[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Rounded corners. Joy. It can be done reliably in CSS3, but do any e-readers support that completely? If not, you'll have to go and jackass around with tiny little images for each corner, or a borderless textbox in a div with a background image, and all those kinds of fun.

It's one of the reasons why I detest front-end web development.

Nyet. Not if the publisher in question is going to publish on Amazon--and who doesn't? KF7, the older devices, don't even support CSS, much less CSS3. Can't be done, not reliably, which is what I'd said to the client's client in the first damn place. RE-LI-A-BLY. Sheesh. (At them, not you, Kats)

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I haven't done any sort of survey, but I'd guess support is spotty.

And the understatement of the year award goes to...

It's more fun when you don't use a dedicated reader, but have an app on a multi-purpose device. My eBook viewer is an Android tablet. I use the open source FBReader for Android app as my eBook viewer. FBReader tries to support CSS, but I turned it partially off - with it on, some books I have displayed poorly because what the eBook's design tries to do is a poor fit for the device. (A wish list item for FBReader is to have that supported by book, left on by default, but turned off for books where it's problematic.)

Oh, yes. We get a lot of crap about just this--we'll get a client, who has downloaded "new app reader that's being used by 10 other humans in the Known Universe" and want to know WHY the eBook(s) we made for them look crappy on said app. My usual response is: "uhhhrrr? I dunno." The books we make are warrantied on the big retailer devices, not every possible app. I mean--who could?

Since I want to read the book comfortably, I turn off things like font selection through CSS and use built in defaults. I haven't seen eBooks attempt to use rounded corners on text boxes, and don't especially care if one wants to. That strikes me as a trick better suited for use in browsers running on large displays.

That's because you have to be bloody daft to do it. We're doing an ENTIRE book--not a small one--in which the whole thing is a series of quotes/text messages, and yes, they ALL have rounded corners, but in the Amazon KF7 devices, they'll be single lines, not boxes, not rounded corners, etc. That client asked nicely, and understands limitations, so we'll go out on a limb for them--unlike Dildo #4,327 there, who thinks we're lazy. NOT the way to motivate me to try harder.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'd just say "You are paying us for our time. Making those changes will require extra time you will be charged for at our standard rates. To avoid such charges, proof carefully in the future before you submit copy to us."

The thing that slays me is, I s**t thee not, we tell people about revisions costs not once, not twice, but three times, before they get to that point. We tell them about it, in DETAIL, in our Terms & Conditions. We tell them about it in a handout we provide, before they start the processed, called "Why a Proofed Manuscript Matters," AND, we detail it the third time in the instructions sheet for the Proofing form. Does ANYONE read those? S**t, NO. It's annoying as Hades.

As to why? Lots of Special Snowflakes out there who seem to believe rules don't apply to them, and squawk when those making the rules don't agree.

I don't understand if those SS'es existed throughout time, or if they are a product of the Zeitgeist. I just don't remember EVERYBODY, EVERYWHERE, always thinking that they were sooooooooooooooooooooooo speshul. When did this start????

Well, it looks innocuous, but there's usually agreement up front as to what qualifies as an AA.

I swear, we really DO detail it, pre-contract.

Taking the example of the annual report I mentioned, discovering an error in the financial tables in an annual report, and submitting corrected copy for the page that would require a new plate would be an AA with a cost.

Indeed.

But it would be a lot more acceptable than having to pay for a whole new printing of the report because you missed a detail reviewing the proof and didn't catch the error till after the job was printed.
______
Dennis

Oh, cr*p, yes. And professionals don't expect the printer, or the bookmaker, to pay for that stuff, but Ammies (Amateurs) seem to think that somehow, someway, we're their "publisher," (which we absolutely, positively, no doubt about it, are NOT), and that we'll take care of it. {sigh}. It's nothing new. It's just the SSDD.


Hitch