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AA0KA

Joined: Sat, Apr 4th 1998, 00:00 Roles: N/A Moderates: N/A

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Our magazine app suggestions Apr 5th 2021, 17:20 1 4,712 on 5/4/21

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Our magazine app suggestions AA0KA on 5/4/21
First time post on this forum, so I hope this is appropriate.
As a long time member, since I was a teenager in the 60s, I have always enjoyed reading QST. Lately, I have been traveling a lot and I have had to use the digital app to read it and QEX, but I find there are two areas that would benefit a lot from two small changes. First, the suggestions and then the reasoning:
1. Include a bubble with a page number on the thumbnail of each issue of the magazines in the app. The page number would be the last page the reader has read and would default to 1 when a new mag has been downloaded.
2. When the app is unable to contact headquarters during its "refresh of magazines" (or whatever it is called?) if it fails, let the user read the magazines that have already been downloaded.

Reasons:
1 Page number; Often I read only a couple of pages of a magazine at a time and, currently, if the app is totally closed, it goes back to the first page. Then, I spend way too much time either sliding through the pages are entering page numbers in the top bar in a hit or miss strategy, to get back to where I was the last time. Also, having the last page you have read displayed on the thumbnails on the apps home screen allows you to quickly see what older issues you may have missed reading (this happened to me because we moved and mail was forwarded only some of the time). It would, also, be very useful to our newer members who might want to go back to earlier issues. "now, which issues have I read, so far?"
2 Let us read the magazines that we have already downloaded, no matter what. A couple times, while camping in a trailer, we had no internet service and the app tried to connect. When it couldn't it failed to allow me to read previously downloaded issues. Just the other day, I opened the app in my home, with internet service, and it said it could not refresh content and would not let me use the app. I found out that ARRL.org was down that morning (can't remember when, but I think it was about two Sundays ago, early in the morning).

As an advanced Android programmer, I know that both of these are minor changes. When I asked the developer (PageSuite?) about this a year ago, they said "we developed it to the spec'. When I tried to go through HQ, I hit a dead end.

Hopefully others agree.
Kim, AA0KA

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