Thursday, July 31, 2008

More Wowio Blues

So far I've had the end of one comic and the whole of another be completely unreadable - nothing but mangled blurs and lines in black and white.

There's also a quality drop that I don't remember experiencing before. I'm looking at HELIOS #1 right now and page 6 has some serious quality issues. The page is blurry and the limited size adjusters (zoom regular, medium or large) do nothing at all to help.

I've also discovered that every time you close the Wowio Reader, it loses your preferences. So while it can apparently remember which page you closed out on, it can't remember to keep a two-page spread at medium.

On top of those discoveries, Ad Block Plus bars the ads on the reader. I've always had Ad Block Plus disabled on Wowio.com in support of their text ads, which I clicked. But those ads were not the intrusive, flashing, blinking, too colourful and distracting not to mention sometimes apparently page distorting ads now on the Wowio Reader.

How exactly do the artists get the best possible deal out of ads people can find ways around? It felt like one thing to have ads in the beginning and end and maybe even in the middle of the comics. That's relatively close to the experience with an actual copy (non trade) in one's hands. But this constantly rotating, blinking, mess?

On the one hand I can look at more comics, peruse first issues and figure out if I'd really enjoy them. But that could have been done with using the Wowio Reader as a previewer. Considering I had to trust Wowio with my credit card info in order to gain membership (1cent charge then refunded at the time), I don't appreciate being treated as some kind of pre-criminal with COPYRIGHTED material all over the Wowio Reader.

I was so excited about Wowio's return. I counted down the days and minutes. I was there within minutes of the site going live again. I didn't bother to wait for notification (which never came via the mail, by the way). And now after a month and more of waiting....

Ugh.

No comments:

Post a Comment