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I am with Dustin on this one, but from a different angle. By creating flowable text, Adobe will ridiculously enhance the usefulness of their current publishing

I am with Dustin on this one, but from a different angle. By creating flowable text, Adobe will ridiculously enhance the usefulness of their current publishing tools. A few years back I dabbled into newspaper publishing, and you can't imagine just how frustrating it is to have a beautiful layout in InDesign, which isn't really portable to the web. Having these tools will allow 'normal' people who don't do web to easily create stunning experience; that is a big undertaking!

DanBC 15y ago
> to easily create stunning experience I know that I've lost this battle and that I'm in a minority, but to me "stunning experience" comes from the content, and not the presentation.
- kirillzubovsky 15y ago
  Presentation without content isn't much, but content without presentation isn't either. When you are competing for users' attention, having an option to present the content in a memorable and outspoken way is quite important. It's much like code, no one cares what your backend looks like, if users can't work with your apps.
- whatusername 15y ago
  Really? I'm really really struggling to find any human experience that is not improved by the "presentation". Can you name a single one that is wholly about the content and derives no value from the 'presentation'? (For any of the 5 senses?). To my mind there is basic quadrant setup: * Low Content and Low Presentation == Worthless Junk * Low Content and High Presentation == Useless Fluff, Polished Turds * High Content and Low Presentation == Useful but Boring and hard to understand * High Content and High Presentation == Life Changing Content. Valuable AND easy to grok. For a HN related example -- Assuming you don't use Python -- do you format/indent your code in any way? That's "Presentation" that clearly adds value to the content.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    Books. Books don't need sound and video and special effects and gradients and rounded corners and 8 different fonts and mouse-over effects and transitions and etc. You get one font for 40,000 words. You get justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font. An online example would be "Readbility" - that turns weirdly presented text into a very simple presentation. I accept that it's a carefully chosen well designed presentation, but the simplicity is key to allowing access to the information. See also all the various HN redesigns. HN is presentationally fairly simple. Almost all the redesigns add more stuff, but decrease usability, and distract from the actual content. > That's "Presentation" that clearly adds value to the content. I'm not saying presentation is pointless. But, if we're doing either / or, would you rather have bug free code with no indentation or buggy code with lovely formatting?
    - hieronymusN 15y ago
      Books are designed. Lots of consideration is put into the typography, layout, rhythm and form of printed books, and those design choices stretch back over a hundred years. There is much more at play than "justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tschichold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tschichold http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450 http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestal... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_St...
    - willyt 15y ago
      Yes but just giving examples of shit design doesn't make all design shit. Read Eric Gill on typography or look at an Edward Tufte book and you will understand how much design has gone into books over the ages. One of the ways you can tell when a design is really high quality is when you don't notice it.
    - hej 15y ago
      You seem to have seriously misunderstood what great presentation is and you are selling books way short. Good presentation is only about rounded corners if those rounded corners are actually an improvement. If they distract they are bad presentation. There are good and bad ways to present text in books and this is not some subtle improvement, this is noticeable. Typesetting books is seriously hard and there are tons of pitfalls, even if all you need are paragraphs and chapter headings. To make this short, here are all things books can do and the web cannot (yet or in most browsers) do: Complete control over the font. A lot of microtypography. Complete control over justification. Easily creating and maintaining a rhythm. I'm sure there are a lot more. (Those points are also the reason why typography in ebooks still sucks for the most part, some of that is caused by the ineptness of those who create those books.) Anyone who has ever had the book of someone with no design background in their hands will be able to testify that there is a huge difference between books done by a professional typesetter and an amateur (if that amateur isn't self-taught and doesn't otherwise care about design).

DanBC 15y ago

> to easily create stunning experience I know that I've lost this battle and that I'm in a minority, but to me "stunning experience" comes from the content, and not the presentation.

kirillzubovsky 15y ago
Presentation without content isn't much, but content without presentation isn't either. When you are competing for users' attention, having an option to present the content in a memorable and outspoken way is quite important. It's much like code, no one cares what your backend looks like, if users can't work with your apps.
whatusername 15y ago
Really? I'm really really struggling to find any human experience that is not improved by the "presentation". Can you name a single one that is wholly about the content and derives no value from the 'presentation'? (For any of the 5 senses?). To my mind there is basic quadrant setup: * Low Content and Low Presentation == Worthless Junk * Low Content and High Presentation == Useless Fluff, Polished Turds * High Content and Low Presentation == Useful but Boring and hard to understand * High Content and High Presentation == Life Changing Content. Valuable AND easy to grok. For a HN related example -- Assuming you don't use Python -- do you format/indent your code in any way? That's "Presentation" that clearly adds value to the content.
- DanBC 15y ago
  Books. Books don't need sound and video and special effects and gradients and rounded corners and 8 different fonts and mouse-over effects and transitions and etc. You get one font for 40,000 words. You get justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font. An online example would be "Readbility" - that turns weirdly presented text into a very simple presentation. I accept that it's a carefully chosen well designed presentation, but the simplicity is key to allowing access to the information. See also all the various HN redesigns. HN is presentationally fairly simple. Almost all the redesigns add more stuff, but decrease usability, and distract from the actual content. > That's "Presentation" that clearly adds value to the content. I'm not saying presentation is pointless. But, if we're doing either / or, would you rather have bug free code with no indentation or buggy code with lovely formatting?
  - hieronymusN 15y ago
    Books are designed. Lots of consideration is put into the typography, layout, rhythm and form of printed books, and those design choices stretch back over a hundred years. There is much more at play than "justification, and paragraphs, and if you're lucky a nice font." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tschichold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tschichold http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450 http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestal... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_St...
  - willyt 15y ago
    Yes but just giving examples of shit design doesn't make all design shit. Read Eric Gill on typography or look at an Edward Tufte book and you will understand how much design has gone into books over the ages. One of the ways you can tell when a design is really high quality is when you don't notice it.
  - hej 15y ago
    You seem to have seriously misunderstood what great presentation is and you are selling books way short. Good presentation is only about rounded corners if those rounded corners are actually an improvement. If they distract they are bad presentation. There are good and bad ways to present text in books and this is not some subtle improvement, this is noticeable. Typesetting books is seriously hard and there are tons of pitfalls, even if all you need are paragraphs and chapter headings. To make this short, here are all things books can do and the web cannot (yet or in most browsers) do: Complete control over the font. A lot of microtypography. Complete control over justification. Easily creating and maintaining a rhythm. I'm sure there are a lot more. (Those points are also the reason why typography in ebooks still sucks for the most part, some of that is caused by the ineptness of those who create those books.) Anyone who has ever had the book of someone with no design background in their hands will be able to testify that there is a huge difference between books done by a professional typesetter and an amateur (if that amateur isn't self-taught and doesn't otherwise care about design).