CSS - How big is TOO big? - Page 2

mrmikel · 12-08-2012, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

You can always use inline style code for one-off formatting requirements.

But DON'T GET COMPLICATED! If your book is going to be any use, it must work on a range of devices. For instance, the Nexus 7 is becoming very popular. A commonly-chosen eBook reader for it, Aldiko, seems to ignore quite a lot of stylesheet instructions. It's often best to simply pour in your text, surround it by <p> tags, and let the device decide how it displays.

I think this may speak to which tags and css to use. If it is critical and will look bad without it, do it another way. If it is merely nice and can get ignored, why not put it in for those readers that can use it.

The catch is the now seemingly infinite number of readers and the lack of preview software for every single one of them (like grains of sand on the seashore!)

GrannyGrump · 12-10-2012, 04:32 AM

Responses to this thread have inspired me. I am going to try to split my CSS, and also to pare down the styles that are way too similar to each other, and can probably be combined into a single style.

I do agree that simpler is often better, but this project got out of control (I've been digging up different bits and pieces from a dozen different sources, and I should have waited till I had ALL my source material in simple text BEFORE I started working it.) I had way too many brainstorms along the way!

Glad to hear from all of you, great advice from everybody! Thanks.

exaltedwombat · 12-14-2012, 06:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmikel

The catch is the now seemingly infinite number of readers and the lack of preview software for every single one of them (like grains of sand on the seashore!)

And that preview software, when available, sometimes doesn't accurately emulate layout on the physical device anyway!

If portability is required, the only thing you can realistically do is simply pour the text in. Let the reader determine how to treat paragraph breaks, whether to justify, serif or sans-serif.

This, however, doesn't seem to be what the market wants :-) Having enjoyed themselves agonising over niceties of layout in a printed edition, "take what you get" isn't what authors want to hear.

GrannyGrump · 12-17-2012, 12:48 AM

Quote:

If portability is required, the only thing you can realistically do is simply pour the text in. Let the reader determine how to treat paragraph breaks, whether to justify, serif or sans-serif.

I agree in principal, but oh! part of the enjoyment for me in re-habbing public domain books is to give them some fancy chapter heads, formatted quotations, etc. I do feel, as do many, that the main body text should be left up to the reader, but is there any harm really in specifying a fancy font just for chapter titles? Otherwise, we all might as well just load up Project Gutenberg plain-text...

'Twould be nice if there were a way to offer *all* readers an option to use the publisher version or their own preference, that was actually *easy to use*.

mrmikel · 12-17-2012, 06:30 AM

Since are doing this, as am I, because you enjoy it and wish to provide something useful, you might as well suit yourself.(Strains of Ricky Nelson song....).

Most of what you do with work on most devices, so why not? It will be a learning experience. It will benefit you and it may benefit others who take a look at your work and see how the magic is accomplished. (I am the Mighty Oz!) (grin)

graycyn · 12-17-2012, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

But DON'T GET COMPLICATED! If your book is going to be any use, it must work on a range of devices. For instance, the Nexus 7 is becoming very popular. A commonly-chosen eBook reader for it, Aldiko, seems to ignore quite a lot of stylesheet instructions. It's often best to simply pour in your text, surround it by <p> tags, and let the device decide how it displays.

I've been testing some of my epubs in Aldiko, and I have generally not seen a problem with my styling being ignored. I did have to enable an option to use publisher styling though, I think that was off by default if I remember right.

Aldiko, Bluefire, Mantano, Nook, Sony and Overdrive (no particular order) seemed to be the apps that did the best job of rendering my epubs as I have styled them.

Moon+, FBReader, Cool Reader, Fabrik and Kobo were not so good. The books are readable, just don't look as nice.

It's definitely a mixed bag of experiences!

graycyn · 12-17-2012, 04:49 PM

I gave splitting up my stylesheet a try last night, I like this! It seems to work nicely. I put the text of the book as the main stylesheet, then created another stylesheet for pages that may get styled a little differently, like title page, preface, dedication, contents, copyright and so forth.

For a single chapter that needed extra styling, I added a specific stylesheet just for that chapter.

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12-10-2012, 04:32 AM	#17
GrannyGrump Obsessively Dedicated... Posts: 3,202 Karma: 34984330 Join Date: May 2011 Location: JAPAN (US expatriate) Device: Sony PRS-T2, ADE on PC	Responses to this thread have inspired me. I am going to try to split my CSS, and also to pare down the styles that are way too similar to each other, and can probably be combined into a single style. I do agree that simpler is often better, but this project got out of control (I've been digging up different bits and pieces from a dozen different sources, and I should have waited till I had ALL my source material in simple text BEFORE I started working it.) I had way too many brainstorms along the way! Glad to hear from all of you, great advice from everybody! Thanks.

12-17-2012, 06:30 AM	#20
mrmikel Color me gone Posts: 2,089 Karma: 1445295 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Central Oregon Coast Device: PRS-300	Since are doing this, as am I, because you enjoy it and wish to provide something useful, you might as well suit yourself.(Strains of Ricky Nelson song....). Most of what you do with work on most devices, so why not? It will be a learning experience. It will benefit you and it may benefit others who take a look at your work and see how the magic is accomplished. (I am the Mighty Oz!) (grin)

12-17-2012, 04:49 PM	#22
graycyn Wizard Posts: 1,581 Karma: 11380098 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: NE Oregon Device: Kobo Sage, Pocketbook Era, Kobo Forma, Kindle Oasis 2	I gave splitting up my stylesheet a try last night, I like this! It seems to work nicely. I put the text of the book as the main stylesheet, then created another stylesheet for pages that may get styled a little differently, like title page, preface, dedication, contents, copyright and so forth. For a single chapter that needed extra styling, I added a specific stylesheet just for that chapter.

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