A Major iReader Improvement

by Henry Neils
President

Our team just had a huge breakthrough in the usability of the iReader!  The "Holy Grail" with this product, we're convinced, is that nobody would ever have to turn it off for any reason, and I think we now have that.

The problem, as we've heard you express, is that an iReader preview is great when you want it, and annoying when you don't. So, we've added a "gesture feature."  It allows you to simply move your cursor into a very unobtrusive, transparent icon next to a link you've scrolled over, which then tells iReader to deliver the goods!  If you don't need to preview a link, then don't gesture into that icon and just go on with your normal browsing activities.

Here's what the little transparent icon looks like, shown next to a link in the "Technology" section on today's NYTimes.com home page (look in the lower left of this image). That's what comes up when you move your cursor over that story link.

The next image shows what you see after you gesture into that little icon -- that is, the iReader Preview Window for that link pops up at that point.  Again, this only happens if you move your cursor into that little transparent icon.

Right now, we only have this update for the FireFox version (Mac or PC), because it is so much easier to prototype. Once we perfect it on FireFox, we will port it to IE. (And we'll let you know right away here on our blog.)

The credit for all the improvements we've been making to iReader goes to all of you -- the bloggers and their readers out there who've found us and taken the time to give us your reactions, comments, and suggestions. Your responses have been great!  You told us what to do, and we're listening! 

Those of you who have already downloaded the iReader plug-in for Firefox, please uninstall it now and go to this page again so you can download the latest. Then, click install and check out this improvement!

And do let us know what you think -- either by entering a comment right here on this blog, using the link below, or simply by emailing me at beta-support (at) syntactica (dot) com.

Thanks for being an iReader beta tester!

 

Comments

[CJ]

Just tested this out...great enhancement. Unobtrusive. A much better user experience.

[Graeme Thickins]

Works great for me, too...