I've just finished giving the www.NoteTakerHD.com web site a totally new look and organization. Much of the old content is still available, along with a lot of new content. The site is no longer presented as a single page that you have to scroll through to find the different sections. It now has multiple sections, most with sub-sections, with navigation using buttons and links at the top. The site has also been made easier to use on an iPad, where many of you read it.

Initially the old version is still on www.softwaregarden.com/products/notetakerhd.

The web site was designed by Adina Bricklin, based on the old content with an eye to future needs. I wrote the Javascript to make it easier for me to maintain and populated it with the new content.

The web site was changed for a variety of reasons. It had become unwieldy for discovering and navigating the many different parts. Now that it is changed, I was able to add a new "Extras" section. This section gives me a place to present companion content for Note Taker HD, such as downloadable templates and clip art, as well as related physical material (initially some stickers).

The downloadable templates are a response to requests from many users. I had Mike Rzepka create several different PDF backgrounds, such as day planners and invoices, render them in a variety of colors, and then create blank docs using them. You can download any of these and put them in your Templates folder ready to use or further customize. See the instructions in the Extras section.

At the same time, I had Michal Blaustein create an initial set of image files that you can insert on a page. Unfortunately, most of the clip art makes use of the ability of PNG files to have transparent parts of an image. The release 6.5 version of Note Taker HD and earlier do not handle transparency (usually showing white instead). The next release, 6.6, will support transparency. I am, though, making the clip art available now, before version 6.6 is available in the Apple App Store, so I can be sure it is up and running the moment 6.6. comes out.

Version 6.6 is in final beta testing and will hopefully be submitted to Apple for approval very soon. It includes sub-folders, folder-locking, and a few other useful features.

I hope you find the new web site design helpful, and the new "Extras" useful.

Apple approved version 6.5 yesterday and it is in the App Store for upgrading. Reaction so far has been pretty good.

Many people seem to like the new color scheme and the ability to customize it with the Button Color app setting. This customization was put in for a variety of reasons. Some people like having color but may have different color preferences. Others wanted something very plain because they use the app in solemn situations (like in court) or were just distracted by the color. Yet other people needed a color scheme that was high-contrast for better visibility. (For them, I included a white/black scheme with the ability to have black button text instead of gray.) The gray bar gradient backgrounds were chosen to go as well as possible with all of the colors. Adina (who is doing a lot of the UI design) felt that the customization should be fun and simple, so she specified the "wheel" implementation which I hope you like as much as I do. I know the current options still won't make everybody happy, but it's a continuation, I hope, in the right direction.

You'll also note that some of the editing buttons have been rearranged and changed in size (most notably the Zoom and Unzoom buttons, and the View button). I hope this makes operation a bit more comfortable.

I've submitted version 6.5 to Apple for approval. This update includes copy/cut/paste between pages, customizable button colors, lots of UI tweaks, better iOS 5 compatibility (especially for many left-handed users bothered by the Notification dropdown), and lots of bug fixes. The main delay the last week or so has been fixing rarely-encountered but important bugs already in 6.0.1 that came to light during testing or through user reports.

I am putting the final touches on a new upgrade, probably called 6.5, that I hope to submit to Apple for approval next week if all goes well. I will be waiting for the general release of iOS 5 to shake out any incompatibilities that I haven't found in my testing.

This new release will address some cosmetic and other minor issues with iOS 5 (but not require iOS 5) and lots of bug fixes. It will also add a few new features that have been frequently requested. These include two main items: Copy/cut/paste of ink and other user-entered material from one place or page to another within the app, and a slightly different color scheme with the addition of a way for you to change the button colors to one of 16 options.

I'll post again when I have a better idea of when this will be available.

A quick bug-fix release is now out, 6.0.1. It fixes three bugs: The "search filter crash" bug described below, a bug with the no-thumbnail 1-doc per row listing, and a bug with the size of the page view and text typing area when editing. It is too risky to make too many changes at once without lots of testing and I wanted to get this out quickly and safely, so there are no other changes.

