Quote:
Originally Posted by dmaul1114
I think at the individual level, it's not much of a question. For a tech savy person that is picky about fonts, layout etc. being able to customize is a clear advantage.
But it's a useless feature for most folks who just want to buy a book, have it look good and readable without having to waste any time in their busy life to learn how to re-format it themselves.
They key is to get to a point where all books, magazines etc. can look good on all or most readers so no customization is needed for all but the most anal like Jon. And I really don't see how that can happen with out some standardization of screen sizes. Or at least aspect ratios of screens. Then people would just have to know that if they buy a smaller screen some larger format media like magazines are going to be hard to read, or have to be reflowed with the problems incumbent to doing so.
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Actually there could easily be a way to override the CSS for user control purposes without having to edit the file. I too am against editing the file and if it has DRM you will have to break the law to edit it anyway but that is another story.
An eBook reader of the future should have lots of options where the user can specify their preferences and these would override the internal book settings. One of the preferences would be to keep the book settings for folks that really want this so nothing is lost. The defaults would be optimized for the average user so a new user wouldn't even have to know about the settings until they decided they needed to change some. With the proper design an eBook can be easy to use and offer customization for power users. Good eBook readers haven't arrived yet.
Dale