Review: WeatherStation

Unlike the iPhone, the iPad doesn't come with a weather app. There are many out there and some have advanced radar, hourly forecasts, etc. The problem with most of these is that they're not very viewer friendly. Adding your city is not a problem. It's that the apps are gaudy, there's too much information and the presentation visually is very confusing.

WeatherStation is pretty much what you have on the iPhone: current conditions, daily forecasts for the next five days, time, date, sunrise and sunset all on one screen. In landscape mode, switching cities is a matter of one tap and it's easy to tell which city you're looking at.

Nothing extraneous here. So unless the Weather Channel is your reality TV, this app gets you to the weather basics fast.

The search for what Search actually searches.

Search is a little frustrating on iPad. It seldom finds what you're looking for. What? You didn't know your iPad had a search? Tap your Home button. Then tap it again. Search is similar to Spotlight on Mac and finds things instantly, without even having to type a return. However...

Built in apps only.
Sadly, search only works with the built-in apps. It doesn't access the dedicated file areas of added software. So it's very useful for finding a word within a thousand Notes, but not useful for finding a word within a Pages document. Many apps have their own search. Pages can search within a document only. You'll find it in the Tool menu.

No web content.
Search will not find anything within Safari's cache. For those who feel Safari's lack of search within a document is frustrating, this can be quickly fixed with the find-in-this-page bookmarklet. This is a little JavaScript that gets stored in a Safari bookmark. When you launch this bookmark it doesn't take you to a new web page, it searches the current document and highlights the search words. Follow the instructions on the site to install.

I don't got mail?
Search can only find what's in the mail that's on your iPad. And the way iPad works is that it only stores the most current messages locally. Most are still on your server. Once Mail has searched what's on your iPad it gives you the option to continue to search your server. Note that this can take a while.

These limitations are all frustrating, but once you know them and the workarounds, you'll find yourself finding things a little easier.

Review: Adobe Ideas for vector sketching.

I have never been an Adobe fan. But I'm stooping to say they got one right.



The lousy interface company.
Adobe creates some great file formats. But for as long as they have been associated with Apple, you'd think would have learned about user-friendly interfaces. Acrobat is the worst thing to create PDF files with. Buried somewhere in their menu maze is a clunky way to do everything, but it's so frustrating to get there.

Ideas is different.
Ideas is the simplest app Abode has ever written. The menu structure isn't intuitive, but simple enough to get by. Draw a line and you'll immediately fall in love. The moment you release your finger the line is vectored to create a smooth, beautiful stroke. You have complete control over width, opacity and color of your pen, even if getting to these controls takes more steps than necessary.

The photo layer.
Ideas has a few nice photo tricks. You can add a photo layer underneath and draw overtop of it. You can also remove it later, making sketches a great choice if you want to do tracings. Another cool feature is the color picker that allows you to create a palette from colors within a photo.

Vector export.
Your drawing can be mailed as a vector art PDF with a clear alpha background. These are great for pasting over top of backgrounds in Pages or Keynote. Provided you haven't added an image, these drawings are tiny and can be scale up to any size.

Adobe finally frees creativity.
Ideas is free. That's surprising coming from a company that usually charges outrageous rates for their software. Well worth keeping a copy on your iPad.

Tips

• To paste a drawing into Pages or Keynote, email it to yourself. In the email, hold your finger on the drawing and choose Copy. Open Pages and paste.

HMTL 5/Flash Part 2

So what's so good about HTML 5? Is it better than Flash? Not really. It will just allow you to do similar things with standard methods. To the average web user, you're not going to notice a lot of difference. Currently many sites use JavaScript for many of the multimedia and graphic tricks. Many of these will work with standard code in HTML 5 and CSS 3.

JavaScript is a compact programming language that most browsers can work with, but JavaScript can be insecure, bog down browsers and function erratically. Using HTML 5 these functions will work faster, smoother and more predictably.

These new tags are supported by many browsers and some are already supported by Safari for iPad. If you're using one of the other browsers for iPad, most of these actually work off the same core as Safari, so the new tags will probably work as well.

Remy Sharp has put up a nice little demo site where you can test these. Currently the following at least partially function:

• Interactive Canvas Gradients


• Content Editable


• Video


• Geolocation


• Post Message


• Online Connectivity Monitoring


• Offline Application Using Manifest


• Storage


• Web Database


• Web Database Rollback

Most of this can already be done with JavaScript and other methods, but HTML 5 will do it more efficiently and make media-rich web pages easier to write and implement. Switching from JavaScript will make many of these functions—like animation, video and audio—look more Flash-like.

HTML 5/Flash Part 1

There's a huge amount of noise about Flash and HTML 5. Apple says one of the reasons that iPad will not support Flash that HTML 5, will do most of those tricks and do them within Web standards.








So what's wrong with these beautiful flash sites and videos?

• Flash is not stable on all browsers. You'll commonly hear about browser crashes that occur when viewing a Flash site or video. Flash isn't viewable on many browsers, even when you don't count iPhone and iPad. Some browsers block flash, since it so often used in ads. And when it actually is viewable, users often get an upgrade message, delaying getting to the site or content.


