Notebooks 5.1 just became available on the App Store. On the iPad, this update eliminates Notebooks’ tendency to freeze when used in portrait orientation on iOS 6; this could have happened when creating books or using other actions from the pop over window. – This issue earned us a couple of one-star ratings on the App Store, and we are sorry that you had to waiting for this fix so long – it required some serious reengineering which had to be tested carefully.

Apart from this important fix, Notebooks 5.1 also introduces a set of interesting additions and improvements.

Fixes and Corrections

  • When using in iPad in portrait orientation, the list of books and documents now appears in a slider, which enhances usability and “reliability”
  • Downloading the Quickstart Guide from within the Quickstart document works as expected again
  • Video playback has been fixed on iOS 6
  • The extra keyboard keys are disabled for formatted documents on iOS 6.
    This is our workaround for a bug in iOS 6, but we will bring these buttons back as soon as the iOS issue has been fixed.
  • Search in document: the search field accepts keyboard input without extra tap (iOS6)
  • Improved import from Safari (bookmarklet) keeps Notebooks responsive during download (download may take a little longer, though)

Dropbox Changes and Improvements

  • It is now possible to select the sync folder on Dropbox; you are no longer forced to use /Notebooks
    If you are already using Dropbox sync and want to change the sync folder now, you might want to take a look at this hint.
  • Auto sync can be turned on for the top level book (is it off by default)
  • Auto sync is less obtrusive and should not get in your way too much; at the same time, it should be more reliable because it checks for changes in single documents more frequently
  • When you turn off Dropbox sync, Notebooks suggests to reset sync history, which avoids unwanted side effects
  • Sync reports contain clearer information and instructions

More Changes, in no specific Order

  • The Jump menu is now also available from a document’s title in split view (iPad only)
  • The Settings dialog is more comfortable to navigate and faster to dismiss
  • TextExpander is supported in rich text documents
  • .markdown is supported as editable document type
  • “Open Enclosing Book” from a document’s action menu (this is a more obvious place than a document’s info)
  • “Save as Plain Text” is available for more document types (it is available for all document types that are full text searchable)
  • “Combine Notes” no longer adds table of contents and produces cleaner results (the TOC can be turned on and off in a separate action already)
  • “Extract Tasks” detects your defined task marker in rich text documents. Moreover, this action no longer creates a new task list each time you use it; if a list with the name of your document already exists, Notebooks uses that to add new tasks.
  • It is possible to insert multiple images in one step (select multiple images from the album or copy multiple images to the pasteboard)
  • “New from Pasteboard” immediately opens the pasted document, so you no longer need to look for it on the list
  • Remove documents from Context books with the delete gesture
  • Extracted Palm Memos preserve their creation date
  • Links in a document’s info appear in a more legible color
  • There are many more interface improvements and fixes
Notebooks 5.1 for iPhone and iPad