There’s a fair amount of congratulating to be done when it comes to the release of Instapaper 4.2. Not only did Marco Arment manage to improve upon the reading experience of his best-in-class app, but he did so while welcoming a new member into his family. There’s a lot to love in v4.2: Page Turner […]
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Quick Look: Instapaper 4.2 for iPhone and iPad

May 10th 2012 by
Instapaper 4.2

There’s a fair amount of congratulating to be done when it comes to the release of Instapaper 4.2. Not only did Marco Arment manage to improve upon the reading experience of his best-in-class app, but he did so while welcoming a new member into his family.

There’s a lot to love in v4.2:

Page Turner

A new Fast Pagination mode makes reading articles feel more like reading eBooks, with silky smooth page-dissolving transitions and a great new control scheme; there are three ways to navigate a paginated article: swipe left to flick to the next page, drag a finger along the new dot bar, or tap just below the text to turn the page. You can also enjoy iBooks-style turning animations in 4.2, but I still prefer Marco’s.

Less Chrome

Full-screen mode is now set to activate automatically, a few seconds after you open an article; the mode is also smart to turn itself off when you reach the end of the text, making it easier to close an article or share it. A two-finger swipe to the right will close the article you’re in – something you’ll be grateful for while all the controls are hidden in full-screen mode.
This is another example of gestures and automation done right: power users will know to use two fingers to leave an article, while newer users will be presented with on-screen buttons when they enter or leave an article.

Share Better

Instapaper can now share text to Drafts and Quotebook, making it easier to quickly save some of your favourite quotes. Sharing text with Drafts will automatically place the origin URL at the top of the note, so you know where the quote comes from.

Simply put, Instapaper 4.2 is one of the most significant updates the app has seen for a while – not because the added features are “new”, but because they really flesh out the concepts added in earlier updates. Full-screen mode and pagination were present in previous versions of Instapaper, but it’s this version that has really brought those concepts to fruition.

 

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