

Second, Issuu’s particular implementation of full-screen reading also requires users to learn a new interface.
#HOW TO DOWNLOAD PDF FROM ISSUU SOFTWARE#
(Nielsen’s time-tested software interface design principles have been usefully adapted for the web by Keith Instone and Jess McMullin and Grant Skinner, among others) When a website forces users into a full-screen interface in order to read its core content, it violates this critical principle. This makes for a worse user experience (UX) in several ways.įirst, it’s a long-held tenet of web usability that the interface must prioritize “user control and freedom,” in the words of Jakob Nielsen, the godfather of the field. The usability issues that seem to matter most all stem from the fact that reading Issuu content requires switching to a full-screen interface. These are mostly usability concerns, the kinds of things that ultimately cost you readers. Even then, there would be reasons to avoid them. Maybe someday Issuu will abandon Flash (which it seems like they will have to) and come up with some unique way of delivering to you the search-engine traffic that should be yours (a task in which I’m sure they have no interest). Personally, I have had enough seemingly Flash-based problems with Issuu that unless I have a really good reason to want to read some piece of writing presented to me in Issuu-like, maybe my wife wrote it-I usually don’t.Ī third technological problem with Issuu is that web searches for content you present in Issuu don’t ever lead searchers to your site. By Issuu’s own admission, because they always host the actual content and serve it to your visitors via your embed code, searches that turn up your content will point to instead of. It crashes often and is notoriously slow and insecure.

#HOW TO DOWNLOAD PDF FROM ISSUU MAC#
I’d stake my reputation on that fact that most of your readers do not subscribe to any version of your content-print or, for example, RSS-and won’t likely become subscribers just to see your content in the Issuu reader.Ī second, related problem is that Flash is clunky in the Mac OS. It only helps if you put your entire publication out via the Issuu iOS Reader (which you probably don’t) and a user of the app decides to subscribe. It’s true that Issuu has a reader app for iOS, but that doesn’t help you when somebody clicks a link to your website from their chosen iPhone Twitter app, for example. (In fact, Adobe has stopped developing mobile Flash plugins for any phone.) Issuu uses Flash, and there is no Flash on those devices. Let’s start with the most obvious: Nobody visiting your website on an iPhone or iPad will be able to read the work you care so much about. I will be as concise as I can, but the platform has many problems.

I’m writing you this letter to beseech you not to use Issuu and to explain why I feel so strongly about it.
