Dont Make Me Think Epub
Read 'Don't Make Me Think, Revisited A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability' by Steve Krug available from Rakuten Kobo. Sign up today and get $5 off your first purchase. Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied. Jul 23, 2010 - You'll learn how to use Word Styles to make your EPUB. I don't think you'll be disappointed, it looked pretty thorough to me. Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 3rd Edition. Even though the principles apply to the design of anything people have to interact with (including things like election ballots and voting booths, and even PowerPoint presentations), its focus was clearly on Web design, and all the examples were from Web sites.
It’s no secret that I’ve spent an entire career designing and producing books for print: letterpress, offset and now digital printing, but all print.I’ve been a little uneasy about the rise of the eReaders and the coming of the eBooks, (and the iBooks). I’m excited about the technology, sure. Publishing is changing forever.
A lot of the things we can do with digital text make texts useful in ways we never imagined in 500+ years of printed books.But the reality of those same ebooks has been—let’s face it—ugly. I know I’m not the only book designer who has wondered whether there would even be a place for design in the coming Era of the Ebook.
I’ve written often about the lack of, the terrible hyphenation and justification, the ragged word spacing and the apparent lack of any controls to create something that just looks decent. Something that shows there was actually a designer behind it. Link to Amazon (affiliate)With the introduction of the hopes were high that Apple, purveyor of great industrial and interface design, would rescue the ebook from the design purgatory it had fallen into. Sure, the interface of the is good, and the look is slick. But the books didn’t look much better.I’ve also gone off in search of ways we print designers could use our expertise to bring some order—maybe even beauty?—to ebooks. The Challenge of EPUBClients frequently ask if I provide conversion to ebook formats, and I invariably refer them to one or another company where the people already know all about EPUB and MOBI (the variant HTML used by Kindle) and the idiosyncracies of the other ereaders.Creating EPUB files looked to be the work of specialists.
Like a lot of other print designers, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to take it on.Liz Castro’s will change all that.Breakthrough SimplicityLiz Castro is the author of a number of books on computer software, most notably her bestselling, (Sixth Edition), Peachpit Press. Published in 2006, it’s number 1 today on Amazon in both CSS and HTML books.In, Liz has applied her prodigious skills in instructional writing, technical problem-solving and graphic design to the problem of the ugly ebook.
(Note: all the screenshots in this article were taken on the iPad using the EPUB version of the book in the iBooks application. You’ll need to click them to see the full effect.). Liz shows how to deal with images in EPUB. Using InDesign to Create EPUB—This long section describes in detail how to use InDesign’s powerful formatting and search tools to prepare files for EPUB conversion. Liz explains the mental shift print designers have to make to learn to think of EPUB as a linear format. She gives detailed blow-by-blow instructions with copious screenshots of setting up files, applying paragraph and character styles, and placing graphics in-line with the text. Check out the screenshot in this article that shows the Find/Change box, using the GREP operators (all explained in simple English).
Liz is doing a search for the Character Style “Drop Cap” and replacing it with the exact same thing. How long do you think it would take you to figure out this one formula for preparing your text? Yes, it's code, but just follow the step-by-step. Advanced EPUB Formatting—Well, here’s the bad news, if you (like me) are not an HTML programmer, don’t know much about CSS or XHTML either.
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You will have to get your hands dirty to clean up EPUBs from Word, to fine tune InDesign’s EPUBs, and generally to make your EPUB book the this one does. Okay, that’s the pain. On the positive side, Liz gives, as usual, step by step, plain language instructions that make the unthinkable, thinkable. This section includes a complete discussion of handling iPad fonts and the implications for iPad typography.
And here, in book form is the list of fonts available on the iPad, and samples. Liz explains:. The mysteries of fonts, text alignment and page breaks. Adapting to the different ereaders.
Spacing and indents, borders and backgrounds. Styling text with drop caps and small caps, si.
