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Title Bar Buttons

Feature of the Week

As forScore has grown, the number of tools available to musicians has increased dramatically. With forScore 7, we made it easier to quickly access some of the most commonly used tools by adding a second page of buttons to the title display:

You can swipe or tap the arrow button to move between pages, but there’s more here than meets the eye. On the second page, the ellipsis (…) button lets you rearrange the tools and put the ones you use most often on the first page for quick access.

The first page has two spots available for buttons—one on the left of the title text, and one on the right. If you have less than two items set up to be visible on page one, an arrow button takes the right-hand spot, making it easier to switch between pages. Everything else is available on the second page.

So, if you recently upgraded from forScore 6 or earlier only to find that the perform button had disappeared (like a recent app store reviewer did), now you know how to get it back.

Bonus tip: we can’t respond to reviews. We hate having an easy answer and no way to tell a frustrated customer about it, so if you ever find something to be unintuitive or different from an earlier version, just ask us!

Audio Controls

Feature of the Week

One of the most popular features of forScore is the ability to link an audio track to a particular score in your library. Open the score, and the audio is queued up automatically, ready when you are.

There are a few different ways to control audio playback: you can use gestures, keyboard/page turner shortcuts, or you can use the controls in the media box at the bottom of the screen. The media box appears and disappears with the rest of forScore’s controls when you tap the center of the screen, but for instant access from anywhere be sure to try forScore 8’s “Always show playback controls” option in the settings panel.

When this option is enabled, the media box will still appear and disappear when you tap the screen, but the play, pause, and rewind controls will stay put. They’ll even turn partially transparent so they’re visible without completely blocking the page.

forScore 8.3, forScore mini 1.2

News

Today we’re happy to announce the immediate availability of forScore 8.3 and forScore mini 1.2. These updates add tighter compatibility with the new AirTurn PED by offering direct Mode 1 communication in addition to the standard keyboard modes already supported in previous versions (with some potential issues). Learn more about connecting your PED to forScore here, and be sure to check out AirTurn’s new page turner if you haven’t had a chance to already. As always, these updates are free and available now on the App Store.

App Tint

Feature of the Week

With iOS 7’s stark redesign, color became a very important part of an app’s design. In many ways it’s the most important part, so picking the right shade is no simple matter.

For some, though, an app’s color can be more than just a preference—it’s an obstacle. Color blindness can make forScore’s controls almost indistinguishable from other information on the screen, so with version 8.0 we added the ability to customize this color. Even if you have no trouble identifying controls, you can still change the color to suit your preferences, mood or even your wardrobe. There’s no wrong color (except white—don’t try white or you won’t be able to find anything).

In the Settings section of the tools menu, under Accessibility, select the “Tint color” entry to pick the color that works best for you.

Gestures

Feature of the Week

Poking at a screen may have once seemed unnatural, but today we spend a huge amount of time tapping, sliding, and pinching at slabs of glass. It’s a natural input method, and what it lacks in precision it makes up for with things like gestures. Gestures allow your device to interpret unique motions, and they work best when they’re location-independent; swiping anywhere on the screen or tapping within large regions to turn pages is much easier than trying to move a slider or tap a button.

Of course, the problem with gestures is that you can’t see them and you don’t always know they exist. There’s one particular gesture that’s so important and frequently used that it’s scary to hear from the occasional customer who still doesn’t know about it: the long press or tap-and-hold gesture that activates annotation mode by default. (Friends don’t let friends use the tools menu to annotate.)

In fact, forScore has three gestures beyond the standard swipes and taps used to turn pages. The long press, a 2-finger tap, and a 3-finger tap. The latter two don’t do anything by default, but all three of them can be customized in the “Gestures” section of the settings panel.