21–30 of 60 posts
> I concede that the thumping noise is better for you with a paperback. But otherwise, the web-based book is better for everyone. The author's style seems to be very opinionated and blunt, and I appreciate that, but a web-based book is not better for me. The reasons listed are great examples of the benefits of web-based books, but I do not find web-based books readable. I read the FAQ, and I get it: he's not…
> I concede that the thumping noise is better for you with a paperback. But otherwise, the web-based book is better for everyone. The author's style seems to be very opinionated and blunt, and I appreciate that, but a web-based book is not better for me. The reasons listed are great examples of the benefits of web-based books, but I do not find web-based books readable. I read the FAQ, and I get it: he's not…
Have you considered an eReader such as the Amazon Paperwhite?
I always just buy a (physical) book.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know. It looks non-functional and ugly to me. https://i.imgur.com/DmPKqhM.png This is in contrast to something like nytimes.com which is really well designed.
Are you using Firefox? I see the same black box in Firefox too (which is actually an SVG inside an tag), but in Chrome, it renders fine: https://imgur.com/a/NdvKN
And it's unreadable on my Android device (both Firefox and Chrome), due not being a responsive design - the text is simply too small to read. For comparison I've read a handful of books on my Android - both epub and Kindle.
A minimal test of design for reading on the web, should be - how much easier is this to read than the Linux Documentation Project's HOWTOs, or the Debian install guides? If the answer is "it's harder", something's wrong.
(Although, that is a nice idea for a side-project, a simple (set of) stylesheet(s) for LDP/Debian/Plain html documents that adds responsive styling - fonts, choice of light/dark, perhaps CSS columns on a wide screen like the Surface).
I have read part of this book and it is a really well written book especially to use racket to construct computer languages . I didn't understand how to use racket to make languages until I read this book.
I'd just like to say that I admire Matthew Butterick's creative experimentation with business models for web publishing and absolutely adore Practical Typography to the extent that I've purchased several of his fonts and intend to purchase Beautiful Racket as well. It can be hard to imagine that there's a world for type design on computers outside the formulaic mundanity and advertisement-laden nature of the rest of…
I don't know. It looks non-functional and ugly to me. https://i.imgur.com/DmPKqhM.png This is in contrast to something like nytimes.com which is really well designed.
Non-functional and ugly? I'd say this is subjective, but I find this assessment objectively wrong.
It's complete accessible, and totally functional for what it does -- present a series of sections and display code examples. And it's also quite obviously well designed from an aesthetic perspective.
(There's no black box in the actual site in Chrome, but even with the black box, it's a totally fine functional design).
As for the NYT, it looks like a compromise between looking like a print newspaper of yore, a portal of slightly less yore, and a modern news website cramming everything in the same start page.
Looks like an interesting book. And, on my surface pro, it's pretty. It's not very readable, as it is only dark-on-light, high contrast -- I prefer "night mode" for reading long-form. And it's unreadable on my Android device (both Firefox and Chrome), due not being a responsive design - the text is simply too small to read. For comparison I've read a handful of books on my Android - both epub and Kindle. A minimal te…
Edit: I was assuming buying would get you an ebook version that would solve the mobile readability issue, but I don't see any mention of that on the 'why I should pay' or 'how to pay' pages. In fact it only mentions the 'web based book you see here'. Exasperating.
I thought that someone else here could be interested...
edit: clarifications
I'd just like to say that I admire Matthew Butterick's creative experimentation with business models for web publishing and absolutely adore Practical Typography to the extent that I've purchased several of his fonts and intend to purchase Beautiful Racket as well. It can be hard to imagine that there's a world for type design on computers outside the formulaic mundanity and advertisement-laden nature of the rest of…
It would be nice for there to be a bit more institutional knowledge on how to get people to pay for your product among these experiments. Too many times I see projects say they're not making much money from these sorts of efforts, but when I go to the project I can't even figure out how to give them money! LWN is a prime example of lost opportunities (count how many steps it takes to go from "see subscriber link" to…
As you say, if you make easy for people to pay you, more people will pay.
Ease, I think, is a function of the quality of offering, i.e how good it is such that people will more readily part with their cash, and the actual ease of making a payment.
If you have great content and people want more yet the path to subscribe is tucked away so no one can find it, people won't pay (or can't in extreme cases).
If your content sucks, including devaluation via aggressive pushes for payment, I don't think people will be so keen to pay.
That said, I think more people tend to pay for the latter. Your get rich in 30 days with a pay now button every other paragraph and huge discount-that-isn't-a-discount is a prime example.