I was able to track down the "search filter" bug with detailed help from a user. 6.0.1 will hopefully not have this problem, and also let those who have encountered it but not edited their data files to fix it now run the app without crashing when they try to preview or change filters. User help aided reproducing and fixing the other bugs as well.

Major new releases of most apps have early issues. Note Taker HD has never really been an exception (of course). Version 6.0 changed many aspects of the app. Even with extensive beta testing you can't encounter (or notice) all of the nuanced variations that may have worked before or should be in new features. When you suddenly have thousands and thousands of users upgrading, statistically you're bound to find more. Help from users, though, has made it possible for me to find those problems quickly and fix them. Many thanks to those users from me and on your behalf! Thanks to Apple for expediting the approval. Hopefully we won't have this too many times for this release...

As usual, a new release archives all App Store ratings and reviews, wiping the "slate" clean. If you like the product, please don't forget to let others know. If you don't, let me know why. Thanks!

There appears to be a bug with the "Search" filter. Right now it is best that you don't use that filter until I release an upgrade with a fix.

The symptom is that if you have used a Search filter there is a good chance that the app will then crash at various later points in the Managing Window. Once this happens it will be hard to use the app. If you have successfully used Search already, but have successfully set the search back to empty (such as by pressing the Reset Filters button), you probably won't encounter the crashes from that particular use.

If you encounter this bug, see "Recovering from the Search Filter bug". The bug is only related to the Search setting and should not affect your other data.

Note Taker HD version 6.0 has been approved by Apple and is now available in the App Store. It's a major upgrade. It includes: Folders, a new UI look and more powerful managing of documents and pages, four user-settable preset pens, single-file full Backup/Restore and multi-document Save/Load, a zoomed editing wrist guard, swiping and full-screen added to page preview, and many other bug fixes and improvements.

There's a new Overview video that shows it in action. The online copy of Help here has been updated.

Creating this version has taken a long time. It changes the UI throughout the app (though not the basic writing experience), changes the way data is stored, and adds lots of features. All of this had to be integrated which added to the time. It's a good basis on which to build as I continue to work on the app.

I hope you like how it turned out! (If you do, please let others know. Upgrading an app resets the App Store reviews and ratings.) Check back here periodically to find out about any bugs or other issues.

Version 6.0 was submitted to the Apple App Store last Friday. We now have to wait until it is approved, which usually takes 1-8 days. I've been working on making a new Overview video to go with it and upgrading my Help-to-HTML converter to handle the new button "look."

In the meantime, Mike Rzepka (the guy who created the 60+ cool shapes that went into version 5 and the "Note Taker HD guy" image you see on the support site, and who created the new icon you'll see with version 6.0) set up and is maintaining a Facebook page about Note Taker HD. The Facebook page is an "enthusiast" page, not "official" like this support site. (If you like it, thank Mike, not me.) I don't spend much time on Facebook and I felt it was best to have someone who likes that genre do the app's first presence there. Being Facebook, it will probably be more interactive than this web site. I'll try to be responsive to Mike if he needs any help.

Take a look at Mike's Note Taker HD Facebook page. Don't forget to click the "Like" button if you like it.

Development of the next release of Note Taker HD has moved along far enough to start beta testing. So far the testing has gone well, but there is still more testing to be done and more Help to be updated. I'll post again when I submit the release to the App Store for approval.

One of the additional features I was able to get into the next release is user-settable pen presets. There are four of them and they make it much easier to use multiple line colors and widths on a page.

As I wrote in the last blog post, I have been working continually to improve Note Taker HD. However, I have not sent out a new release yet. What's happening?

In early June, I went to California for a week to attend the annual Apple World Wide Developers Conference to learn the latest about the iPad and iOS. Like many attendees, I met with various people from Apple to get feedback about my new design and other aspects of my app. This was all very helpful, but given the changes coming to iOS and other feedback, I realized that I should make additional changes as part of this update of the app. These additional changes (some of which are only internal, but will help in the future) have made this development phase take even longer. I feel that it should be worth it in the long run.

The changes I'm making include a major reworking of the User Interface, especially in the List of Pages. (Editing will feel pretty much the same, even if the "look" is a bit different and there are a few additional features.) This was needed as part of adding Folders and improving Backup, and to make it easier to add additional capabilities in the future. Unfortunately, these changes are "all or nothing" in that I can't release it in partial updates.

