From the NY Times' "Bits" -- Could Amazon and Audible Rewrite the Rules of Publishing?
How about a service that allows you to seamlessly switch from reading a book on your digital device to listening to the same book read aloud as you get in the car, or if your eyes are tired, or if you simply want to hear a crucial scene acted out? And then to switch back to the printed page?
So Amazon is going to buy Audible.
And they mention the Kindle in there somewhere.
C'mon, guys -- take the logical next step. I'm still on board to buy the first one...
Imaging being some poor bastard working at Audible.com.
You get the call to update the code that displays links on the front page. Smiling that naive smile of yours, you ask, "So we can get rid of the pointless, annoying Javascript links? The ones that make browsing our site torture, and bookmarking near-impossible?"
"No, dipshit. Just change the naming conventions a bit, refer to a cookie, but use the same crap links as before. That should break any Greasemonkey scripts that try and inflict usability on our site, yet in no way improve things for our users."
You slump down, open another box of Swiss Rolls, and churn out the non-fix.
Anyway, I've updated the Greasemonkey Audible-fix script accordingly.
Remember the Audible fix-up script for Greasemonkey? The one that turns those nasty javascript: links into something useful?
I've updated the script -- adds a 'bookmark this link' entry below the 'share this with a friend' on product pages. Cycling through Amazon referrer links to make the permalink work, but that's Audible for you.
Oh, and the by-product of this is that Amazon-Audible links now jump automatically to the 'real' Audible page.
The script can be found right here.
Having given up on ever getting audible.com to care about their site's usability problems (especially the javascript links which render tabbed browsing unusable), I had considered writing a Firefox extension to fix the links. Maintaining one extension is enough to fill what spare time I have, however.
Enter Greasemonkey: a killer extension which allows you to assign "user scripts" -- Javascript snippets which perform some sort of fixup once a page is loaded -- to certain sites.
Bingo.
So, if you like Audible, but hate the useless interface:
Everything look the same? Good. Hover over a link, however. Look at the status line. Instead of, say, javascript:linkThis('/store/product.jsp','&productID=BK_TIME_000350'), you should see an actual http:... or https:... link. You can open it as usual, in a new tab, in a new window -- all the normal things you can do with a link.
Except save it across sessions or pass it to a friend to help sell an audio book. Audible will have to fix that particular brain-fart themselves.
Update: the script now creates bookmarkable links, as well. Details...
So, actually heard back from Audible, albeit through a moderate customer service filter. Basically a rewording of boilerplate we've seen before. Still referring to Javascript as Java, still leaving us to infer that the reason for all the Javascript is "faster load times".
We thank you for contacting the home of the best audio – Audible.com. We use java for faster access on the page and we limit the amount of time we have for open sessions to stop and prevent jams. At the moment we cannnot create Guest session on the spot save the home page becuase of how our ecommerce is setup which actually requires an acive session. This request will be forwarded to our developers at great ideas and if feasible will incorporate into our system. However can take a couple of weeks since there are other ideas they are currently working on.
So, I don't know. I give up. They're not listening.
If there was another ship to jump to, with a similar subscription deal, I'd be gone.
The folks at Audible at least seem to be looking further into my questions...
We thank you for contacting the home of the best audio – Audible.com. I am just writing to inform you that both my supervisor and I are looking into this issue a little more.
So there's that. Hmm.
And to make it perfectly clear -- I'm not bashing Audible, nor do I have any intention of cancelling my membership. I love what they do -- I just think a part of the way they do it is user-hostile, and I'm trying to see who I can get to listen.
Hey, I got escalated! A bit.
Dear Paul,
We thank you for contacting the home of the best audio – Audible.com. I have answered your questions in the same order you asked them.
1- We use java for faster access on the page. This is a web development issue. I can send a request to our web development department for you if you like.
2- We limit the amount of time we have for open sessions. This way there is minimal lag and traffic jams.
