subject: iPad Review : Email, VPN and CMS [print this page] iPad Review : Email, VPN and CMS iPad Review : Email, VPN and CMS
Email
Composing emails application an iPad is beneath fiddly than on a touchscreen handset such as the iPhone, attributable to its abundantly ample basic keyboard (see below).
However, the blueprint of the basic keyboard is a bugbear, with the assorted characters advance beyond three screens, the aboriginal of which is mostly aloof for Qwerty letters. To admission less-popular characters, users will be always cycling through to the additional or third awning - apostrophes, for instance, are on awning two. A accessory acrimony conceivably but one that absolutely slows me down.
While scrolling application a flick of the feel is hardly faster than application a abrasion or touchpad, the consistent abundance accretion is alas minimal.
VPN
My abutting move is to get the iPad on the VPN so I can admission our agreeable administration arrangement (CMS).
I alpha with a pre-emptive IM to tech abutment which credibility me in the administration of the centralized wiki and a 'how to guide' for VPN admission via iPhones. Our citizen IT abutment authority is analytic assured this will do the trick.
After delving into the iPad's settings - and canonizing to not aloof save the settings but additionally about-face the VPN on - I'm acceptable to go...
CMS
I was assured our agreeable administration arrangement to account austere headaches for the iPad, actuality as it's proprietarycomputer application abounding with scrollable agreeable boxes and fiddly drop-down menus.
The iPad about deals decidedly able-bodied with the majority of these deformed card layouts.
The capital agreeable box - area the anatomy argument of accessories appears - is beneath happy, however, with the argument accession way out to the right-hand ancillary of the screen. As a result, I accept to do a lot of annexation larboard and appropriate as I type, in adjustment to analysis and adapt my story.
Scrolling to the basal of some of the boxed airheaded can additionally be fiddly - at one point I accept to assumption that I charge to use two fingers on the awning at the aforementioned time: one to baddest the accurate card box on the page, the added to bash up and bottomward aural it to annal through its contents.
Oxymoronically enough, it's fiddly yet automatic back my hazarded assumption meets with success.
Typing anon into CMS causes a few added gremlins: admitting the iPad's abounding 9.7-inch display, if you're application it in mural approach the basic keyboard hogs bisected the screen's real-estate, acceptation accounting and alteration can still feel rather claustrophobic - abnormally as the keyboard obscures the cursor if you bang on any argument in the basal bisected of the screen.
Entering HTML into belief additionally presents a botheration as it requires triangular brackets.
Each time I charge to blazon on the iPad, I accept to aeon to the third basic keyboard - an acid breach in the accounting flow. There may be an app out there that lets users customise the blueprint of the basic keyboards but that's article I'd accept to absorb time hunting for.
Another affliction is autocorrect - a 'feature' of Safari that can account spelling-based commotion back accounting in CMS - is an acquired aftertaste and there's no accessible ambience to about-face it off.
But for me the capital acrimony at this point is the abridgement of a abrasion or added attention aeronautics aid. Why do you charge a abrasion back you accept a accomplished capacitive touchscreen at your fingertips, you may ask?
The botheration is that the iPad's touchscreen is abundant for some things, such as zooming in and out by avidity the screen, but feel gestures are not as absolute a apparatus as a abrasion arrow is. Back attempting to apple-pie up afterwards erroneous autocorrect - 'urea' rather than 'URL' was one agreeable archetype - the touchscreen acquaintance can get actual arresting indeed.
To accurately position the cursor area I appetite it in a branch I accept to zoom in aboriginal and again tap - a clumsy way to assignment compared to the attention of a abrasion click. The accession of an optical nav-pad or roller brawl - like the one begin on the Android-based G1 smartphone - would boldness this account issue, but Apple's aesthetics of accepting aloof one concrete button on the advanced of the accessory agency added aeronautics aids are absurd to arise on approaching iPad iterations.
