Hidden headings/links don't work in iBooks?

[eschwartz]

How this started:

Originally Posted by Psymon

[...] Think of it like weighing how much of a relatively minor "annoyance" it would be for you, one person, the designer, to make your book work in that app, compared to the major annoyance it is for the millions of people who think your book sucks, [...]

Originally Posted by Hitch

It's a minor inconvenience for you, because you are--no insult intended--you are a hobbyist. It's a major inconvenience to the rest of us, because we have to work around the "wrong" ways of iBooks all the time, to try to allow our myriad clients to have books that will work on ALL fronts, even to the extent of making 2 (or now 3) ePUBs for different platforms. That's really not quite the same thing as tweaking code to ensure that it works, however much of a kluge, across Internet Exploder, Chrome, FF, etc. Just a point.

Hitch

Hitch, I am unsure what point you are trying to make, you are preaching to the converted. And the "minor inconvenience" bit was specifically framed within a larger context.

Just sayin'.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

How this started:

Hitch, I am unsure what point you are trying to make, you are preaching to the converted. And the "minor inconvenience" bit was specifically framed within a larger context.

Just sayin'.

@e:

I already 'splained what I meant. Psymon and I have already kissed and made up. AND I apologized, TWICE. AND I clarified that by "Hobbyist," I simply meant someone who can, mostly, please themselves, rather than slaving for filthy lucre. I think that's a pretty self-explanatory distinction. I was ONLY addressing whether the inconvenience (of constantly having to "fix" things to work on iBooks, varying from one version to the next, or one week to the next, NOT in accordance with the standards) is minor or major--particularly in the context of what people's expectations are, for those of us stuck on the filthy lucre side, AND what happens when iBooks suddenly stops working.

As an example: iBooks first-gen, on the first-gen iPads, can't display floating images properly that come at the TOP of any given rendered "page." Just can't do it. If you have a 2nd-gen iPad, no worries. Because there's a 2nd-gen solution, Apple--as is Apple's wont--just shrugged and never bothered to fix the problem.

I had a very nice contract with a guy, to do books for a group of folks. Not one person--not 5; quite a few. A good-sized group. Vanity press work. EXCEPT, his first client, had a first-gen iPad. NOTHING I said, did, etc., fixed that book, nor fixed his "understanding" that we'd made the book WRONGLY. Not even taking screenshots on a 2nd-gen iPad, a Nook, Nook Color, you-name-it. Apple's cavalier, make-it-today, abandon-it-tomorrow, screw-the-standards, we're-Apple attitude cost me, a little guy, a tidy chunk of cash. (more than 4 digits, overall). It could have FIXED the bloody problem with ease--but never bothered to, because, why WOULD they, when, god knows, some pissed-off consumer might buy a NEW DEVICE, goody-goody!!!!

BUT, everybody KNOWS that Apple is "cool," so, hey, that's okay. It doesn't matter if Apple deliberately obsolesces its own devices, doesn't follow any standards but its own (non-existent) standards, etc. It's just, hey, APPLE! Compare that to how much Amazon spends on keeping even the oldest, cruddiest Amazon Kindle working viably. But they're not "cool." So we all sit here and waste time "formatting" stuff to work on ONE device, with ONE reader, that isn't even a particularly good e-reader.

Sorry, done now. </rant>.

Hitch

[DaleDe]

The truth is Apple didn't know what they were doing on the iPad 1 and didn't plan for the future. They learned a lot from that experience and from the 2 on they did a much better job. Unfortunately the 1 didn't have enough hardware, memory and processor, to move forward. There was just too much missing on an iPad 1 to save it. I am not one for buying the first generation of any brand new products. Too much growing pains but my Apple 2 with iBooks works pretty well.

Dale

[eschwartz]

Whoops, didn't notice those last few posts.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Hitch

It's just, hey, APPLE! Compare that to how much Amazon spends on keeping even the oldest, cruddiest Amazon Kindle working viably. But they're not "cool." So we all sit here and waste time "formatting" stuff to work on ONE device, with ONE reader, that isn't even a particularly good e-reader.

All complaints about Apple aside, how come I never hear anyone gripe about amazon? I mean, there you're talking about what? FIVE readers you have to design for, with all kinds of ridiculous kludges and multiple images, etc. etc. etc., just to do ONE simple, stupid thing? Getting my first epub to convert over to mobi and work in all the various kindles was such a total pain in the butt that I just didn't bother doing so with my second book, and quite frankly I don't know if I can be bothered in the future to design anything beyond plain ol' epubs -- just getting things to work in both ADE and iBooks is enough of a pain in the butt for me... but then, I'm not doing this for clients, and profits aren't my bottom line. I can understand that others out there are rather "stuck" with having to design for amazon...

