Articles for iPad – Review

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By: Sophia Teutschler

Version #: 1.1

Date Released: 2010-04-01

Developer: Sophiestication Software

Price: 2.99

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You use Wikipedia, don’t you? Of course, you do. And since you own an iPhone, iTouch, or iPad, chances are you use the stock app, Safari, for browsing the Web on your device. It’s also highly probable that you access Wikipedia using Safari instead of using a third-party app aimed specifically at pulling information from Wikipedia and displaying it using a supposedly more readable interface because perhaps you can’t be bothered with downloading any app of that sort when you’re doing just fine with Safari displaying Wikipedia’s mobile version, right? If your answer to that last question is "yes," then I bet you haven’t heard of this new Wikipedia app I’ve been using. It’s called Articles, and it’s rather excellent.

If you’re used to the general format of articles in Wikipedia, and if you’ve used Safari on your iPhone at least a couple of times, then you already know how to use Articles. When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll be greeted with a familiar interface, very familiar indeed. That’s because Articles mimics the appearance and basic functions of the Safari app, from the multiple tab browsing down to the little navigation and bookmark buttons at the bottom of the screen. Oh, did I say "multiple tap browsing"? That’s right. With this app, you can browse more than one Wikipedia article at a time as you would browse more than one site on Safari. One great thing about this is that the articles you have opened are cached in their respective tabs so you can easily get back to them at a later time.

Reading articles on Articles is, for the most part, a breeze. The text is presented in medium-sized Georgia by default but you can resize the font by pinching the screen. The app features a unique image viewer that zooms in on an accompanying image when you tap on it, shows relevant information, and lets you copy or save the image to your photo library. Jumping between sections of the article is performed by double-tapping then holding as you slide upward or downward across the screen. It’s a novel way to navigate within an article, but I’d rather have the outline of the article’s content appear on the screen so I can find my desired section more easily. Another distinct feature is the presentation of tables. Rather than being displayed inline with the rest of the article, a table is shown separately. A link is provided where the table should be, and clicking on this will make the table appear. Again, a novel idea, but the presentation can be a bit confusing without lines serving as borders between rows and columns. Articles can also be viewed in landscape mode; the screen orientation can be locked or unlocked by going to the top of the article, then pulling down and releasing it. It’s a method that was no doubt inspired by Tweetie 2’s innovative refresh mechanism, but used for this purpose it’s not so intuitive, especially when you’re in the middle of a article and doing so would require going back to the top of the article.

All in all, Articles is an impressive app. The interface is very clean and familiar and it also runs very smoothly. I have a few problems with most of the app’s novelties, but they’re just minor ones. Don’t get me wrong, Articles is an excellently designed app. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have abandoned the Safari app for my Wikipedia needs in favor of this one.