Hi,
The BBC News App initially released for the iPad only is now available
as a universal binary for iPhone and iPod Touch as well.
Unfortunately, due to commercial pressures from other media in the UK,
the BBC are not yet able to offer this app in the UK, pending a review
of the terms of their charge. See the Guardian article titled "BBC
told to delay iPhone apps" for details:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/29/bbc-digital-media>
You can get the free BBC News app (available everywhere except the UK)
from:
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bbc-news/id364147881?mt=8>
The app offers streaming from BBC World Services ("Live Radio" button
at top left), as well as articles in various news categories. The
"Edit" button allows you to add other categories (e.g. for specific
categories of interest like "Sports", "Entertainment", "Health", etc.
or for additional news coverage for specific regions of the world) and
also to reorder them, by using the "reorder" button at the right of
each entry. (Double tap and hold the button, then drag the entry up or
down before releasing.) It also allows you to add coverage for news in
other languages. (This will be more useful when we get the language
rotor following the OS 4.0 release on June 21.) Note that on the iPad
the "Edit" button only appears when the device is in landscape mode
and on the iPhone or iPod Touch this button only appears in portrait
mode. There are three unlabeled buttons at the bottom on the iPhone
app once you have double tapped on a news category when you read
individual articles. These are: a sharing button (bottom left) and
font size smaller and larger buttons (bottom right). There should also
be buttons to go forward and backwards to the next/previous article in
each news category at the top right of the screen for each article.
On my iPod Touch, the screen just "boinks" when I touch the top right
corner. To advance to the next or previous article I need to toggle
VoiceOver off and swipe to the left or right.
They seem to have re-designed the app slightly to match the iPhone
app. I think the original release of the BBC app for the iPad worked
better with VoiceOver for iPad users. To go through the complete list
of stories in each category I now toggle VoiceOver off and swipe to
the left or right in the category strip. Within a category, I
currently prefer reading in portrait mode on the iPad and landscape
mode on the iPhone/iPod Touch. The reason is that this gives a better
browsing experience flicking through or touching the individual
article titles (in the respective modes on iPod and iPad), and also
displays more articles in each category before I have to toggle
VoiceOver off and swipe (if I want to see more than just the first
entries in the category). The other reason for using landscape (in
the case of the iPhone/iPod Touch) is when you stream from the "Live
Radio" button, your player is launched in landscape mode (just as with
movies, etc.), so it's easier to access the controls. (This is also
true if you add the "Audio & Video" category to your selected
categories; any selections you play will launch the player controls in
landscape mode.)
You should all probably experiment on preferred settings and playback
usage. I'm mostly using the iPad for this app, since the layout and
selection are much more convenient: many categories displayed at once,
and you can start or stop the "Live Radio" and audio or video
selections streaming without leaving the current screen display, etc.
I'm not sure whether the font adjustments help at all for low vision
users, but as a tip, if you don't want to adjust these within the app
screen using the unlabeled buttons on a per article basis, you can go
to "Settings > BBC News > Article Font Size" in the main iPhone/iPod
Touch/iPad Menu. Incidentally, although those buttons are labeled in
the iPad app, they now have ridiculously long and unhelpful names like
"bottom bar text decker button" for the font size adjustment and "icon
underscore header underscore button underscore s button" for the
sharing button. Also, off topic, but does anyone recognize the voice
used for the "Help" button information at the bottom of the "Edit"
screen of this app? It's not the standard UK voice for the iPhone.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
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