...but like I said, whatever problems Apple/iBooks might have, at least it's not what I had to go through to get my book to work on all the various kindles.

In other words, it would seem that ALL device manufacturers should be shot! At least, all but one -- we can keep one, and just design for that one.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Psymon

All complaints about Apple aside, how come I never hear anyone gripe about amazon? I mean, there you're talking about what? FIVE readers you have to design for, with all kinds of ridiculous kludges and multiple images, etc. etc. etc., just to do ONE simple, stupid thing? Getting my first epub to convert over to mobi and work in all the various kindles was such a total pain in the butt that I just didn't bother doing so with my second book, and quite frankly I don't know if I can be bothered in the future to design anything beyond plain ol' epubs -- just getting things to work in both ADE and iBooks is enough of a pain in the butt for me... but then, I'm not doing this for clients, and profits aren't my bottom line. I can understand that others out there are rather "stuck" with having to design for amazon...

Actually...it's not that bad. There may be 7 or 8 or 10 devices, but there are really only 1.2 formats, so to speak. KF7, KF8, and media-queries.

And why I don't bitch about Amazon is simple: they are still supporting the very first device they sold. They don't just shrug, turn their backs on customers with a first-gen Kindle, and say, "tough crap." If nothing else--say, John Doe buys a book that really isn't viable on a first-gen, due to some type of table formatting, etc.--there's a desktop reader, free, that he can use. Yes, iBooks for Mac exists NOW, but it didn't for YEARS. Amazon never really made that mistake, at least.

...but like I said, whatever problems Apple/iBooks might have, at least it's not what I had to go through to get my book to work on all the various kindles.

In other words, it would seem that ALL device manufacturers should be shot! At least, all but one -- we can keep one, and just design for that one.

Well, your interest in formatting is certainly more...in-tune...with the type of display features that Apple's iBooks' app has. I can see why you would not like Amazon's set of available features.

I *do* agree that the "standards" issue is completely out of control now. There's no going back. Any idea of "standards" is utterly ruined. And for that--sorry--for that, we have to look directly to Apple. I've said my piece, and now it's really OT, so...fare-thee-well on this one. ;-)

Hitch

[Freeshadow]

Doing a little sum-up:

Do we agree that - regardless that they use *ML, as web page coders do - the makers of (both hard- & software based) reading systems completely failed to learn ANYTHING from history (see: 'browser wars') ?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Doing a little sum-up:

Do we agree that - regardless that they use *ML, as web page coders do - the makers of (both hard- & software based) reading systems completely failed to learn ANYTHING from history (see: 'browser wars') ?

YES, absolutely, and in this instance, we have entities that weren't IN the browser wars--Apple and Amazon and B&N--so, no, why would they have learned jack? And Apple's arrogance about its walled garden is so complete that they simply do whatever they want. At least on the Amazon devices, regular, normal HTML/CSS works--you don't have to do daft stuff like put spans around elements to get them to center, etc. It's small comfort, but it's some.

And, YES, I'll say it before the tit-for-tat starts: yes, Amazon does not support all the HTML/CSS it "oughta." But at least, as I said, what it does support mostly works, and isn't misbegotten into some weird pretzel.

Hitch

[DomesticExtremis]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Doing a little sum-up:

Do we agree that - regardless that they use *ML, as web page coders do - the makers of (both hard- & software based) reading systems completely failed to learn ANYTHING from history (see: 'browser wars') ?

I would say it is standard behaviour for all aspects of
IT and efforts to standardise.

It is usually clients that drive the requirement for standardisation,
so vendors have to be seen to play along, all the time looking for
angles to add proprietary stuff to lock their clients in to their way
of doing things.

[eschwartz]

And unfortunately, the next Mozilla cannot even get started until DRM lockin is no longer a thing.

So we may be in for a wait.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by DomesticExtremis

I would say it is standard behaviour for all aspects of
IT and efforts to standardise.

It is usually clients that drive the requirement for standardisation,
so vendors have to be seen to play along, all the time looking for
angles to add proprietary stuff to lock their clients in to their way
of doing things.

I do think they have standardized but not on a standard. They have standardize on webkit.

Dale