Hands On: The Little Changes in webOS 2.0 You’ll Love

Stacks, Just Type, Flash – you’ve heard it all before. You’re already prepared for the big boys of the 2.0 update – but what about the little things? The tweaks and changes that make all the difference but didn’t deserve front page news. What indeed! Read on and we’ll reveal some of them to whet your appetite.

Visuals and Transitions

We’re gonna come right out and say it – webOS 2.0 has graphics acceleration applied to the general user interface. While we have no evidence to back this up at the moment (other than our own observations), the visuals are just so slick and smooth that it seems the most likely explanation. Transitions glide in and out, the launcher and quick-wave fall away with such grace and with a subtle and attractive fade effect that just makes you drool. The frame rate of animations and transitions feels higher and more consistent – to the point where moving cards around and pulling up the launcher feels like working with lubricated glass.

Aside from smooth animation, the physics have also had an upgrade. Pulling up the launcher doesn’t just slide up an overlay window like before – there’s a definite calculated friction that makes the launcher appear to rise up and then fall away when closed. It’s not just moving things around the screen – it’s moving them around with grace and beauty and subtle effects that are really quite beautiful.

As most of you know, by enabling advanced gestures in Screen and Lock options, you can switch apps simply by swiping your finger the length of the gesture area – the animation that follows in 2.0 has also had a makeover. It’s a small thing, but instead of simply sliding one card on top of the other, you get to see the old app fall away back into card view while the new app swoops in to replace it. It’s a subtle effect but a noticeable improvement.

Believe us when we say the videos don’t do webOS 2.0 justice – you have to see it for yourself.

Screen Capture

Taking a snapshot of your screen by pressing ALT – SYM – P now gives you an audible sound to let you know that you’ve successfully snapped a picture. Brilliant.

Editing Text and Spelling Correction

Selecting a word is now as easy as double tapping it. The old methods are still there – you can hold Shift and peck away at the screen. You can also use the old trick of pressing Meta – A to select all the text in a field. But now you have one extra way to select stuff – and it’s really quite intuitive because most PC users will already be accustomed to double clicking text in order to select it.

Spelling correction is great in webOS 2.0 – if you type a word that is clearly spelled wrong -for example wnt – the system will correct it automatically to want - and you’ll even hear a little click sound to notify you that a spelling adjustment has been made. This audible cue is really great because if you’re hastily rattling out an email you might not notice the system changing your text if it weren’t for the audio signal.

But let’s say you actually wanted wnt to autocorrect to went instead of want – no problem! Just open up the brand new Text Assist app and you can change the way your autocorrect works. This app lets you add as many custom shortcuts as you like – for example you can tell the spellchecker to always change the word hw into homework – a hugely powerful feature that finally puts HP/Palm’s text editing in the same league as BlackBerry and co. Here you’ll also be able to edit your custom dictionary – for example, webOS doesn’t recognise the word plugins by default – but it’s a word I use a lot. When you type it, webOS will underline it in red to let you know that it’s an unknown or incorrectly spelled word – all you have to do is tap it and you’ll be given a list of suggested spelling corrections – and then you’ll have the option to add it to your dictionary.

What this means is that you can actually add words to your dictionary on the fly without ever opening up the Text Assist app – simply by tapping on words you can add them to your repertoire directly inside the messaging app, or memo app, or wherever you happen to be.

Slideshow

The Photos app now has a Slidehow feature that’s available simply by pressing the Play button while viewing any photo full-screen. It’s a handy feature and a welcome addition, but we haven’t yet found any options for changing the transition or speed.

Public Wifi Spots

Public Wifi spots are now handled much better in webOS. Whenever you connect to a Wifi spot that requires a login, webOS 2.0 will notify you and allow you to launch the browser in order to login. This is a huge help because webOS 1.4.5 simply doesn’t distinguish between regular wifi spots and wifi spots that require a sign-in.

Custom Searches

Visit certain websites in the browser and you’ll be magically asked whether or not you want to add their search functionality to the Just Type menu – what this means is that you can directly search websites by Just Typing in card view and then selecting your custom website – you’re only limited by the website’s compatibility, so extending Just Type’s functionality is easy and full of potential.

Apps minimise into Card View correctly

Often apps (particularly PDK games) would spin round into portrait view when you swipe into Card View. This was slightly disorienting and unnecessary – webOS 2.0 now maintains the app’s orientation when in card view. A small but cool addition!

Media Volume Increased

The max volume on the Pre 2 is much higher than the original Pre, Pre Plus, Pixi or Pixi Plus – we take this to be a software tweak but it’s possible that it may be exclusive to the Pre 2. Hopefully we will see volume increases in other devices too when 2.0 becomes available.

QuickOffice replaces Doc View

Some of you may have used Doc View to look at documents on your webOS device – but it’s nowhere to be found in webOS 2.0 – QuickOffice takes its place. You can open Documents, Spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, but we’re sorry to report that you can’t create or edit anything just yet – this is reserved for a paid version which we expect to become available fairly soon.

Self-Expanding Notifications

If you receive a notification while your device is locked (for example an SMS or E-mail) webOS will now very kindly auto-expand your notification area when you unlock your device – in previous versions of webOS you had to manually open the notification tray by tapping the little icon in the bottom right. Great addition for productivity and removes the necessity for one extra tap.

Icons in your Quick Bar stay in your Launcher

A slight change in behaviour here: any icon in your Quick Bar will now remain also in your Launcher – this is brilliant for some people and an annoyance for others, it’s really down to personal preference. We personally think it’s a more logical way to organise apps.

New Launcher

Hadn’t you heard? There’s a brand new Launcher. We’ve covered this already in a previous article - check it out.

Synergy Account Management and Future Support for 3rd Party Apps

Remember that Synergy thing? It wraps all your contacts up in one handy bundle and let’s you integrate various applications and content into one useful network. Well webOS 2.0 makes it possible to extend this feature by a potentially unlimited amount – under the brand new Accounts app you can now manage your existing Synergy applications - but notice the “Find More…” button. We’d wager there’s going to be a lot of developer interest in this particular feature.

No more Zoom Out in Card Mode

Okay you might not like this change. You can’t zoom out so that your cards are tiny anymore. Tapping and holding a card allows you to interact with the new Stacks feature – and tapping outside the card area simply does nothing. We’re sad to see it go, but it’s a small price to pay for the very awesome Stacks system.

Location Sharing in the Browser

You can now share your geo-location using websites in the browser. For example, go to the mobile version of Facebook and you can tweet from within your browser and use Facebook Places without ever opening the dedicated Facebook app. We love it.

So there you have it – these are just a few of the things we’ve noticed. If you know of any others or have any questions about webOS 2.0 feel free to ask in the comments or head on over to our forums.