[sordie]

I just spent some time playing with the 2.0 Beta, and here is my feedback to IREX:

1 - Zoom functionality is a nice effort, but right now it gets a D. Here are the reasons.
- If the page is zoomed so that it does not fit the screen, now the user is required to toggle between pan mode for seeing the rest of the page, and page mode to move between pages. More over, these modes can only be toggled through a sub menu. So the operation becomes something like this:
You just switched to a new page,so you are at the top of the page (which means you are in page mode). You read the top half, and you now want read the bottom half. Tap menu, then tap Zoom then tap Pan. Then use pagebar to move to the bottom half. Now you want to go to the next page. Tap menu, tap zoom, tap pan to undo pan mode, now tap pagebar. Total of EIGHT( that's right, 8) taps to read a page. This is clearly NOT what you'd call a well designed interface. Shaggy's suggestion in another thread clearly and simply solves the problem: let the pagebar tap move you to the bottom of the page, then to the next page. I don't understand the logic behind the current implementation. It actually took a greater effort to program it, and makes the usability worse.
-The selection zoom is not an effective method of replacing crop margins. Unfortunately, the WACOM digitizer is not very sensitive. Accordingly,when you select the text to zoom into, it either does not cut out all of the margins, or cuts off some of the text. This, regardless of how hard you try to position the stylus precisely. It takes several tries to get it right,making it far too cumbersome to be worthwhile. Either improve the digitizer sensitivity (is that even possible through software), or bring back "remove margins".
- The Landscape mode still defaults to "fit page". Why? I think everyone in this form has provided sufficient feedback to make the point very clear that this is utterly useless. No text is readable in this mode. So why even have it? (can't figure out a reason except some project manager thinks it is cool for some reason). The landscape mode needs to default to fit width. Then of course, the whole PAN/Page turn mode switching needs to be fixed, because really,having to do EIGHT taps to read a page is simply not doable.

2 - The note taking functionality is again a good effort, and would get a B+ if it worked:
- The writing functionality is messed up around the edges. About 2cm from each edge, the pen strokes are not clearly registered and show up elongated, compressed, and displaced. At the top of the device, the scribbles show up as a very faint gray. They sometimes darken once the page is refreshed (or the note reopened).
- The pen/eraser switch needs to be an icon at the bottom that can be toggled - menus are really cumbersome to use for touch devices. They are a legacy of keyboard/pointing device inputs of computers.
- The eraser,while erasing turns the annotations into gray, rather then actually erase them. They are gone after the next page refresh.
- The device froze several times while using the note application

3 - Go To (get an A)
- Way to go. It works

4- PDF Scribbling (would be B+ if it worked):
- Please see all the comments under note taking. All the bugs are present here as well.

5 - Other bugs
- sometimes the menus do not display properly. Only a frame is drawn,but the elements are not displayed
- When doing the selection zoom, the zoom happens while I am in the middle of selecting. I guess the software thinks I have lifted the stylus,even though I am still moving the stylus to select. This is particularly problematic while moving the stylus from the top-left corner to the bottom-right corner. Haven't noticed it as much while moving the stylus in other directions.

I am looking forward to seeing the software improve. The device has lot's of potential and I can't wait to see the software bring that potential out to its fullest.