Please let me know if I have answered your questions.
That would be "no".
That *sort of* answers my questions.
1. We're talking about javascript here, not Java -- but I'm guessing we both mean the same thing. "Faster access" I take to mean reducing the page-download size; which is nice, but probably negligible given the amount of images, etc. accompanying each page. Meanwhile, the user's experience (tabbed browsing, etc.) is pretty broken.
And of course, users without Javascript enabled (for security reasons, or many speech-enabled browsers for the blind) are *completely* out of luck.
2. The question remains -- why should bookmarking a single book or category, for future reference, *require* a session at all? And if one is not present, why not create a "guest" session on the spot, as most sites do? If I want to point someone to a book on your site, I should be able to give them a direct link, to make their life easier and your sale more likely. In other words,
http://www.audible.com/adbl/store/product.jsp?productID=BK_RAND_000266should take someone right to "The Da Vinci Code", every time.
And yes, forwarding this to the web team would be great. I'm a big fan of Audible in general, and a longtime customer, but the site is maddening.
Update to: An open letter to Audible.com:
Hey, here's a surprise. Audible came back with a form letter that is not only completely irrelevant in this case, but probably meaningless in any context.
Dear customer,
We thank you for contacting the home of the best audio – Audible.com.Please try going to java.com and installing javasoftware. Unfortunately, we do not have enough information about your computer system to resolve this problem. Because it is extremely difficult to troubleshoot complex technical matters via email, please call our Customer Service group at 1-888-283-5051, or from overseas by calling 1-973-837-2700 to resolve your issue. Our hours of operation are Monday thru Friday, 9 am to 9 pm, and Saturday 10 am to 4 pm Eastern Time.
Please include this message if you are replying with additional information.
Sincerely,
Kathy
OK, it would be mean to pick apart the many ways this response doesn't apply to my question. It's a form letter, probably keyword selected by some semi-automated process. Or perhaps "Kathy" has a brain injury of some sort.
So let's try again, under the theory that good CRM systems will eventually escalate a problem to the point where a somewhat-clueful human being reads the message.
To wit:
Thanks for that very strange and unhelpful answer. It was certainly entertaining, trying to figure out what "javasoftware" might have to do with anything I asked.
As I said in the first mail, "Please, please answer me this time -- historically I get a not-terribly-relevant canned response." Perhaps I should have been more clear -- I was hoping *not* to repeat that experience.
The questions again:
1. Why does Audible insist on Javascript links everywhere, breaking tabbed browsing; multiple-window browsing; the back button; etc.
2. Why can we not have reliable, bookmarkable URLs -- URLs that don't require a currently-active session tag?
Time will tell.
Submitted to Audible.com's "ask a question" page (I'd link it, but I can't, really -- read on). The reason for the admittedly snarky tone, and for my posting this on my blog, is that I've tried to ask these same questions, nicely, via all available tech-support and customer-feedback routes. Once or twice a year for several years now. I've been a subscriber all that time, so it's not like I haven't been patient...
The responses have been about 90% deafening silence, with 10% being a canned response telling me I should use a modern browser. Must be triggered by the word "javascript" in the emails.
Anyway, just for fun, let's see when/if they reply.
Subject: Javascript and bookmarking funPlease, please answer me this time -- historically I get a not-terribly-relevant canned response.
What's with all the Javascript links? I can't open a book in a new window or browser tab, the back button doesn't always work right -- the rest of the web figured out 5 or 6 years ago that these were bad things.
And I'm sorry you guys used Broadvision, but it's not my fault -- please don't punish me by making it impossible to reliably do crazy things like bookmark a page. Either I leave out the BV session/engine info (giving me an immediate "Timeout" error, instead of establishing a new session and redirecting, like sane people) or I leave it in and the link soon goes stale, giving that same timeout error.
Seriously, I love the service, but the site navigation seems designed to thwart users.
I won't even try to suggest latest-additions RSS feeds...