I know enough from experience not to promise any dates until I have "final" code. I do see "light at the end of the tunnel" and have major new features pretty much complete. When I have a better idea (such as when the next release is in beta test) I'll make another blog post.

Thank you all for the support through this upgrade. I continue to try to respond to emails as I have in the past. I'm really pleased with how this new release is coming together and hope you will be, too.

I haven't updated the "Recent Mail" section here recently. While I continue to get, and respond to, email every day, most of it is pretty much similar to what you've seen so far (Folders? Android? How does Auto-Advance work?, etc.), or not appropriate for sharing. In many cases I send the person a link to one of the items already here or in the Help. At some point, I'll put up some more.

However, I have been listening very carefully to the requests for new functionality and have been hard at work improving my app. With the recent upgrading of Dropbox that allows Note Taker HD to create an output PDF and send that file to Dropbox using "Open In", there is less pressure for that form of output to Dropbox so I can spend more time doing a more full implementation of a variety of functions.

The most common request has been for some form of Folders for organizing groups of pages. I have been working on providing that. However, in my normal style of trying to do relatively "deep" implementations, I am coupling that with related changes to the List of Pages and how pages in general are stored that should be helpful all around. For example, I hope to remove the "special" nature of the first sheet, and some other unpopular restrictions.

I'm also adding a few "tweaks", such as allowing you to switch between pages and sheets in the List of Pages and in View mode by swiping across the page view.

There will hopefully be other commonly requested additions in the next version. Release is still a while off (not in the next few weeks) in order to give me time to get as much in as possible. As it gets closer, I'll provide some status updates here. As long time users have seen, I try to provide a lot of new functionality in major upgrades.

In the meantime, thank you very much for all the wonderful reviews and good feedback, and thanks for recommending my app to friends and colleagues.

I received another interesting sample of someone's notes. This one, from Wan Nadzim, is from a biochemistry class. It is even denser than the previous ones. You can see it in the Samples section of this page.

It would be nice to see a totally different type of use than class notes, though the ones I've gotten so far have been pretty cool and show off the app well.

I got an email from a user who pointed out that Dropbox recently updated their iPad app and now supports "Open In..." This means that you can now send your PDF output to Dropbox by using Note Taker HD's Open In output capability. I tried it and it worked for me. This is great news for many people. Thank you, Dropbox!

I'm still working on adding more direct Dropbox support in a future release (along with Folders and we'll see what other features), but this at least makes it easier without using an additional intermediate app, which some people have been doing until now.

I'm added another sample of output sent to me by a user. This is another one that involves learning Mathematics, but this one was done by a teacher and includes material actually created in class "on the whiteboard" using a projector connected to the iPad. You'll find it at the bottom of the support page as "Mark's Teaching Material".

Does anybody have any good examples worth sharing that show other uses besides use in class (or mathematics)?

Apple approved the new version 5.1 release a few hours ago and it should now be available in the App Store and as an upgrade for existing users.

This is the first release I did after buying an iPad 2 for testing. It lets you capture directly from the iPad 2 camera as an additional option in the list of image sources (and fixes a bug with portrait images captured that way in the previous release). It also has some additional App Settings for VGA output that are helpful for both the VGA adapter and the new Digital AV (HDMI) adapter. These settings let you turn off Note Taker HD's special echoing of just a user-selectable part of the screen and let you use the iPad 2's display mirroring to see the entire screen (as some of you requested). It also gives you some control over the external screen resolution used if more than one is available.

These features were needed to better support the iPad 2 and necessitated having a release sooner rather than later. However, knowing that most users don't have an iPad 2, I added some other "goodies" for everybody to this release. First, I had Mike create some additional shapes in response to a few requests from users. These are for doing flow charts and related diagrams. They all use an optional grid for positioning and sizing to make it easy to line things up. These shapes brought up an additional need for something that drawing apps normally need anyway but that hadn't made it into the app yet: The ability to move objects (and ink) to the front or back of the display order. I was able to also get this into the release.

