Updated iPad Experience for OpNote

Earlier this week, one of our doctors found a problem using OpNote's write-in textboxes on the iPad. We quickly replicated the problem here and fixed it. At the same time, we took the opportunity to enhance OpNote's iPad experience.

Apple has done a great service for web applications running on the iPad with iOS 5. Among other improvements for web developers in the mobile safari browser, Apple now provides that native, kinetic scrolling you've come to love on your iOS devices to web apps.

Wait, you may say, I already use flick gestures to scroll up and down when using OpNote! However, you were using a simulation of the native iOS scrolling effect that we implemented with an open source code library. It was never quite as good as the real thing, and also turns out to be the cause of our surgeon's bug, above. Removing the code that simulated native scrolling fixed our problem, and gave us the chance to upgrade to native scrolling using the new features in iOS 5. Anywhere you scroll in OpNote when using the iPad, you will experience high-performance, smooth touch scrolling.

While working on this, we noticed a few things that could be smoother on the OpNote Edit screen. Traditionally, OpNote-on-iPad required users to tap "Edit" in order to select and edit a section of the report. Now you can tap anywhere on a section's current answers to select it. In addition, flick scrolling could be confused with dragging and dropping answers to reorder them. Now, flick scrolling only happens on the left where the section labels are, and drag-drop or selection happens over the answers.

In short, touch behavior on the Edit screen is now redesigned and improved:

• Users can flick anywhere in the left column where the labels are to scroll. (purple rectangle below)
• Users can tap anywhere on the answers or edit button to select the section. (red rectangle below)
• After a section is selected and green arrows become visible, users can touch-and-drag to reorder answers. (purple oval below)

What do customers need to do?

Customers who want the best possible iPad experience should upgrade to iOS 5. OpNote will still work with older iOS versions, but you won't have kinetic scrolling and will have to use the non-kinetic, 2-finger scroll gesture (a real pain when you are used to the real thing!). iOS 5 if a free update that is available to all iPad 1 and 2 owners. Simply plug your iPad into your computer and follow the instructions in iTunes to upgrade.

We hope you enjoy these changes!