Working with images. Creating links, tables and placing video in your ebook. Another beautifully balanced page showing Character Style options in InDesign A Guide for the Ebook TransitionAt some point in the future we will have tools for working on EPUB files, and less need to know the nitty-gritty that goes on behind the scenes. But now, anyone who wants to create great-looking books for the iPad or any other EPUB reader needs to deal with XHTML and CSS. Liz Castro’s EPUB Straight to the Point is the best guide I can imagine, patient and detailed, guiding you every step of the way.This book is destined to be a great seller, and it deserves to be. Anyone responsible for creating EPUB files, or anyone considering publishing an ebook will want this book. It will guide you through the entire process.
And simply owning it will show you just how good an EPUB can be.Takeaway: Liz Castro’s is a fantastic resource with clear instruction and should be in the ereader of anyone whose work involves dealing with EPUB and iBooks.(ISBN: 978-0-321-73468-6) is available for $29.99 (before discounting) before the August 8, 2010 publication date for pre-order on (affiliate),. The EPUB version is available for $20.00 now from the. It will soon also be available as a PDF.Liz is a regular in the #ePrdctn chat on Twitter and you can connect with her at. I currently design books for print. And we are moving toward also creating ePubs of some of our print titles. I want to be able to take a completed and approved InDesign file – and re-work it as necessary to become an ePub book. Or do I have to re-invent the thing after the book has gone to print?
Exporting the text and starting over to create the ePub version? Or can I just work with my original InDesign file?Does Liz’s book have a work flow that covers that? I’m sure I’ve seen tutorials on the Adobe TV site that look like it is possible.I am currently reading “How to Create an eBook with Adobe InDesign CS,” and in the first step the author is creating a brand new “web-intended” document.
Does that mean it’s easier to start over from scratch?I’d love to see a work flow that starts from an existing document. Converting existing documents seems a more realistic to how most people will be getting into ebooks. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
Dee,Liz’s book is specifically designed for people who want to produce ePub files from InDesign’s epub export (available at least in CS4 and improved in CS5). Once you get into it you’ll see that the best workflow involves (ideally) structuring the book file and using styles in such a way that the conversion process is much smoother. However, if you have existing books, you can still get them to epub, but you may have to either rework your InDesign file or do a lot of cleanup in the epub files.
I think this book will help you significantly. Hi Joel:It is copy heavy. I’ll probably edit it down some, but right out of the starting gate a very famous graphic designer gave it a bad review because he totally misunderstood the book.
He thought it was a typography gallery, but nothing could possibly be further from the truth. He didn’t understand the book, and probably didn’t read the FAQ very well. I want to avoid people spending money for one thing but getting another.I’m working on the ePub version as we speak. The basic graphics look pretty good to me. I’m leveraging the original work for the PDF, but I have to make some pretty basic and extensive mods to account for the display of eInk. No biggie, just my time.I’ll send you a link for a copy, but you have to read the FAQ:).
Thanks a ton. I love this site, btw. Love it love it. Anders: I just downloaded Sigil and joined the forums.
I was imagining what an app might look like and when I saw the screenshot, it was practically the same. Amazing!Does anyone know if there is a matrix anywhere that show what features of the ePub format, image format, resolution, etc., are handled by what devices or software? My eBook would certainly benefit from it’s graphics being SVG, if they weren’t too intensive. They are typographic layouts, which would essentially be 1 color very complex drawings.Can anyone point to a post anywhere outlining at least some of this info?
I’d love to do a big post on this.I agree that this is like the browser wars all over again, but hopefully the industry leaders have learned, and we won’t end up with the equivalent of IE6 dragging the industry down for the next decade.BTW, I just published my eBook version of my new book on font combinations I mentioned above in this post. No, not gratuitous promotion but only by way of interest since I’m actively developing the print and ePub versions of the book now.On another point of self-promotion amongst independents, I’d love to hear some feedback about the landing page:This thread is getting long but it’s a GOOD one.
