The Cranky User on unusable onscreen documents

An article by "The Cranky User" describes a horrible experience with onscreen documentation (or an eBook, but the line is very blurry in this regards) that is provided in a fancy, non-standard, style-over-substance user interface. His points about usability are great, but I'll add to it the authoring side of the equation. Imagine how much time must have been spent on creating the restrictive, custom interface. Any labor and time invested in it almost certainly took time away from developing or improving the content, which is really what's being sold. Then, to make matters worse, it prevents the book from being used on other platforms, reducing its marketability.

Posted: November 20, 2002 link to this item, Tweet this item, respond to this item