Make something wonderful - a book collecting some Steve Jobs own words about himself and his creations - came out the other day, and today I finished it.
It is available in full online, right on that link, and for a change the browser is actually the canonical and best place to experience it. The book combines the table of contents and the scroll bar in a really clever and enjoyable way, the only downside of which was that chapter starts seemed somehow sticky. When I passed one, the book would jump back up to the start of the chapter when I stopped scrolling past it. It felt very typical of the world of the web, and I made a snarky comment about it in this week's Björeman // Melin // Åhs.
I subsequently read somewhere that the scroll problem was supposedly a regression bug in the latest version of Safari, but now I can not find that statement where I thought I saw it. So who knows. Despite spending most of my professional life doing web development of various kinds, I am not all that bitter about browser wars and bugs and the progress of standards. Sure, it is annoying that a great web experience such as this book is hit by a bug like this, but I mostly just find it somehow funny. I like to tell myself that Jony Ive - whose firm designed the whole book - resisted his urge to build his own scrollbar library, instead using some finished one which happened to have this bug. A slight imperfection in his creation, reinforcing the need to build even websites from atoms to really reach his vision.
Even reading the whole book in Safari, that imperfection does not diminish the wonderfulness of the book. It all worked for me, even though I stupidly read it in too few, too long sittings. But hey, I can go back and re-read sections whenever I like.
The e-mail exchanges were among my favourite parts, I really enjoyed reading this style of communication.
I could not help but think the world would be a lot better if all e-mail were as well-written, as to the point.
Let us make more wonderful things.