Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Ebooks
Raised as a usability problem by 30 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 32 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Ebook interface is harder than paper for non-linear readingUnreviewed
20102026- Ebook with two text columns per page and no auto scaling is a mess2026-06-15
- Diagrams and maps render poorly on ebook readers, making tech books unusable2024-11-05
- Ebook interface is worse than paper for anything beyond linear reading2024-08-16
Buying an e-book is harder and slower than pirating itUnreviewed
20102026- Buying ebooks is painful and the experience is worse than physical books2024-03-03
- E-books have a poor user experience, so people keep buying paper2023-11-28
- Buying an e-book is harder and slower than pirating it2022-12-29
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 33 complaints
- Ebook with two text columns per page and no auto scaling is a mess2026-06-15
- Hard to locate and bounce between bookmarks; forgets authors of ebooks being read2024-11-20
- EPUB conversions lose layout and style, making cookbooks and technical books hard to read2024-11-05
- Diagrams and maps render poorly on ebook readers, making tech books unusable2024-11-05
- Uploads rejected by an outdated validator with little or no error message shown2024-08-23
- Ebook interface is worse than paper for anything beyond linear reading2024-08-16
- Footnotes are annoying to use compared to paper footnotes2024-03-18
- Buying ebooks is painful and the experience is worse than physical books2024-03-03
- E-books have a poor user experience, so people keep buying paper2023-11-28
- Unclear what file format and DRM a purchase actually includes, forcing emails to customer service2023-07-13
- Buying an e-book is harder and slower than pirating it2022-12-29
- Must use a specific app to read purchased ebooks, and refunds are hard to get2022-12-25
- Ebook text is center aligned and missing periods, making it unreadable2020-10-25
- Paged ebook format is worse to read than scrolling HTML pages2020-05-26
- Publishers' ebook formats are poor to read compared to a plain HTML layout2020-01-06
- Page turning is slow enough to make rapid scanning annoying2019-09-18
- Highlighting only works reliably if the file is a rendered or OCR'd PDF, otherwise it fails2019-06-28
- Screen goes dark when hands are dirty and recipes force scrolling or page turning2019-06-23
- Uploads rejected by outdated validator with unclear or hidden error messages2019-05-17
- Browsing ebooks is terrible and flipping through to find something is impossible2019-04-04
- Hard to find earlier passages; no spatial sense of place, so relies on slow search and paging2017-04-27
- Can't quickly flip to a remembered page location like in print books2016-11-24
- Menus and header take over half the page, text loads in a cramped iframe2016-08-30
- Most e-book and paper software is poor quality2016-08-20
- Diagrams, equations and big tables are unusable on ebook readers2016-05-25
- Ebooks are hard to read on small phone screens, varying from terrible to unreadable2016-01-25
- Two-page spreads are difficult or impossible to scan with the eyes on small screens2015-12-12
- Hard to flip to a section; paging one-by-one is slower than paper; search unhelpful2015-09-23
- Commenter can't stand ebooks that aren't plain PDFs or web pages2015-05-03
- E-book typography makes reading noticeably worse, and moving around content is awkward2015-02-24
- Hard to annotate, keep notes, and have several open at once2013-10-14
- Can't tell which eBooks work on which reader; need a chart to know2010-12-07
- Wading through ebooks for information is horrible; must print PDFs to read them2010-02-11