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Q: I have a question related to reading the NWFL Daily News OnLine Subscription on my iPad – the page image is often larger than the screen, collapses to half screen when I attempt to move to read resulting in a continuing battle of larger than to half screen through the entire attempt to read. I have tried correct in Settings and contacted NWFDN several times for assistance with no success. Any suggestion you might have would be appreciated as my wife has given up and I am about to. Thank You.

– Jim D.
Niceville, Florida

A: You might think of this as a question about a problem that mostly you are having, Jim, but I think this is probably more significant than you realize.  Now that the paper has switched from carrier delivery to USPS delivery (which for me delays the availability of my newspaper for at least half a day, or even a whole day if I want to take it to work to read over lunch, and I’m presuming this is the case for others too) I feel like more and more people are switching to the eNewspaper.  Like you, I too use an iPad to access the content, and I’ve had to figure out how to navigate around this new digital world, so perhaps my experience can help you out.

It almost sounds like you’re trying to treat the electronic image that you’re viewing as if it’s the actual newspaper.  In my experience, looking at a whole page at once results in text that’s tiny, and very hard to read. At its core, the eNewspaper is nothing more than a PDF version of the printed paper.  Page for page, they are identical, but because the eNewspaper is virtual, you have the ability to do things with it that you can’t do with a physical newspaper, like zoom in and out (within limits defined in the software, of course).  This can be accomplished in several ways. On the bottom of the page is a virtual button with four arrows pointing in different directions.  The button should have the label “Fit” and tapping it causes the entire page that you’re currently viewing to fit on the screen. In the upper-right corner of any page are viewing controls, which include magnifying glasses with either + (zoom in) or – (zoom out) in them.  If you’re more adventurous, you can use the classic “pinch” gesture on the screen to try and find that exact custom zoom level that you want.  I’m guessing this is your normal way of doing things, and what is causing you and your wife so much frustration. 

It might help you to tap on any article you want to read.  This jumps out of the newspaper-like rendering and presents the text of the article in a plain-Jane format that can be far clearer and easier on the eyes.  Even this view can be zoomed in or out to get just the right size text for you.  Then just click the X and you’re back to the full-page view to select your next article.

One thing that occurred to me was to wonder whether you’re using your iPad in portrait mode or landscape mode while viewing the paper.  It can make a difference in how the reader presents a page.  For example, in landscape mode, the buttons are along the right edge instead of the bottom, and tapping the “Fit” button actually fits two whole pages to the screen for you.  For my money, way to tiny to read, but from there, you can use any of the methods I talked about above to zoom or jump to the text of an article.

By the way, I don’t know how much exploring you’ve done with your eNewspaper, but you have an entire suite of papers from the Gannet family of publications at your fingertips through the e-reader, including their flagship newspaper, USA Today.  I said above that your question was more relevant than you realized, and one of the reasons is that it applies not only to your local paper, the Northwest Florida Daily News, but to all those other publications as well, as they all use the same reader software.