with web apps. A giant iPad. Who’d a thunk?

And, oh, yeah. Just to cap off AnEventApart, Boston:

How Tall Is Jeffrey Veen?

Meeting Jeff Veen in person was a bit of a shock, really. For a guy who writes and speaks about all this web stuff, turns out the guy’s tall enough to be my father!

Oops, Capped Off Too Soon

[A Bit More On An EventApart, Boston] Here’s a nice roundup of the event called Themes From AnEventApart Boston with a link also, to Luke Wroblewski’s extensive notes from the conference. Also, Luke and the concept of “Mobile First” gets a treatment on the Big Web Show.

A Future Without Flash: Microsoft and Apple Nail The Coffin

Richard Fink — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:54:08 +0000

Wow. Big Changes. Bad news and more bad news for Adobe Flash and Flash developers over the past few days.

Apple Says No Flash On Apple Mobile

First, there was the announcement by Steve Jobs on the Apple blog.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

Steve hath spoken. Adobe Flash lies broken.

Microsoft Says Yes To H.264 Video, Says No To Flash

Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of the IE team drove in another nail with an announcement on the IE Blog.

The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.

The name of this blog isn’t “Watchable Web” so I don’t know anything about what hidden or not so hidden agendas Apple or Microsoft might have for supporting H.264. But Flash’s funeral will have a big impact on the way text looks on the web, and soon.

Web Fonts Become More Important, Cufón, Too.

@Font-Face just became a whole lot more important. If Flash isn’t going to be available on Apple Mobile devices and IE9 won’t support it for video, Flash no longer has a future. For text replacement, it is no longer a viable option, period. As in: stop using as of now, today. As in: if using, phase out, soon.

Open Source Font Serving Engine, Fontue, Released

Richard Fink — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:34:11 +0000

Garrick Van Buren of the font-hosting site Kernest.com has released Kernest’s font serving engine as an open source project.
Garrick’s dubbed it: Fontue.

It seems like everyone and their mother is starting a font hosting service these days so head on over to Github and roll your own!

EOTFAST: A New And Essential Product For @Font-Face Web Fonts

Richard Fink — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:57:27 +0000

We’re proud to announce Readable Web’s first software development effort: EOTFAST.

The site is up and EOTFAST, along with documentation, a supporting utility font and HTML EOT test page is ready for download.

With EOTFAST, font designers, web designers, and developers can create natively compressed EOT font files for use with any web domain. There are no “root string” restrictions, as with Microsoft WEFT. Convert once, use anywhere.

Savings in file size typically range from 45% to 70%.

Cut Font Files Down To Size With EOTFAST

For example, a first-rate screen font like Droid Serif starts out at 169kb as a TTF font file with the full character set but as an EOTFAST file it weighs in at only 80kb. With still the full character set. Compression is lossless.
Please stop by the EOTFAST site. Further announcements will appear in various forums in the coming days.

The documentation contains very useful information for font designers looking to prepare their fonts for use on the web.

EOTFAST is a must-have for anyone looking to use @font-face web fonts today or for years to come – for as long as Internet Explorer has a substantial user-base.

EOTFAST 2.0 Is Already In Work

Version 2.0 is already in work. I’m using a Beta of it right now. And as soon as certain technical issues are ironed out, conversion from TTF to EOTFAST will appear as an online service, as well. Tools for the WOFF format are in the pipeline, too.

Deliver @Font-Face Web Fonts Efficiently Today, Not Just In The Future

EOTFAST works to deliver web fonts to half a billion Internet Explorer users efficiently today – not in some distant the future as many in the font industry would prefer to see happen.

Here at Readable Web, we want better, and more accessible, screen typography and we want it as quickly as possible. Every day that a web designer chooses – for aesthetic reasons alone – techniques that will defeat a screen reader is a day that we are not willing to wait.
This time, Internet Explorer is NOT a problem. @Font-Face has existed in IE for twelve years. It works, it works well, and we’ve got the test pages to prove it.

We’ve been very supportive of initiatives like the new WOFF format which now has its first implementation in Firefox 3.6. But WOFF has a bit of catching up to do now, with EOTFAST.

My co-developer Philip Taylor and I thank you in advance for your support. EOTFAST is released as open-source under the Apache license.

Utilities like Microsoft WEFT, ttf2eot, the Font Squirrel EOT generator, and font-design firm Ascender Corp’s tool for EOT “Lite”, are now obsolete.

