Tom Hughes1

Q: Shrinking widgets

Has anyone else seen the following issue and if so found a solution ?

 

The test to run In iBooks Author…

1- Add a widget to a book (HTML , Keynote or Gallery)

2- Preview the book to the iPad in the iPad iBooks App

3- On the iPad OPEN the book and OPEN one of the WIDGETS

4- Before closing the widget either quit iBooks or slide to a different iOS app

5- Now reopen iBooks or slide back to iBooks

6- You should now be in the same open widget you left in step 4 above except…

…the widget will shrink to about 50% of its original size and move to the lower left of the screen.

If you repeat the above steps the widget will continue to resize smaller and smaller.

 

My system info...

iBooks Author 2.4 on Imac 5K retina  OSX 10.11.3

Previewing on iPad Pro and early iPad Air both running iOS 9.2.1

iPad Pro Wi-Fi, Cellular, iOS 9.2.1

Posted on Feb 22, 2016 7:07 PM

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Q: Shrinking widgets

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  • by idc2002,

    idc2002 idc2002 Feb 25, 2016 2:37 AM in response to Tom Hughes1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 2:37 AM in response to Tom Hughes1

    Do you by any chance have or have you ever had the app Notability (a popular note-taking app) on your iPad. We had some users complain they were getting this behaviour with one of our iBooks. Initially we couldn't replicate their problem, so to replicate their setup we installed Notability and then we got the behaviour you describe. In our case this behaviour only appeared after we installed Notability. Bizarrely it didn't stop once we uninstalled Notability. This behaviour doesn't show itself on our other iPad which has never had Notability installed.

  • by idc2002,

    idc2002 idc2002 Feb 25, 2016 3:58 AM in response to idc2002
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 3:58 AM in response to idc2002

    Interestingly, I've now installed Notability onto our other iPad, an older iPad 2 with non-retina screen. (Our first iPad is an iPad mini with retina screen.) This older iPad does not seem to be exhibiting the shrinking widget behaviour.

     

    So, Tom, do both your models of iPad, Air and iPad pro, have the higher resolution 'retina' screen?

     

    So, non-shrinking widgets: Model MC979B/A iPad 2 with iOS 8.4.1 (12H321) with or without Notability installed

    shrinking widgets: Model ME276B/A iPad mini retina with iOS 9.2.1 (13D15) problem noticed only after Notability was installed & continues after it was removed

     

    Am now wondering whether to install the latest update to iOS on the older iPad to rule out the iOS 9.2.1 as a possible culprit.

    Feedback and ideas welcome.

  • by Tom Hughes1,

    Tom Hughes1 Tom Hughes1 Feb 25, 2016 3:13 PM in response to idc2002
    Level 1 (21 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 3:13 PM in response to idc2002

    After reading your experience with this issue I ran more tests.

     

    I first tested on an older iPad Mini (2012 Non Retina) running iOS 9.2.1

    This iPad has never had the Notability app installed on it.

    There were NO PROBLEMS with shrinking widgets on this iPad.

     

    The iPad Air 1 (Retina) does indeed have the Notability app installed on it.

    YES there are PROBLEMS with shrinking widgets on this iPad.

     

    The iPad Pro (Retina) has never had the Notability app installed on it.

    YES there are still PROBLEMS with shrinking widgets on this iPad.

     

    Further testing….

    On the iPad Pro I deleted all third party (non Apple) apps except the following -

    - Procreate

    - PhotoCard

    - Pixelmator

    - 1Password

     

    Do you have any of these apps on your iPads ? 

     

    Maybe the shrinking widget issue is precipitated by more than one app.

  • by idc2002,

    idc2002 idc2002 Feb 25, 2016 4:10 PM in response to Tom Hughes1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 4:10 PM in response to Tom Hughes1

    Thanks for your response, Tom.

     

    If you were to install Notability on your iPad mini and it still exhibit the shrinking behaviour we could (tentatively) say that the non-retina screen iPads don't have this problem in either iOS 9.2.1 or 8.4.1, whether or not they have Notability. That would be helpful to establish. (I could also upgrade our iPad 2 to 9.2.1 to check this, but I'm slightly reluctant to do so as it is next to impossible to downgrade these things and it is sometimes helpful for our testing for us to have a machine with an older OS.)

     

    Our users who notified us of this problem (and who use a class set of iPad Air's apparently--so retina screens) said they thought this problem first exhibited itself 'about three months ago'. Although they haven't told me whether or not it was after an OS upgrade (or a Notability upgrade?) that the shrinking began, according to Wikipedia iOS 9.0 was introduced in September last year (5 months ago) and iOS 9.1 in October (4 months ago) and iOS 9.2 in December (2 months ago), finally 9.2.1 was last month. It seems quite plausible then that this might be related to something introduced in iOS 9.1 or 9.2. Notability appears to get upgrades about once a month. Would any of the above fit with you experience, Tom? Do you remember when you upgraded, or might you have noticed the shrinking behaviour beginning soon after?

     

    It does seem that they were using our iBooks & widgets alongside Notability without problem before then, so I guess something new caused it. There were a couple of changes to iBooks mentioned in the iOS 9.2 upgrade in December (though at first glance it isn't obvious that they should have had this effect). Currently they are the only people who have complained about this to us, but it is possible that we simply haven't heard yet, or perhaps many of our users (mostly classroom sets of iPads in schools) are not regularly switching between our app and other apps in this way.

     

    We have relatively few apps on our two iPads as they are mostly used to test our iBooks books while we're authoring them. I'm pretty certain we don't have any of the apps you mention above.

     

    It does look as though the problem may turn out be something to do with the retina screen and a recent-ish software upgrade...?

  • by Tom Hughes1,

    Tom Hughes1 Tom Hughes1 Feb 25, 2016 5:24 PM in response to idc2002
    Level 1 (21 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 5:24 PM in response to idc2002

    I just did the following test….

     

    On the older iPad Mini (2012 Non Retina) running iOS 9.2.1

    I just installed the Notability app.

    There were STILL NO PROBLEMS with shrinking widgets in iBooks on this iPad.

     

    I don’t think the Notability app is at fault here.

    So maybe there is an issue with the newer Retina hardware and iOS 9.2.1

     

    Perhaps the upcoming iOS 9.3 will mysteriously correct this issue.

  • by Nyberg,

    Nyberg Nyberg Jul 30, 2016 3:45 AM in response to Tom Hughes1
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Publishing
    Jul 30, 2016 3:45 AM in response to Tom Hughes1

    I just got this problem after updating  iPad Air to 9.3.3
    I never had this Notability app installed . I also checked my new iPhone 6S which has 9.2.2 and it does not have this bug.

    I  work with books including a Virtual Tour in an HTML Widget and all of them got the problem.
    Very irritating as I am just finishing a guide for the National Museum in Denmark which will be installed on 20 iPads.

    To be sure that it is not just my Panorama-widget I installed one of the classic old ibooks "Life on Earth" which has a lot of animations.

    All animations has the same problem. 

     

     

    Please report this as a bug.

    http://www.apple.com/feedback/ibooks_ios.html

  • by Nyberg,

    Nyberg Nyberg Aug 5, 2016 3:03 AM in response to Tom Hughes1
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Publishing
    Aug 5, 2016 3:03 AM in response to Tom Hughes1

    Just for info. I have been in contact with the iWork team. They contacted me after I reported it as a bug.
    They are now working on the problem, I hope.

     

    I know also that this problem occured at least since IOS 9.2.1
    I have checked a number of iPad mini 2 with IOS 9.2.1 and they all have it.

     

    Those iPads do not haved any external apps at all installed.