O'Reilly

I really hope O’Reilly is around for a really long time. This portal is an absolute must if you want to grow in your career and advance your skills. They have ALL the technology (and others) books you’ll ever need and want! When I need a paper copy I check it out at O’Reilly first to decide if I want it. Most of my books though are digital copies there and I read them on my IPad. They have sandboxes for learning environments, live conference access, certification training books and courses; live and on demand, and more. The app is solid rarely have any issues. I started with a paid work subscription from work 11 years ago; as soon as it expired I got my own out of pocket and have had it ever since. It’s one of the best investments I have made for my continuing education; try it and I’m sure you’ll think so too. Thank you O’Reilly team!!

First off, I love the content of this app and appreciate the developers who have made it a reality so I hope the poor rating and following statements only encourage the platforms growth. My biggest complaint is how painful the transition process is between devices. I would love to pick up where I left off on my iPad when I switch to my MacBook and, then later, back again. I'm thankful that the history seems to sync up (most of the time) but in the scenario provided I generally have to go searching through the book to find where I was on the other device. The irony is the highlighting seems to persist so clearly the location could likely as well. Also, (another major pain point) I like to have a few books I'm consistently working through but often open up a number of other books for reference throughout the day. This result in an absolute disaster in my history. It would be nice to pin a few books to the top of the history view or very least filtering and sorting capabilities so these books don't get lost in the clutter. Obviously deleting the others is an option but then you lose visibility to the fact that you've referencd the book before so it's only a half-baked remedy to an unsolved problem.

The catalog O’Reilly offers is invaluable but many hiccups with app crashing and log ins disrupt the continuity of reading across and within platforms. When using the desktop portal, the website requires me to log in each new day in spite of repeatedly checking the ‘remember me’ box. The mobile site isn’t much better, often loosing my log in information when accessing the site through links. The app has similar problems, it never remembers my place if I move from my safari to the app and rarely knows what book I was even looking at. Often I have to search for my reading material each time I access a particular chapter assigned by my school instead of just using their provided link 😤 Attempting to use the app once finding my desired reading material is just as frustrating. The app will not allow me to scroll across images, constantly opening them instead of panning down. This forces me to attempt grabbing the narrow spaces between the images. Worse than all of this is that if I leave the app for a long period of time, it will crash while running in the background but instead of rebooting will get stuck to whatever page I’m on and not allow me access any controls and will jump back to the top of the back if I shift the orientation of the phone. The only solution to this is to close the app and wait a few minutes before launching it again. Really disappointed in the mechanics of this platform and have noticed my teachers moving away from it as well in preference to Lynda to due it’s smooth utility.