There are also some other minor tweaks and bug fixes. I've also updated the help, both in the app and on the support site.

All this made it worth bumping the version number from a 5.0.x to 5.1. I hope you like it.

I just submitted a new release to Apple for approval. Once approved it will be available as a free upgrade to existing users. I won't update the Help and other information here until after that occurs.

In addition to the major features added in version 5.0/5.0.5, version 5.1 has a few new features and some bug fixes: New Move to Front and Move to Back buttons, over 20 new shapes including many commonly used for flow chart diagrams, extra support for the iPad 2 camera and the Digital AV HDMI adapter, and a fix to the rotated EXIF image bug that affected the iPad 2.

A user sent me an example of his Linear Algebra class notes. I thought it was a great example of use (better than the Gettysburg Address in my handwriting that I had been using) so I've added it to the support page. You'll find it at the bottom of the page as "Ben's Math Class Notes". Thanks, Ben!

As I craft this support site, I finally bit the bullet and did something I've been meaning to do for a long time. I wrote a converter (it's in Perl, for techies who care about such things) that takes the special formatted file that drives the Note Taker HD help system and turns it into a single HTML file. It was a little tricky, because it needed to do things like render the buttons correctly in HTML instead of the iOS-specific code in the app. It also lists all the image files that go along with it that are built into the app so I know what to copy to this web site. The results should be a pretty faithful representation, except for some minor layout differences with IE before IE 8. You'll find the latest help posted on www.notetakerhd.com/help.

Rather than mix my comments and emails, which is what I originally thought I'd do, I decided to break them apart into two streams. This way my comments won't get lost in a long stream of emails, and I can more freely add emails without trying to make them fit in style-wise with blog writing. If you email me and don't want it listed please mention it. I'm not using names for now, unless you ask for it in the email.

I let my Apple business sales person at the local Apple Store know right away that I wanted an iPad 2 even before Steve Jobs got off the stage March 2nd. I was going to be out of town the day they went on sale, so I did all the paperwork in advance and had it waiting for me this morning when I went over.

To have something different (and to check the "look" of things as my app's UI evolves) I got a white one.

As soon as I got it home I plugged it in and got it started. I installed Note Taker HD, and tried different things. It seemed pretty good. Faster at some things, too.

Then I tried the camera. I took a picture of myself and inserted it. Oh, no! It was distorted. I took a picture with the back camera and things looked good. Hmm. What's the bug? No reports, yet. (It's nice to find bugs before a lot of others run into it and are bothered enough, or kind enough, to report it.)

It turns out that portrait orientation photos have special "EXIF" information about how they are rotated, and my code was not using that appropriately. Landscape (horizontal) photos, like those I took with the camera on the back, and images that are edited (most that I get from the web for testing) don't have rotation information that causes the bug, so this really didn't show up as much until now.

Well, I knew the "no new issues, yet, in 5.0.5" entry on the bug list wouldn't last long. Sigh. That's why you always have to test and test, and why we developers have the "tax" of needing to get new devices right away. While this bug affects images taken with regular cameras (when you turn them sidewards if they store that info) it was the iPad 2 that first made it show up.

When I make an update that includes better support for the iPad 2 camera (with a "Photo from camera" button or something), and that addresses other issues I'm sure to find with the new capabilities Apple has given us, I'll address this one, too.

In addition to this Note Taker HD-specific blog, for over 11 years I've been updating a personal blog, Dan Bricklin's Log, on the www.bricklin.com web site.

I've posted an essay on that blog with some thoughts about this latest release.

To read it, go to: Note Taker HD version 5 -- a real productivity app on the iPad.

I've finally done an overhaul of the support page for Note Taker HD. The old one, which has been around since the app first came out, was just one long scrolling list of information for prospective purchasers, samples, videos, bugs, FAQs, and more. It was very hard to find what you needed, especially for existing users.

The new design is aimed much more at existing users. It has a place for news, bugs, frequently asked questions, and a new blog. The lists are made easier to scan visually by highlighting the title and then including just an excerpt of the details in a smaller font with a link to the full text.

This blog is provided to let me share more of the conversations I've been having (or wanting to have) with many users by email that don't easily fit into those other categories.