Windows 8 App review: Fine Cooking

     Overview

     I have always loved magazines and a good "magazine" app is hard to come by. This app shows true potential among the current crop of preview apps. The other magazine that I have reviewed My History Digest goes with a more web styled approach, but the Fine cooking magazine follows the path the Fine Homebuilder app took: the traditional magazine look and feel. The app has a lot of good features that all work unlike the Homebuilder app, and it also has a beautiful look and is pretty quick in app. The speed stops there. It took me 30 minutes to download 1 issue and there was only two to choose from. I was pretty disappointed at the lack of issues, but that is becoming very common among magazine apps before RTM. Another piece of criticism I have to give is that the text is too small for comfortable use. You are forced to view any content in zoomed view otherwise it is unreadable on a 1366x768 screen (a full HD screen renders text even smaller). In zoomed view you can not leaf to another page which forces you to exit the current view and then leaf over. Currently pages are rendered in two page mode so if it was rendered say in 1 page mode the problem would be fixed.

     Functionality

     Loading the main screen was pretty quick probably because there is nothing there. Loading up a pre-downloaded magazine takes about 4-6 seconds and there are some pictures of recipes that work part of the time. In a design aspect there is a lot of empty space that could be utilized by even a simple Office 15 like theme where they put flowers on the edges or lines you understand. It is not like the issues are even new they are from May and April. After you open your downloaded issue you have two options: 1 go to a recipe or 2 start reading the issue. Navigation is powered by the hated side buttons or if you click in the article you can use the left and right buttons. There is no fancy turning animations and the zoom function is not completely polished. There is a full screen mode which wastes some space on the side and the text is still too small for reading. If you try going through the magazine quickly then it starts to stutter and some pages do not display. There are some other functions like showcasing all of the articles in a grid or strip function. 

     Conclusion

     It did not provide the most pleasant experience, but still it laid a good groundwork for what looks to be a solid app come time for the RTM or Windows 8 release.

Rating// 3.8 out of 5

Windows 8 App review: My History Digest

     Overview

     The My History Digest is a magazine style app that currently showcases some premium looking articles that are pretty in depth into history. I really like the layout of the application and think other magazines or news websites like, The Verge, Engadget, and Better Homes and Garden should really follow the History Digest route. There are two other apps that follow a real magazine layout like this are the Fine Home building and the Telegraph which I both do not use (yet). The layout has a consistency with the horizontal scrolling of Windows 8 that shows itself in the start screen and the Windows Store. The My History Digest is an excellent looking app that is designed nicely but the content situation is very bad with only 3 articles. Still there is so much information there it might be enough to satisfy your history buff self. 

    Functionality

     The one good thing about the My History Digest is the premium app feel. It loads first time in around 3 seconds which is faster than Slap Dash Podcast and opens up to the screenshot seen above. Surprisingly for a free app that is a magazine it has very little lag when going between articles. Sadly there has been a lot of reading apps in the Windows Store (You version Bible, Bible Pronto, Free Books) that have some lag between turning pages and the Free Books app has horrible formatting. The lag is only when you turn pages in an article which is very annoying. Instead of the Wikipedia approach they took the Free books approach that is these little side buttons you press that we saw in the original Kindle app. Still they are a lot more responsive than the ones found in the You version Bible app. You can see the design and effort that was put into this app that really makes it shine far above many apps. There maybe only 3 articles but remember this is not a big company behind this project like the History channel that can fund it and how many writers work for no pay. Remember that this project looks like a group of developers, graphic designers, and History guru's converged and decided to make a Windows 8 app.

     Conclusion 

      This app is very eye catching and even with only 3 articles they are jam packed with a lot of information and is very well displayed. My only two quirks are the annoying side bars which may be more responsive than others that I have seen. Also it is short on content which I think since the articles are probably 3,000 + words are being hammered out and lay in preparation for Windows 8 as we speak.
 Rating//4.8/5