• Flash content is not searchable. Most sites depend on search to attract viewers and many depend on it for income. Flash is in essence a movie. Just like you can't search a YouTube video for a word that someone says in the video, you can't practically search Flash. And regular HTML sites with Flash content rank low in searches.


• Flash, like any movie, is slow loading. Yet a further inconvenience.


• Flash is an extra expense. You have to build an HTML companion site to make search work. And those who find it through search won't see your Flash version anyway. HTML can be modified in a text editor. The entire Flash site need to be redone just to change one letter.


• Flash is designed for a mouse. One of Steve Jobs contentions against implementing Flash on the iPad is that a mobile device doesn't have a mouse. As this is something Adobe has never addressed as the device market has become more mobile, this is the deal stopper.

In short, it's not just that Flash isn't a web standard, it's that Flash was set up to never be a web standard. As another Adobe file format designed to protect content, it's also designed to protect itself, as a read-only format. The average user can't afford to create Flash files due to Adobe's extravagant software costs.

Everything is stacked against Flash's success as anything more than a specialty video format for the desktop. Adobe took a gamble with PDF and won. They took a gamble with Flash and appear to be losing. Ironically, with Adobe taking out anti-Apple ads, a large part of PDF's success is that OSX adopting it as standard export and printing format.

And another interesting fact: Apple's QuickTime format is actually capable of creating movies that work like websites, but Apple must have decided somewhere along the way that since QuickTime was unlikely to be a web standard, it wasn't worth the gamble.

Next: Demo HTML 5 on your iPad.

iPad User Guide for iBooks

Apple has made the iPad manual available for free through the iBooks Store. This freebie is literally a nice addition to your library.

iPad keyboard secrets.

The iPad keyboard is a clever little thing. It can make typing on your iPad a surprisingly smooth experience once you get the hang.


Turn to Landscape.
Once you get used to the fact that turning your iPad is part of its function, it ceases to become an annoyance. Most apps are designed so that you edit in Portrait mode and enter text in Landscape mode. When you turn to Landscape both the text and keyboard get bigger making typing allot easier. The keys are actually just a hair smaller than on a real Mac keyboard.


Have faith.
The keyboard corrects itself. Just type and don't worry about your mistakes. When you're finished, go back and you'll be surprised at how many have already been corrected for you.


What would you autosuggest?
With many words you'll get an Autosuggest popup with an x beside it. Tapping the spacebar accepts the suggestion. Tapping the x gets rid of it.


Autopunctuate.
Typing a double space after a word will insert a period, add a space and cap the first letter of the next sentence. You can turn off Auto Cap in Settings>General>Keyboard. Also, for most words that require an apostrophe, just type without it and iPad inserts it. We're doesn't work. If you want its, you'll have to tap the x on the popup.


A key of many characters.
When you hold down certain keys you'll get more options. If you want an é, just hold down the e key and tap it in the pop up. You'll find extras logically hiding under these keys: e y u i o a s l z x c n ! , . 0 - $ & @ ? ! % ' "

Note that the " key hides smart quotes and the - key hides an emdash.


Slide into numbers.
To quickly add a digit, hold the Shift key and slide up. The numbers keyboard appears and disappears when you release from your choice.


Unlocking Caps Lock.
In Settings>Keyboard>General you can enable Caps Lock. Once enabled, double tap the Shift key to turn it on and single tap to turn it off.


Scratch that.
The Delete key will backspace through single characters if you hold it. Keep holding and it will start deleting whole words. Careful, it get vicious. To quickly delete a single word, double tap on it and hit the delete key. To delete a whole paragraph, triple or quadruple tap on a word in the paragraph and hit the delete key. There are Undo and Redo keys on the second and third keyboards.


Netcuts.
In Safari and Mail holding the period key will give you .com and other options. Safari doesn't need a whole address in the URL bar. apple.com gets you there. apple will get you there too, since safari tries dot com as the first option.


It learns your style.
The keyboard actually learns how you type. After you've typed a word that's not in the Autosuggest list three times, it's added. When you've dismissed a word three times, it's removed. The more you use a word, the more likely it becomes an Autosuggest choice.You can seed your Autosuggest list by adding the words to the note field of any contact since Autosuggest uses Contacts as one of its databases. If you really screwed up the database the first few days you had your iPad you can reset it at Home>Settings>General>Reset>Reset Keyboard Dictionary.


Spellcheck.
Most apps have Spellcheck enabled. Red dots under a word means iPad questions it. Tap the word and you get suggestions. Even if the word is spelled correctly but not what you meant, it can change the word for you. Double tap a word and choose Replacement. You'll get a popup with suggestions.


Give your writing some definition.
iPad has the same sensible built-in dictionary that Mac does. Currently Pages is the only app that uses it. In Pages, double tap on a word, choose More, and choose Dictionary.


Go international. Or go crazy.
In Setttings>General>Keyboard you can enable the international keyboards. The Chinese keyboard even allows you to handwrite ideograms. One of nice features of a virtual keyboard is that iPad can easily do alternative keyboards, like Dvorak.


The option of no options.
Autocap, autosentence, autocorrect are all able to be disabled in Settings>General>Keyboard

These are the tricks I have discovered. If I find more I'll update this post.