1) The printing is terrible, dark-blue print with an ugly typeface on a mock graph paper background. And the faux "handwritten" side notes are actually as hard to read as somebody's handwriting. Typography is actually supposed to make something *easier* to read, not harder.

2) The structure of the sections means I'm constantly flipping back and forth, to a degree that I never have to for other O'Reilly books--e.g., they have a section labeled "How do I do that?", then a section labeled "What just happened?" Honestly, I think a section called "What's about to happen?" followed by a how-to makes vastly greater sense. Sort of like writing tests before code, writing what you expect to happen before you show it happening communicates the intent much more clearly.

3) The whole "No lengthy explanations" attitude makes me feel like this was a way for O'Reilly to ship a book 40% of the size of a typical offering (180 pp., including index), and still charge 90% of the price ($29.95 USD).

I know chromatic is both smart and helpful, and I trust that Langworth is, too, but this format really, really bites. There's a lot of information in it, but there's more work to dig it out than should be necessary. I think it has such a high reputation because it's the only book that focuses exclusively on this particular subject.

While I, personally, find the structure / length completely appropriate I do agree with:

1) The printing is terrible, dark-blue print with an ugly typeface on a mock graph paper background. And the faux "handwritten" side notes are actually as hard to read as somebody's handwriting. Typography is actually supposed to make something *easier* to read, not harder.

The mock graph paper and the right-justified typewriter font make reading the main text a pain. Everybody in the office whose read PDTN has agreed. Pity since the content's nice, and O'Reilly books are normally a model of clarity.

If you're new to Perl testing I'd definitely spend the extra effort to get past the presentation.