Users Report Fuzzy Fonts In Evernote 3.5

Richard Fink — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:27:32 +0000

~~I have not checked this out personally yet, but I’m going to try.~~ My friend Joe Golton reports that users of Evernote – a million people, I’m told – are rather upset over a change in font rendering that leaves some text looking blurry, fuzzy, washed out – you name it. And it’s quite true. I upgraded from Evernote 3.1 to 3.5 and the text renders terribly.

Joe’s words were strong:

“Evernote just upgraded yesterday to 3.5. There are numerous improvements but many people hate it because of the horrible font rendering… the interface look terrible – the list of notes is very fuzzy to read – it strains my eyes and many others report that, too.
I cannot believe Microsoft did this – supposedly it will improve with .NET 4.0 but they are pushing .NET very hard so it is weird that they would make the principle activity of a computer user – reading text – a terrible experience.”

Wow!

A post on the Evernote forum explains the issue. (There’s a Windows registry fix for it posted there, too – make sure it includes a way to undo!) It seems the Evernote developers decided to switch from using the standard Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) to WPF – Windows Presentation Foundation. WPF is the latest .NET based text rendering platform and it handles fonts differently than GDI.

Here’s a screen shot from that post showing the difference:

One Man’s Anti-Aliasing Is Another Man’s Fuzzy

This isn’t the first and it won’t be the last time Windows users get upset over changes in font rendering. I’m expecting to see a lot of it in the next few years as Microsoft continues to push WPF and moves to its DirectWrite API instead of GDI for ordinary text rendering. These are changes for the better, but it’s likely to be unsettling to many Windows users as the changeover occurs.

Computers give us color graphics and video at no extra cost, but it’s still mostly words, words, and more words. And when it comes to typography – how words look – people are creatures of habit. There was a time when lettering like the following was quite easy on the eyes and gave readers a warm, down-home feeling:

If the text suddenly looks different than what people have gotten used to – watch out!

Improvements to Window’s handling of fonts are long overdue. Next to the Mac, fonts rendered at “heading” sizes and larger are so inferior, it’s an embarrassment. And now, with all the major browsers offering @font-face font linking – and with that, bringing a fresh focus on text rendering within browsers running on Windows – people have been shocked at how crappy a lot of fonts look. One of the more talked-about episodes being the popular blog, Boing-Boing’s experiment with “web fonts”.
(With a technically astute analysis from Thomas Phinney here.)

Expect a lot of changes in text rendering in Windows over the next few years. And let’s hope developers and designers make wise use of the new options they’ll have at their disposal.

And Speaking Of Thomas Phinney…

Thomas Phinney is a walking font and font technologies encyclopedia. He was formerly with Adobe’s font team where, among many other things he wrote Adobe’s blog on fonts and rendering issues, Tyblography. He is now with font-utilities provider, Extensis. His new blog makes up with insight what it currently lacks in volume. More, more! As of today, Phinney On Fonts has been added to the blogroll here at Readable Web.

An Open Letter To Retail Font Vendors

Richard Fink — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:10:48 +0000

Call me Webmail.

I make web pages. And now that the latest browsers are supporting @font-face, I’ve been taking to the sites where fonts are sold.

I’ve never needed to go shopping for fonts before. And I’m distressed by what I see. And I’m distressed by what I don’t see.
First, let me tell you what I want: I want to see a browser-friendly and well-categorized selection of fonts. I want prices that make sense within the overall cost structure of the sites that I make. And I want licensing terms that give me the flexibility to do what I need to do. I don’t design signs, or magazines, or advertisements. Those folks have their needs, and I have mine. I make web pages. If you don’t have anything to sell me, or you just don’t want to deal with customers unfamiliar with your ways, that’s OK. Just tell me up front and I’ll move on. But please don’t waste my time. Or lead me on. Or ask me to fill out a special form or in any other way subject me to a level of scrutiny greater than your other customers. I won’t be vetted. I won’t be frisked. I’ll just get angry. And I’ll Twitter about it. I like Twitter.

So let me say it again one more time: I want a browser-friendly and well-categorized selection, at prices that make sense to me and my clients, and with liberal licensing. This is what I need.

Just so we understand each other, here’s some dos and dont’s:

Show Me Browser-Friendly Fonts

By browser friendly, I mean fonts that look halfway decent in a browser. I know that quality will differ from font to font. But if you have fonts designed strictly for print work, that look like hell in a browser, weed them out. I don’t want to see them. Fonts either look OK, or they don’t. Details like hinting, no hinting, TrueType, OpenType CFF – that’s your business, not mine. If I’m using Flash, or Cufón, or some other font embedding technology, I already know my choices are greater and I’ll look at your other fonts then.

