Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Lester
Or to put it another way the user complaint of "I can't see the content" trumps "This looks bland"
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I believe Publisher Defaults is turned OFF by default, correct? If it were turned ON for all users as a default I would not have a problem.
Assuming Publisher Defaults is turned OFF by default, here's what I have to say:
The problem with this approach is that the Nook is making all eBooks look bland/bad by default. That makes Apple and Amazon's eReaders look better than the Nook. By default they honor styling that the Nooks overrides. Amazon's new KF8 is dramatically better than Mobi was it, even supports embedded fonts which automatically work, like the Nook used to.
With iBooks, Apple lets us tell it to start with our settings, and THEN users can switch to their own look. Apple got their themes working even without having to initially remove all original font and colors, why can't B&N? And it never removes all the colors applied to text like the Nook is now doing.
I guess it's about priorities. B&N is saying they'll make all eBooks look bland/bad by default because the ability of users to change their look trumps the designer's ability to make good looking eBooks. If B&N had a priority on allowing good design, it would ship the Nook honoring Publisher Defaults (and get the themes issue figured out like Apple did). And to be clear, this should be a book by book preference. Some books may look best with Publisher Defaults on, some with it off. I think it should NOT be an app/system wide preference. Turning it on/off book by book is annoying (to me as a user).
I'll close by saying that I've championed the Nook because I like a competitive marketplace. The Nook seemed to do a really good job of honoring styling in eBooks without making me jump through the hoops that iBooks does (with a proprietary .xml file to honor fonts). But I can get iBooks to display things properly, Amazon's KF8 is a huge improvement, and now the Nook is going backwards and making the eBooks look worse by default. This is a step backward, not forward. Yeah it's just one setting, but many users will not know about it and now B&N is forcing content creators to add instructions to every eBook saying "If you're on a Nook be sure to turn on Publisher Defaults." That's not good usability (software changes, but the eBook doesn't, so this isn't good practice) and doesn't encourage content creators to enjoy supporting the Nook. Hopefully B&N figures out a better way before pushing this change out to all their eReaders.