Developer Marco Ament has reported that his Instapaper 4.1 for Retina Display iPhones and the new iPad has gone live in the App Store, offering greatly improved readability along with six new fonts (three serif and three sans-serif), a full-screen mode, new gestures and more. The update introduces a gradual descent into Automatic Dark Mode based on sunset times of the user’s location, with the in-between state known as “Twilight Sepia.”
The program is one of several that takes long-form web content such as articles or literature and repurposes it with clean, paper-like design and elegant, professional fonts along with the ability to save articles for later reading. The new support for the Retina Display iPad released today is the result of surprising quick turnaround on the part of Apple testers, Arment reports. Elena, the new default font, is distinguished for its sharp look on both Retina and non-Retina devices.
In addition to Elena, new fonts include Lyon Text, FF Tisa, Ideal Sans, FF Meta and Proxima Nova. The original fonts such as Georgia and Verdana are still available as options as well. Full-screen reading mode is an option for both tilt-scrolling and pagination modes, with new gestures or taps needed to bring up the menubar and options.
The new version also debuts Twilight Sepia, a soft off-white color that can be used to gently fade the white default display into softer tones as evening falls, transitioning the reader into Dark Mode where the type is reversed out for reading in low-light conditions. It can also work in reverse, gradually shifting Dark Mode back into daylight reading. A future update will give users the option of setting Twilight Sepia as the default daytime color.
The app now requires iOS 5 and costs $5 from the App Store. The update is free for existing users.
