rolling. rolling.

Overall I really enjoyed reading Wired Mag for iPad today. I haven’t read Wired all the way through in years. This new app is beautifully designed and more elegant to use than I expected. But it’s not perfect at all. Here are my beefs:

• You can’t select text. The articles might as well be JPG images. Accordingly, text isn’t as sharp as it could be. Also, I’m not used to seeing overly kerned type on a digital screen. Icky.

• Articles should have a share button with links to their web counterparts. Right now it’s still more social to use the website if you want to drive people to Wired.

• They should use an in-app web view to display out-of-mag content, like advertiser sites and related links. See Twitterific for iPad for best implementation. Fixed in V2.

• Staff box and author names on articles should be links to a mail view for instant feedback.

• It’s not evident which articles or ads get the vertical scroll treatment. You have to test each page to make sure you’re not missing anything.

• I’d like to know if my ad clicks and video views are being tracked. The long EULA says Wired tracks usage, but when? What should I avoid?

• Audio is page specific. If you swipe to a new page, it stops. The NPR app handles audio better.

• No page numbers makes articles hard to reference. Shouldn’t we still be able to cite articles in this realm?

• What’s the point of having a fill-in-the-blank puzzle if you can’t type in the answer?

• Would like an option to make all photos full screen. There’s great photography and digital art in here that deserves more pixels. Conversely, I wish videos played inline instead of full screen. Fixed in V2

• There are a few internal links between stories, but there is no “back” button, a browser convention for hypertext.

Looking forward to next month’s issue.