Had Potential

UPDATE: July 12 - After finally being updated, this program still is a disappointment. The default font size has been increased from 12 to 15. Thats it. It still crashes when it encounters midi files or scripts in a page. When this happens, the only way to get the app working again is to delete and reinstall. There is still no tabbed browsing despite the screen shots shown above. The sidebar is still fixed. There is still absolutely no support from the developer. In short, nothing has changed.

UPDATE: This program has now stopped working completely. It starts, but will not search or access Wiki at all. There is absolutely no support from the developer, nor has there been an update in over a year.

Positives for this app are that it includes support for Lions full screen mode, and it offers page title options while a search is typed in the search box. The picture viewer also is a nice convenience.

Negatives are numerous, however: 1. Despite the screenshot in the App Store, this program does not offer tabbed browsing of any kind. The contextual menu in the articles offers an option to open a link in a new window, but this does absolutely nothing. The only way to have two or more articles open at the same time is to open a new window from the File menu. 2. The default font size (12) is readable, but quite small. Increasing the font size means that the window will not actually scroll down to the bottom of the page. 3. While a nice feature, the picture viewer crashes if it encounters scripts on a page for multimedia like WAV or midi files. 4. The history in the left side bar is a convienient way to backrack pages without csrolling one at a time with the back button, however there is no way to clear the history at all. Neither does the history cache reset when the app is closed. 5. The side bar which contains the search function and the history list can not be hidden, closed or minimized. Considering how small 12 point font looks in the window, it seems as though Wiki Reader is simply copying a page from Wikipedia and displaying it in a window other than a web browser. If the side bar could be switched off at will, the image would be larger and the text more readable.

Overall, Wiki Reader has potential to be a great utility. But to do so, it should be uprgaded to interact more as a web browser and less as a PDF viewer.

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