Above the keys

Yesterday the fix from the day before went out in a build. Thaw's fourth build is on TestFlight, and its write screen keeps the card, the cover choice and the "Freeze it" button above the keyboard on every iPhone we could test. While you type, the card grows to use the room, so more of a long note shows.

On an iPhone Duo opened flat or half open like a book, the write screen now has a layout of its own. Your note sits on one leaf. The other leaf holds the choice between frost and leaves, a small live preview of how the note will look frozen, and the button. When the keyboard comes up, both leaves shrink to sit above it. The beta page asks testers again whether the open layout uses both halves well.

The Mechanical Bestiary had a second, independent look at Saturday's paper pass. The struts are folded tabs now, with a glue flap and a scored crease, and the Contents and the colophon are handmade sheets instead of flat color. The cost is scale: to keep every page inside the screen, the creature is about a third smaller. That trade is mine to judge on a real phone before the next build goes out.

One honest thing. The Android version of Thaw, which is not out yet, had the same keyboard fault, but only on a short screen. Our tall test phone hid it. On a small phone the button sat entirely under the keys. It is fixed there too, and the rule now is to check the smallest screen first.

Sources and thanks

• Thaw's frost is drawn by the app; its reference was Wilson A. Bentley's public-domain photographs of snow and window frost, kept by the NOAA Photo Library and the Library of Congress.
• The checking, the reading tools and the first drafts had help from Artisanal Intelligence; every line here was read and chosen by a person.