Sure, the new Pulse 3 looks nice and dandy. But the update has removed all the fantastic usability features that had made it great. There are just so many things bad about this new version, that it appears that the developers did not ask users whether they wanted these changes in the first place. This is exactly the same problem I face with Microsoft Windows 8: implementing features that no one had asked for, and removing usability in its stead.
1. Removal of navigation bar at the bottom of a story page
In version 2, as you read to the end of each story, a navigation bar will come up from the bottom of the page showing the story icons. It is very easy to swipe through this navigation bar and click on the icon of the next story that you wish to read.This has been removed in version 3. Now, when you reach the bottom of the page, that's it. You have to click the top left corner to go back to the main menu page, which contains a screen full of story icons for all the various channels that you have subscribed to. This is very bad. It is exactly the horrible feeling I get with the new Windows 8 Start screen with all the tiles.
The problem is that the during the redraw of the main menu page, you may not remember the position of the story icon that you have just exited from. Sometimes, that icon will be in focus. But many a time, the story icon is not in focus, and I have to slide the icons on that particular channel's navigation bar to find my place. In fact, the program will sometimes reset the channel back to the left most story icon. If you have already read many stories in that channel, it is really infuriating for the channel bar to reset back to the leftmost story!
When I discovered this problem, I thought that I will simply dispense with going back to the main menu page to select the next story, and simply swipe from the right on the current story page to get to the next story. However, I discovered this wasn't possible. The program appears to cache only 4 stories, so once you swiped to the 4th story, that's it. You still have to go back to the main menu page to select the next story from the channel's navigation bar.
2. Scrolling is no longer smooth
After I had updated my Transformer Pad to Jelly Bean 4.1, navigating through Pulse 2 was extremely fluid - "buttery smooth" - to use the technical term.
Unfortunately, Pulse 3 has eliminated all the smooth scrolling, and returned the tablet's behaviour to that of Froyo 2.1!
Everything is "stuttering" now. Whether it is scrolling through the story icons in the main menu page, or scrolling up and down an article on the story page, the movements are now in fits and starts.
In fact, I can say that in general, the speed performance in Pulse 3 is worse than Pulse 2.
3. Removal of Convenient "Open in Browser" Feature
Previously, when reading a particular story, it is possible to simply click the Settings button and click "Open in browser" to view the page in my preferred browser (Dolphin).
This is no longer possible.
Instead, you must click Settings > Web Mode to first show the page in Pulse 3. Then, you click Settings > Open in Browser to open the story in the external browser. It now takes several more clicks to do something that was so easy to do in Pulse 2. Again, this reminds me of Windows 8, in which many activities now require more clicks or hand movements to accomplish.
This wouldn't be a problem if the Web Mode in Pulse 3 is good. But that isn't the case. There are many nice usability features in the Dolphin browser that makes reading web pages a breeze (such as opening related links in the web page on another tab). This is not provided by the Web Mode feature in Pulse 3, and thus, it's Web Mode feature is not a real contender for reading the original web pages against a bona-fide browser.
Making it so inconvenient to open the story in my preferred browser is really a bad decision.
4. Pulse now always open to the "Home" section
Whenever I start Pulse 2, it always open in the section that I was viewing previously.
In Pulse 3, the app now always open in the "Home" section. I hate this because I now have to then select the section that I was previously reading.
Also, there seems to be no way to re-order the sections. Due to historical reasons, the first section in my Pulse configuration did not contain my preferred channels. I only added my preferred channels to subsequent sections.
Because Pulse 3 now always open in the "Home" section, I would like to re-order my preferred section to be the first section. But re-ordering of sections does not seem to be possible.
5. Less Intuitive Interface
The font used in articles is very much smaller than the one in Pulse 2. I wanted to increase the font size, but could not find any place to change the font size! I went to the Pulse web site, but their instructions for changing the font size is for Pulse 2, and not their new fangled user interface.
I finally found it today. In Pulse 2, there was a very intuitive Settings icon where this could be changed. This icon is now masked and hidden under my name!!!
I didn't realise that I could actually click my name to display the settings page to change various settings, including the font size. Again, this is like Windows 8, where you have no idea whether something is clickable or not. In Windows 8, there is no way to tell if something is a button or a label. Pulse 3 has copied this behaviour.
Conclusion
All in all, this update has not really improved the app at all. Perhaps Alphonso Labs needed to change the interface to make it similar to its iOS or Windows 8 incarnations. Unfortunately, this new interface has simply removed all the great things about Pulse 2 that made it a must-have/must-use app for me. When you satisfy the lowest common denominator, you usually end up dissatisfying a large chunk of people.
I used to read in Pulse 2 for an hour or more a day. With the new version, I usually exit after 15 minutes. I just can't stand the slower performance, and the inconvenience of performing activities that were a breeze in the previous version.
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