Yes, maybe we are hijacking Joel’s blog post just a littleI haven’t seen a matrix about support for specific epub features, but there is a Wiki matrix with a lot of other features for different devices including resolution. It also contains information about which software each device use, this could give you some hints about capabilities. You can find it atI fear that a similar matrix for epub features would contain a lot of noise originating from problems with the epubs themselves. Many times when people thinks the software is faulty it’s really an issue with the packaging, info files or XHTML in a specific file. It’s probably possible to start one at the above wiki which lists software, I don’t know what policies they have. I’m not too good with creating wikis either 🙂.
Clive brings up a great question pertinent to myself.I’m a web developer and programmer, as well as designer. If I know what I’m doing with HTML and CSS at an expert level, and I want granular control of my eBook, should I just code it manually?For instance, I could easily put my content in a database or XML file and write a PHP program to read that data from the database and wrap it with the right markup and save it to the right format of XML file. If the book was small, I could even code this by hand or with Javascript and simply save the contents output from Javascript to an XML file.All “real” web developers code by hand and blow off bloated WYSIWYG interfaces. I’m in that crowd, but know almost nothing about the actual contents of an ePub file at the precise moment, because I’ve only just cracked this open and bought one book.It seems like there should be an explicitly delimited ePub app, that doesn’t have a bunch of bloat, and can only do whatever the current standard of ePub allows.
Don't Make Me Think Epub
Is there such an application on the market yet? Any rumors?Thoughts? Douglas what I’ve seen lately is more “consumer-level” apps incorporating support for ePub, like Storyist and now Apple’s Pages. What kind of html these programs will generate is a good question, and one I’m unqualified to answer, since all my expertise is in print. But I thought Liz did a great job of drilling down into the details of the ePub format and showing ways to get that “granular” control. Just looking at her book gives a pretty good idea of what you can do if you want to get your hands dirty.
Sigil is an open source application which claims to support the full spec. You can find it atIt’s still in beta but it shows promise, it has WYSIWYG as well as code editing.Something you should be aware of is that most reader devices have spotty support for the format. You can be sure that any given reader will have a bad implementation of parts of the specification; examples are specific layout features, metadata, unicode glyphs, font types, font sizes, TOC, crosslinks in general, and more.We have found that we need to simplify the books as much as possible, and test them on as many devices as we can.
You can’t get a consistent layout with anything but the most basic features, but you can make sure that your document is at least usable on most of them.Lastly I’d like to mention that the forums at MobileRead is a great resource. There are many knowledgeable epub creators there, and they are helpful and friendly if you ask good questions.
You can find them atGood luck! Indesign CS5 only arrived recently, so what you’re saying is that all those extant books will have to be re-imported then re-exported then messed around with. This sounds like the work of forever. Where are publishers going to get all these extra people to do this, considering their revenues are dropping?The methods used to create “books” need to change. Everything we have now is aimed at print. Exporting from Indesign to HTML – at least in CS4 – is pretty useless because the css file is minimal. The industry is in a real mess and appears to have been caught unprepared.
I’ve already seen how to do this from Indesign CS5 from a rather good video series. That’s not the point. My point is this: the method seems completely backward; this is what I suppose we can expect from a print to paper designer. Why on earth use Indesign to create an XHTML file when there are MUCH better tools – like Dreamweaver – for that. The whole idea is crazy.Secondly, I saw nothing in the review to indicate any possibility of doing things like, for example, wrapping text round a graphic on the Kindle. It’s taking the lazy way out to concentrate on the iPad, because the iPad is really just a 7-year-old laptop design with a touch screen bolted on.
It’s already got the ability to handle css properly. I was thinking I would have to make an edition per reader. The book literally is going to have to be images, 1 per page. It’s all typography and font related, with a fixed display being the crux of the book. Essentially, it would be no different than a photography book, or photo album, with one photo per page. There is no content to flow, other than the header of each page. Each page is exactly one title, one page number, and one image:What you see there is the PDF version.
