Safari Books Online

The Bad

But like any good mistress, there are a few drawbacks: Safari Books Online is not perfect.

First, you can't always bookmark where you want. Safari lets you bookmark pages, but only at specific points in chapters. Every chapter is broken up into "logical" units. Each "logical" section has a marker on the left (see graphic) and when you encounter one of those, you can bookmark that page. But if you set a bookmark at a page after the marker, when you go back to the bookmark, it'll take you to the beginning of the section instead of the specific page you left off on. So I find myself forcing myself to finish a section before placing a bookmark, whether I want to or not, just so when I place my bookmark, it will take me to the right page. This seems like an unnecessary shortcoming. In a physical book, I can place a bookmark wherever I darn well please. Why can't I in Safari? How hard is it to store a page number? This is probably the most frustrating aspect of Safari Books.

The second drawback is related to the first. Not being able to place a bookmark where you like is bad enough, but some books are just broken up weird. Finding "logical sections" for some books is hard, or lazy editors don't do a good job of it. So I've ended up reading 20 pages further than I really wanted to just to get to where the editor thought was the end of a logical section, even though I just read through a dozen more logical sections that weren't marked. I was at the mercy of Safari to decide where I could stop. However, most books I've read are marked up pretty well, but it's annoying when you encounter a chapter that isn't.

Third, the digital books still have errors. Though Safari books has links to the errata for books, it doesn't correct the errors in the digital version. While this isn't feasible for highly graphical books like the Head First series, for books that have been converted to HTML, it just seems silly to leave the errors in, but tell you where they are. And you have to manually go to the errata to see the errors, they don't point it out on the page itself.

Fourth, they don't really have ALL the tech books. Safari doesn't claim they do, but there are some ommisions that I miss. For example, a book that was highly recommended by a friend, a 3D graphics guru, Real-Time Rendering is unavailable via Safari. While Safari has plenty of books on 3D graphics, it doesn't have this one since it comes from a more obscure publisher (AK Peters). Because it's not there, it's unlikely that I'll read it.

Fifth, you can't write in the books. While you can attach notes to pages, Safari limits the number of characters your notes can be to 256 characters. But worse, the notes appear on a separate page. You can't scrawl a note on a page with arrows pointing to important stuff, nor can you highlight text. I realize this is more of a technical limitation than a design flaw, but it's still irritating.

The sixth flaw is related to the first and second above. When you add a bookmark to a page, Safari keeps your previous bookmark for the book. You can have twenty bookmarks for one book. If you're like most people, you read a book from beginning to end. And as you do, you move your bookmark up to where you left off. But Safari apparently thinks that you want to keep track of where you've been, too. So, when I place a bookmark, I have to go back and delete the previous bookmark so it doesn't clutter up my bookmarks page (all your bookmarks for all the books you're reading appear on a single page).

Now I realize Safari may see this as a "feature". After all, lots of people like to flag certain pages, and this may be their way of allowing this ability. But if they want to provide that, it needs to be seperate from the regular bookmarks page, because it just clutters up all the bookmarks for every book you're reading. Why would I want fifty bookmarks for one book? I have no idea.

And while I'm at it, flags would be nice. While I may not want to make a Note for every page I find interesting or particularly useful, it would be nice to just attach a colored flag to it so I can find it quickly when I refer back to it. But with Safari, apparently I'll have to make a note for the page or give it a bookmark, which I can't describe (it's just a bookmark, with a page number and the name of the section).

Seventh, the errata doesn't match. The errata for books is normally written for the print books. Some books have errata for the digital versions, but these are a minority. The errata refers to errors by page number, but books that are converted to HTML don't have page numbers (this is because in the print-to-HTML conversion, some pages are combined, which is a Good Thing: it makes related sections appear together). So it's infuriating trying to match up errors to the digital versions of the books, because all you have to go on is the actual erroneous text and it's correction.

Safari left off the end of a very important sentence

Eighth, sometimes it barfs on graphics. Though they're not my exclusive source of information, I love the Head First series. But on some pages—and I stress this is only some, meaning very few—Safari misses key portions of the page. The "print layout view" loads in square blocks, but sometimes the blocks are missing key portions of the text. Like the example at the right: "using the <img> element's..." what? Even though I can guess what the missing text may say, it's irritating that this happens at all.

Lastly—and this is the worst—I usually end up wanting to buy the book I just read. While the digital versions of books have several advantages, which I hope I've sufficiently covered, there are some disadvantages too. While I can browse an entire digital book, sometimes it's just easier to quickly rifle through a book to check some syntax or look up some nuance of a language. While you can search the Safari books, using the browser just isn't as quick as flipping a few pages to a page you have dog-eared. So, I'm usually tempted to buy some books that are particularly good, just so I have them around for handy reference. While I haven't succumbed to this desire yet, I pretty much want all the Head First books I've read. I'm sure O'Reilly wouldn't mind if I succumbed to my desire, but, hey, they've already got my $40 for the month!

Conclusion —>