Automatic bookmarking of each app has been released to iPhone, Android, Palm, Blackberry, Chrome, Safari, and other platforms. It's a significant change for the user experience and a new feature that allows rapid release of more enhancements. Fat Library of E-books
Each Keys mobile app is a collection of 30 to 200 terms, hundreds of images and videos, and activities like Learn, Watch, Spin, Match, and Guess that aid learning and memorization. When compared to e-books, each app can have thousands of pages - ie thicker than the textbook to the right.
As our library has expanded to over 600 apps, we needed a better way to track the status in each app.
The automatic bookmark feature has no user interface - it just works. When you select a term, that bookmarked term travels from activity to activity. When you restart an app, the last term shows immediately. In short, it's a bookmark.
The Technical Details
We use local storage, a feature that is supported by the iPhone, iPad, and iTouch (v2 or better); Android (v2+); HP Palm (all versions); Blackberry (version 5+); Safari (v4+); Chrome (v4+); Opera (v10+); Firefox (v3.5+); and Explorer (v8+). Other browsers from Japan and Nokia may support the same feature. IE6, IE7, older Firefox browsers won't have the automatic bookmarking.
Using local storage, we'll be able to release many more features that enhance the learning experience.
PS: A belated thank you to the 1,500,000 users who have downloaded Keys. And a special thank to the Amazon tech who suggested this approach to improving the user experience.
Although the new browsers from Blackberry and Microsoft each claim full support for HTML5, these new browsers still have quirks that blacken the real experience of a true HTML5 platform such as our coffee-table apps. Multi-touch and animation services are lagging, and some simple bugs have not been corrected by these companies.
Posts