Show Me A Web Font Specimen

I can’t tell what your font looks like in a browser unless I view it in a browser. How you do that is up to you. Find a way or don’t waste my time. Perhaps some sort of glyph-limited set is the answer. Or one without kerning. Or perhaps the methods developed by font-obfuscation services like Typekit can be used. Or maybe a combination of these. But if you can’t or won’t take the time and effort to show me an accurate sample of what I’m buying, I won’t be buying. At least not from you. I make web pages. It’s very competitive. My clients don’t make allowances for me, so I can’t make them for you, either.

Tell Me What The License Is Up Front

I want to know what the web licensing terms are before I do anything. In plain language. With a link to it on the home page and not buried away somewhere. If you feel the need for legalese, have it follow the plain language version. If the EULA says that if my site succeeds I have to come back and give you more money. I’ll probably walk. More visitors does not necessarily mean more cash. If the EULA contains all sorts of “if this, then that” provisions that require a lawyer to interpret and an assistant to keep track of, goodbye. In my world, I usually buy once and then I’m done. I’m good to go. That’s it. Adios, amigos.

Don’t Restrict Me To Pre-Processed Files

If for some reason you insist on delivering only WOFF or EOT files, I’m not interested. I’ll just convert them to TTF or OTF anyway so you might as well leave the conversions up to me. Unless it’s as a part of a courtesy package with the source files included. I might need or want to install these fonts in the operating system as part of the development process. I won’t inconvenience myself for you. If this bothers you, like I said, it’s OK. Tell me the licensing terms up front, and I won’t hold it against you.

Don’t Ask Me To Enforce Same-Origin Restrictions

Like I said, I’m not going to agree to assume additional costs just to please you. And sometimes I don’t have complete control over the administration of the server. I can probably comply with a request to not enable hot-linking to my site, but that’s all I can or am willing to do.

To sum up:
I don’t find anything I’ve asked you to do to be unreasonable. But even so, you may disagree. You may feel that somehow, you can reap the benefits of digital distribution without accepting the disadvantages. If so, I wish you luck with that, and all the best.

Three Advances In Screen Typography

Richard Fink — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:27:38 +0000

This, just in from Readable Web’s Department of Keeping Track:

New Font Control Features For Designers

The typography Wizards of Moz, Firefox devs Jonathan Kew and John Daggett have been cooking up some ways for web designers to take advantage of the advanced features of OpenType. If you want a peek at what web typography might be looking like not too far down the road, this is one to bookmark. Includes an animated screen demo.

The Importance Of Gabriola

The product of Tiro Typeworks’ designer extraordinaire John Hudson (or “The Buffalo Whisperer” as we call him around here), Gabriola is an advanced and experimental font included by Microsoft in Windows 7.

Gabriola:

… includes significant flourishes that push the boundaries of vertical space, display logic, and Cleartype.

Includes a talk-show-like video presentation. So grab some popcorn.
Other info:
1) An announcement and comments on Typophile.
2) A screen shot.
3) A quickie pdf sample.

All of which don’t do it justice. Watch the video, enjoy the popcorn.

Prince, Web To PDF Conversion Software

A pet project of Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie, Prince is designed to take XML and HTML documents and convert them, smartly, into PDFs. It builds on the existing and huge knowledge base of developers already familiar with Cascading Style Sheets.

Prince can read many XML formats, including XHTML and SVG. Prince formats documents according to style sheets written in CSS.

While I’m still in the process of wrapping my mind around the potential uses for this, I’m excited by the prospect of software that builds a bridge between web design and E-Book design. Web -> EPub -> PDF. If you’re a web dev or E-Book creator, check this one out. Command-line tools and components, too!

Less Than 8% Of People Know What A Browser Is, Google Video Reveals

Richard Fink — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:30:15 +0000

Those of us in technology get lost in a bubble. We forget that people go online for a value, not cool technology. Values like staying in touch with your friends; convenient shopping; keeping up with the news – that’s the stuff that counts. Click here to get this. Click there to get that.

I found the following video a fun reminder of how differently non-technical folks think. It rings true. I’ve taught new computer users. I’ve worked in a consumer electronics store. I’ve done desktop support. The news that few people know what a browser is doesn’t shock me one bit. And that many think the word “browser” is just another word for “search engine” — well, that makes perfect sense, too.

Tip: It’s fun but a little repetitive. You won’t miss much if you bail after a minute or two. Enjoy.

BTW – I also got a kick out of this personally because it was shot near Times Square right across the street from the offices of Viacom (MTV, Nickelodeon, etc.). Did a consulting gig there not too many years ago.
Once a New Yorker…

Google Starts Hosting @Font-Face Web Fonts