Buttons can do a lot, and with forScore 10.4 they can now do even more. There are two completely new button types as well as some expanded functionality for a few of the existing ones.
The new “Seek Audio” button type lets you change the playback position of the current audio track, whether it’s playing or paused, and the “Open Link” type allows you to activate a predefined URL with a single tap. That URL can be a standard web address, or it can also be one of the new forScore-specific links that we discussed a few weeks back.
When you’re using the “Play/Pause Audio” button, you can now specify the playback position to use when starting playing. If the audio track is playing, tapping the button will pause it, and when you tap it again it’ll start playing from the time you supplied. If you don’t supply this information, tapping the button resumes playback from the currently paused position.
Finally, the Navigation button type now sports a “Go To…” option. This lets you specify an item to open when you tap on the button. You can choose an item from your library or from a specific setlist to also queue up the rest of the items in that setlist. Once you’ve picked an item, you can also choose to specify a page number. (You can’t set a page number without choosing an item first—if you want to go to a different page of the current score then Links are a better tool for the job.)
Buttons are easy to set up and virtually effortless to use, so the next time you find yourself doing the same task over and over again at a certain point in a score, consider using a button to simplify it.
Dashboard, forScore’s set of tools that help you track and understand how you spend your time playing, got more than just a subtle design refresh with our latest updates. It’s logging system was rebuilt from the ground up for improved accuracy, and we added some new capabilities to help you get the most out of it.
You may not want to track all of the time you spend viewing a score, so forScore now lets you control how this works: a new gear icon in the top right-hand corner of Dashboard’s Analytics tab gives you several options, such as preventing tracking while you’re annotating.
You can pause or resume tracking at any time using this new panel, but the toggle action is also available as an option when configuring two- or three-finger tap gestures and through the Page Turners and Shortcuts section of forScore’s settings panel (look for “Analytics”). That means you can start and stop tracking with a gesture, page turner, stylus button, MIDI command, or external keyboard shortcut—all from the main view, without having to open Dashboard first.
When information is tracked that you don’t want, it’s now easier to remove it with our latest updates. Swipe to delete all data tracked for an item on a specific day, or reset the whole day and start fresh. If you decide not to use Dashboard any longer, or you want to reset all of its data, you can do either as well.
Whether you’re using AirDrop to send a setlist to a colleague or backing up a score to Dropbox, sharing is an integral part of working with items in forScore. Depending on what you’re sharing, there may be several formats you can use: setlists can be sent as plain text, or they can be packaged up in the forScore-specific 4SS file type. Scores and bookmarks can be exported as flattened annotated PDFs or they can be sent using forScore’s 4SC format.
Depending on how much content you’re sharing and which options are included, the export process can take a little bit of time. That’s why we added an export progress overlay to forScore with 10.4 so you can see how long it’ll take and cancel it if you need to.
If you’re using either of those two forScore-specific formats—4SS or 4SC files—they’re now stored more efficiently making them dramatically smaller. They’ll take up less space on your iPad or iPhone, use up less of your cloud storage provider’s quota, and take less time to transfer over a network connection.
Under the hood features aren’t always flashy, but they’re sometimes the most satisfying: we can take something that huge numbers of people do every day and make it significantly more efficient. It doesn’t have to make headlines to make a difference.
As we discussed a few weeks ago, iOS 11 includes some changes that allow multiple apps to access and edit the same documents without duplicating them first. With forScore 10.4 and forScore mini 3.4 we added support for this functionality, and understanding how it all fits together can take a little bit of practice. Whether you’re bouncing between apps or taking advantage of the iPad’s multitasking modes, keeping track of your files takes more work.
Fortunately, there’s another way: iOS allows apps to provide some of their functionality through something called an ‘action extension.’ An action extension might be included with a translation app, for instance—instead of requiring you to copy and paste text between apps, the extension can show you a translated version of a webpage right from within the web browser you’re already using. Action extensions are contextual, so when you share content using an app, the extensions available to you will depend on the type of content you’re working with. In forScore, you can share PDF files, so PDF-focused action extensions might appear in the standard iOS sharing interface.
We include three of these action extensions with one of our other apps, Badger, and they allow you to quickly view the embedded metadata, table of contents, or annotations within a PDF file. Some action extensions offer editing capabilities, so when an extension is dismissed forScore checks to see if it has provided a new version of your document—if it has, you’ll be asked if you want to overwrite the original file with the new copy or not. Badger’s extensions work this way, and other extensions can easily be updated to offer the same kind of functionality.
When serious editing is required, opening your documents in other apps is still the best way, but when you just want to check to see what information already exists or make quick edits, action extensions can offer a much more streamlined experience. As always, you’re free to use whichever one works for your situation.
From globalization and industry to speakers that can turn on your lights, automation is a big word with a lot of different applications and meanings. In short, it describes how people take one or more unchanging tasks and create a system that does it for us, either repeatedly or on command.
For instance, often times you’ll want to get to a specific page of a specific score in your forScore library. First, you’ll need to open the file—either by browsing for it through forScore’s menus, or by searching for it—and then tap forward or use the page selector at the bottom of the screen to navigate to the correct page. With forScore 10.4, you can now create shortcuts that do both tasks for you at once, and they use a familiar mechanism: URLs.
Any time you share a link with a friend, open a bookmark in your web browser, or click on a tracking number in an email, you’re using a URL. While URLs most often reference content on the internet, they also have other uses. Instead of the usual “http” or “https” prefix, a link might start with “mailto” and open a new email draft addressed to the person indicated in the URL. These prefixes are called Schemes and help your device understand how to handle different types of URLs.
With our latest big updates, forScore now declares its own custom scheme (“forscore”) and can handle these specially-formatted links, allowing you to navigate to specific content or a location in the Services panel with one easy tap. This support is provided across the entire system, so any app that displays tappable links, including Apple’s own Safari, Notes, and Mail apps, can send the URL on to forScore so it can respond no matter where it comes from.
You can ask for a specific score, bookmark, page, or setlist, and you can combine these parameters to achieve different results. For instance, tapping forscore://open?setlist=Summer finds the setlist called “Summer” if it exists in your forScore library, and opens to the first item in the list (using the setlist’s current sort order). If you know the Summer setlist includes a piece called “June”, you can open the setlist to that specific piece using forscore://open?setlist=Summer&score=June and forScore will do just that.
Those are just a few examples, but there’s a lot more you can do with forScore 10.4 and automation. For a full list of parameters and formatting requirements, be sure to check out this page.