Hi Niklas here. I'm the other Co-Chair of the W3C WebView Community group that built this site. We took heavy inspiration and code from caniemail.com and are still discussing and working on building up this site. It's a very early stage with very little content. If you want to help us feel free to check out the GitHub repository: https://github.com/WebView-CG/Compatibility-Data-Project
Thanks for the feedback! This is indeed something we discussed in the community group maintaining this site. We need have some definitions for WebViews and it's capabilities and are planning to put them on the site. There will be a glossary explaining everything at some point.
Same goes for Apache Cordova a framework for building mobile apps for Android and iOS. Apple knows a big chunk of apps in the App Store are using it.
You can only use it for iOS apps if you have Apple hardware. I am one of the maintainers and thankfully I got a Mac Mini donated as well when I lost my company Mac.
It's funny how this comment seems to have most upvotes. Good morning fellow germans ;)
It adds no real feedback to the original post but shows how much we germans love our Buchpreisbindung.
Another German here. I don’t know… Buchpreisbindung sucks when it comes to eBooks. It would be awesome if you could get the eBook at a reduced price if you have the physical copy.
Isn't that 100% on the authors/publishers? Such deals exist, bundling the ebook version for technical books. Might be misremembering, but some authors (of tech books, fwiw) always were happy for that feature. But then again they usually don't live off the royalties, but are developers/consultants anyway.
Exactly, the cheapest and fastest way to get a book in Germany is most likely your neighborhood book store on the way back from work. (And if they don't have the book in store, they can order it for the next day.)
"Thankfully" is an interesting view from the reader side. Would be interesting to know what was the impact on the authors side.
Got it cheaper because the authors got now less money or got it cheaper because the publisher got now less money?
Because I know, that (at least for technical books) the pay for the authors is not really great. It's more like a reputation than making money out of it.
Is that the main impact of the German law? I was thinking it might improve an author's chances of earning a reasonable amount of money from writing which I think could be a good thing.
Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are price and readership always inversely correlated?
>> Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are price and readership always inversely correlated?
I would say they are always inversely correlated if you are poor.
Does the German law also fix the price of used books? If not, then I could see how a thriving (but expensive) new book market could lead to a robust used market which could help readership.
Libraries allow (not only) poor people to read as much books as they want for free or ~the price of a cheap book. That seems to be a much better mechanism to allow for literacy independent of income than trying to make books cheaper.
Exactly. Enabling poor people to buy books is a far greater social good than having somewhere comfortable for hipsters to sit with their laptops and middle class mums to push their three wheeled buggies round.
Actually, you don't need to own a book to read it. We in Germany have a great concept for this, its called: Library, You can go to your local community library and decide to either read the book there or to take it home and read it where ever you like. The rent for the first 2 weeks or sometimes the first 4 weeks is free of charge.
These libraries these days even not only have books to rent out. They have online-books, games (like those physical games to interact physically with other people you like), and other medias.
Even the membership in those community libraries is mostly free of charge, with a few exceptions.
Thanks for sharing, reminds me of another old revered law in Germany, the Reinheitsgebot. Buchpreisbindung was introduced in 1888 and according to the Wikipedia article it fails to deliver cheaper books and even indirectly subsidize large bookstores like Amazon.
I really don‘t like Buchpreisbindung. It frequently makes books significantly more expensive than their English originals (I‘ve seen prices 10€ higher than the English version). That’s the primary reason why I choose to buy the original English versions instead (Buchpreisbindung does not affect non-German books as long as they are not specifically targeting the German markets like educational materials). A nice side effect is the noticeable improvement tin my comprehension skills for English texts.
Can't be bothered to translate this page to English, but from the comments I'm guessing it's the decision by the government to not tax books the same way they do leisure items?
I moved to the Netherlands a while ago, and was shocked at how much books cost. I learned that they're taxed the same as everything else, which seems short-sighted.
does that apply to used books, or just new? i think (?) the target for this website is used because there is a fixed price for newly published books. (however sometimes big box stores will mark them down or run a sale)
