Highlights

• Supports iPad 3 resolution
• Music is available in Galleries
• Dropbox can be used to load images for backgrounds and into galleries, only JPEG is currently supported
• A new side navigation bar has been created to help users find features more easily
• Twitter and email integration allows quick sending of screenshots
• Many fixes and subtle improvements have been made including design of editing menus and improvements to transitions in galleries

Revised image sizing guidance

The following image sizing is advised for the non-retina and retina screens

iPad 1 and 2

As before, the minimum image size we recommend is 1024×768 as this exactly fills the screen. Maximum size should be no more than 2048 x 1536 for good performance when zooming. Larger images may be usable but this risks making the app run short of memory in some cases, particularly on the iPad1

iPad 3 and later – retina screens

The minimum image size we recommend is 2048 x 1536 as this exactly fills the retina screen. Zoom images have been tested up to 22 megapixel and while this is stable (as the iPad 3 has twice the RAM of the iPad2 and four times that of the iPad1) zooming in can take a long time. We believe that 12 megapixel, 4096×3072 is a good maximum size if you want to permit zooming. As always we don’t force you to use smaller images, but you have the responsibility to try a smaller size if you find the performance is affected negatively.

Music in galleries

A simple music playing method has been introduced. This allows a different music choice to be played in each gallery. Sound is turned on and off globally by tapping the speaker icon in any gallery. Music loops continuously in this version. Further music controls may be added in future updates.

Dropbox image loading

Users with a Dropbox account can link Foliobook to their account and download images from any folder in their Dropbox account. This has a number of advantages. Firstly its a simpler process to import images than by going through iTunes. Secondly, this method causes fewer generations of JPEG compression in the files. In addition, colour quality may be improved as iTunes import appears to alter the colour profile of an image. Note that currently only JPEG files can be be imported from Dropbox. We will support additional image types when possible .

Side navigation bar

A new side navigation bar will appear throughout the app. This side navigation can be hidden by single tapping on the iPad screen. It is possible to disable the side navigation, this is likely to be necessary on the home page of your Foliobook. But we recommend leaving the side navigation bar enabled on all other screens. This is because the back button allows a reader/user of the app to easily navigate back out of galleries and categories.

Twitter and email screenshots

In previous versions single or multiple images could be shared via an email feature. In Foliobook 3.0 screenshots can be made anywhere in the app and either be Tweeted or shared via Email. This means that any design created in Foliobook can be shared with the world via Twitter. The #foliobook tag is automatically added to tweets and can be removed if desired. However users who include the tag will be included in a regular ‘competition’ to find new candidates for our hall of fame. Screenshots are copied at full resolution, so keep in mind that by Tweeting these, you will need to accept Twitters terms and conditions for images uploaded to Twitpic. We believe that these T&C’s are reasonably photographer friendly, however you will need to make your own assessment of whether the terms and conditions meet your own business requirements.

Cosmetic improvements

Subcategories have been renamed to ‘categories’ in the interest of simplicity.

Refinements

Video presentation has been improved

Video poster image can be set to a selected frame from a video or from a still image, just click on the small video camera icon on the surround of the thumbnail in the lightbox to reset the video poster frame

Video play button has been changed in the gallery to a more consistent visual design

Video play mode now defaults to the full controls when a video is played from a gallery, this allows early cancellation of the video

Check out this link on our redesigned website for the rules and instructions on how to enter. The competition is open to owners of Foliobook who post a review on iTunes before the end of 2011

Rules and entry details

iOS 5.0 is not recommended as images may be automatically deleted by iOS in the case of a shortage of storage space on the iPad. A new Backup and Restore capability provides the ability to create complete backups of a portfolio and to copy it to other iPads running Foliobook

Highlights

• Runs on iOS5.0.1
• Backup and restore functions are added
• Fixes a couple of outstanding bugs, including an annoying problem where background images in portrait format did not correctly retain their size settings

iTunes Backups

Backups are stored in the iTunes Filesharing directory. To copy a portfolio between iPads, copy the backup file from iTunes. This file can then be shared and used by importing it into iTunes on another computer to allow a different iPad to restore the portfolio.

Note that backup files can get very large, and they will be automatically backed up via iCloud. We advise storing these files outside of iTunes in order not to fill up iCloud data usage unnecessarily. To do this, copy the backup file from iTunes and store it somewhere safely on your system. Then delete the backup file from iTunes

The problem

These capabilities while useful use the resources of the iPad quite heavily, and those resources are often thin on the ground, the main one being the available RAM in the iPad. For those who are not familiar with the difference, the RAM (random access memory) is what the iPad uses as a ‘short term memory’ for running programs.

On the iPad 1 the amount of RAM available is 256 Megabytes, and on the iPad 2 this is 512 Megabytes. Theres not much room for programs to play in. In fact Safari can regularly use 60Mb of memory, and Foliobook needs about 16-20 to run smoothly. At best on an iPad1 there is often only 60-100Mb available that apps like Foliobook can use, so its easy to get that filled up if Safari is running at the same time.

Users of the iPad2 should very rarely encounter problems as the iPad 2 comes with twice the available RAM of the iPad1. Luckily, for the iPad user there are things you can do that make Foliobook run better if you see the following symptoms.