The eBook version is going to be a subset of this page (header, subheader, body, body footer), which is roughly the dimensions of Nook and Kindle standard. The larger Kindle, and iPad, could both read the full size PDF no problem.So yes, eBooks are not print books.
But the content of this eBook doesn’t exactly flow.Can anyone suggest an eBook to look at that is primarily images? Like a photography book? I haven’t been able to find a primarily image based eBook yet, that wasn’t simply a PDF.I looked at the Weissberg article. Great resource!! Is he saying in clear terms that if you have a Kindle-targeted file, the ISBN doesn’t make any sense, since it will only ever be on the Kindle? Do you need ISBNs at all for electronic versions then? Indeed, it’s very confusing.
Very interesting. Perhaps you have another post on this somewhere, but what is so bad about PDFs that don’t flow as a format that Amazon, Apple, BN, etc. Won’t sell them and let them be downloaded? Is the whole.mobi and ePub format conundrum unsolvable without a huge leap out of the current mess into some new format?Zeldman started a petition to get Apple to deal with typography and embedding fonts.
I can’t see that happening in the ePub format, but it assumes the world wants to read documents in one of 3 fonts, forever 🙂HTML is the uber-format, is it not? Douglas: Your example from your book clarified it for me, and I agree, that one is difficult to pull off as an epub. If you find a good solution I’d appreciate it if you shared it here. I think I’d actually prefer that one as a PDF.Regarding large-format books as digital publications: At the academic publishing house where I work, making epubs among other things, we don’t even consider (yet) making available digital formats of our books which relies heavily on rich illustrations.
These are mainly reference works on art, media, archaeology and architecture. They are in a “coffee-table format” because the size and the additional clarity and detail of glossy print is needed. The formatting for digital publication is not impossible to do, but electronic displays, software and GUIs are still not satisfactory. This is not actually my decision, but I see where the higher-ups come from on this one.The main limitation as I see it is still the existing devices. Lots of exciting formatting options are available in the epub format, as you know it is packaged XHTML as used on most web pages, custom fonts and all. Support on any dedicated device is still touch and go, and the result may well be literally unusable as in “won’t show”, we have to aim for the lowest common denominatior.
Don't Make Me Think Pdf
An additional challenge is the difference in display sizes. I believe all this will improve, give it time, and I’ll be happy to produce digital versions of the large format books that rival the paper versions 🙂. Maybe someone knows the answer to this:My new book in PDF and print will be fine, but in ePub I’m not sure.Each page will essentially have to be an image.
Each page is essentially a unique typographic layout. I believe I’m going to have to export each page as an image of some size and resolution. The question is: what resolution do I target so it look good on larger readers, like Kindle DX? And will page breaks “keep” if I have one image per page? The book is 300pp+, all with one image per page.I guess the question would be simpler if you think of my book as a photography book with one image per page, and one line of text. Can an ePub do that? Does anyone know of any examples of image-heavy ePubs yet?
Don't Make Me Think 3rd Pdf Download
Douglas,Have you had a look at Liz’s book? She says the only way to reliably get a page break is with a new chapter. However, she also has exact pixel dimensions for the page, so it may be possible to optimize your book for 1 specific reader, but that may not hold for other readers, which size the page differently.Books like yours seem to present special problems. I have a couple of other authors asking these same questions and plan to keep researching this. I’d also suggest you ask this question of the people on the #ePrdctn Twitter chat, that’s where I would go for advice. She says the only way to reliably get a page break is with a new chapter.In my experience every new XHTML file in the epub will generate a page break.
You can use Calibre to achieve this by converting epub - epub, and specifying a a class name in the “Insert page break before” under Structure Detection. You then insert a tag with this class name in the file whenever you want a page break.I’ve used this technique for inserting a full-page image before every chapter in a book. You’ll end up with a lot of XHTML files if you use it for every page, which can be slow on some readers which needs more time to switch between files. I’ll have to agree with Liz that it’s the only way to reliably ensure a page break.Her book looks very promising, I’ll make sure to buy a copy.