1) Foliobook exits a gallery without being ‘told’ to do it.
2) Pictures move more jerkily than usual.
3) Reactions to links, buttons, navigation seems very slow.
4) The app exits by itself (crash).

Before allowing Foliobook to be sold via the app store we run tests of a variety of types which means that crashes are not caused by bugs in our program, crashes are almost always just caused by Foliobook running low on RAM, so this is something the user can help avoid, and we can’t do much about at our end, without removing some of the nice things our app does.

The fix

Luckily 9 times out of 10 there is a remedy that only takes a few seconds to use.

Double click on the round button on the iPad. You will then see a bar slide up from the bottom of the screen showing you what apps are running on the iPad in addition to Foliobook.

If you see Mobile Safari running, your problems may be over just by shutting that down as it uses a lot of RAM, in general it needs about twice the space Foliobook needs, but in truth it can’t hurt to shut down apps that you aren’t currently using and which are just hogging RAM when you don’t need them.

To shut down one or more app, touch one of the app icons and hold the finger down until the icons acquire badges and start to wiggle.

Once you see this, just tap the ‘-’ badge on the upper left to close the apps that appear here.

When you are done closing apps, just double click the round button again… and Foliobook will occupy the full screen again. So if you encounter a problem, such as slowness, you can quickly close some background apps without needing to stop and restart Foliobook.

In the past we’ve advised people to power off their iPad and power it on again, thats guaranteed to clean up a few things, but its very disruptive. Closing down background apps is much less time consuming and may be something you can even do in the middle of a presentation.

We would advise closing down unnecessary apps *before* you even start Foliobook and definitely before you give a presentation of your work.

In future we want to add some more capabilities to Foliobook like music playing during a slideshow, each feature we add can mean that Foliobook needs a bit more space to run successfully and with the iPad3 on the horizon, we’ll be needing to handle larger images if the rumours about higher screen resolution are true. Careful management of apps in the background is the quick and easy way to get the best out of our app for users of older iPads.

With this menu type, the links/buttons can be panned and moved to any place on the page.

If this menu type is selected in a subcategory, and no galleries or other elements are added to the subcategory, then it becomes impossible to exit the subcategory by pinching.

The solution to this problem is either

a) Add a gallery to the subcategory

b) Change the menu type, either through the toolbar menu, or by selecting a different theme from the theme wizard.

It will then be possible to exit the subcategory normally.

To understand these points further, please view the two subcategory video tutorials starting with this introduction. Following the approach used in the tutorials will avoid any problems.

An introduction to subcategories from Foliobook on Vimeo.

We advise holding off on upgrading until we release a new update of Foliobook (2.9) in the next week or two.

This is because there is a rare chance of experiencing data loss in Foliobook with these two upgrades, it has currently affected less than .1% of users, but we don’t want it to affect anyone who can avoid it.

This problem is a side effect of changes we made to accommodate updated data storage requirements made by Apple when iCloud was introduced. Unfortunately meeting this data requirements had an unintended side effect of making it possible for iOS to delete users pictures if an iPad is restored and/or starts to run out of storage space.

For anyone already running on 5.0 or 5.0.1, please ensure that your iPad has plenty of free storage space (5Gb if possible, but as much as you can spare if this isn’t possible) as this will safeguard you against the possibility of your imported images being ‘randomly’ deleted by iOS if runs out of storage space.

The 2.9 version of Foliobook will provide a fix for this and will in addition include backup/restore capability to help improve data security of Foliobook in future.

Subcategories Part 2 from Foliobook on Vimeo.

An introduction to subcategories from Foliobook on Vimeo.

We recommend this update for all Foliobook users who have upgraded to 2.7

At this point we haven’t used many new capabilities of iOS5, the aim has been instead to continue with the same functionality as version 2.6 but with some fixes. The release notes are below. Note that there are some known issues (see bottom) so if you are happy with version 2.3, and don’t immediately need iOS5 then you may want to consider delaying updates for a while until we have these corrected. There is one important fix for people who have already upgraded, or who bought 2.6, with respect to image quality. So we do recommend the update in this case.

Note that some of our recent changes to version 2.6 and 2.7 have been made to enhance the performance of transitions such as Wipe and Swipe. These changes have slightly increased the memory footprint of the app. As a result, we advise, particularly iPad 1 users to occasionally power off the iPad to free up memory resources. We are working in the next release or two to improve this situation.

The release notes for the coming version 2.7 update are below.

This version is compatible with iOS5 as well as iOS4.3

Please perform an iTunes backup prior to installation, as this iOS5 compatible version modifies where we store your existing data in order to comply with iCloud requirements. While this should work without incident, we recommend the precaution of a backup. See http://www.foliobook.mobi/faq/backup-and-restore for instructions

Additional features and fixes

Videos can be added to galleries if the video plugin is purchased

Start wizard and themes are improved

Fixes a bug in 2.6 causing a white line to be inserted along the edge and reducing image quality (detail) of some images

Fixes a bug in 2.6 causing no autoreturn function on all transitions

Known problems :

Text does not advance when using the full text mode (credits and copyright mode works correctly)

Autoreturn is not working on Swipe and Wipe transitions, but does work with Fade and Foliobook transitions

Help page on the gallery and slide sorter cannot be dismissed. The user must exit the app with the iPad button to dismiss help.