I have a stationary fetish. I'm one of those people who buys a pen just because it looks like it might write nicely and will fit in with my collection of hundreds of other pens that have only been used once each and will probably dry out from non-use. I'm the one who browses stationary stores for hours, filling up a basket with stuff I don't need and don't have space for, but must have nonetheless. Which is why I'm a little sad that the iPad Pages app will be the reason I never buy another pen again - it's that awesome.
Pages is essentially a word processor that lets users do just about anything they would normally do in Microsoft Word, only it's a lot more user-friendly, it has nifty extras and it's fun.
When creating a document, users can choose between a blank page or editable templates such as letter, resume, project proposal, poster, visual report, thank you card, invitation, flyer, recipe and more. Working in either portrait or landscape mode, users can create content-rich documents easily and intuitively.
The toolbar at the top of the document lets users select font type (of which there are nearly 60), font size, text alignment and formatting, such as bold, italic and underline. There is an easy-access 'undo' button that also works as a 'redo' button if it is held down.
The format tool at the top-right of the screen lets users format the font, adjust the style, add bulleted or numbered lists, adjust line spacing and insert columns. I loved the dictionary tool. When highlighting a word, a number of options appear above it, one of which is the 'define' option. Selecting this option brings up a dictionary definition of the word, the part of speech it classifies as, phrases and the origin of the word.
Another handy feature is that Pages saves users' documents as they add to or edit them, so they'll never again experience that heart-sinking feeling of losing all their work when the power trips because they forgot to save every two seconds.
Triple-tapping a paragraph selects the entire section, enabling users to change the style of the paragraph. Here, they can chose from a number of Apple-designed styles.
Adding images, tables, graphs and shapes to documents is incredibly simple. From the '+' tab on the top-right of the screen, users can add images from their own galleries and photo albums, spreadsheet-type tables, 2D or 3D graphs (which can be rotated to view from any angle), and shapes. Any content added can be resized by simply dragging the edges of the picture or graph until the desired size is achieved.
What I found particularly handy was that, when resizing images, a little block appears above the image showing the dimensions (width and height) in centimetres, so users are assured of accurate sizes for their documents. There was one bug, however. While loading images from the camera roll worked perfectly, adding images from photo albums didn't. For example, when I selected an image of a gorilla from the wildlife album, I ended up with an image of a little girl running through a field. This happened across all the albums.
That being said, working with images in Pages is a lot of fun. Aside from the easy resizing, users can just as easily rotate images by holding two fingers on the picture they want to rotate and turning it to the desired position. Text automatically wraps around the image if it overlaps and users can also change text-wrapping styles. What's more, users can add borders or frames to their images by selecting from a number of templates. They can also adjust colour saturation, or add a reflection or shadow. Furthermore, placeholders for images can also be added to documents to fill later.
Adding charts and tables is a breeze and was something I found particularly useful, considering my non-existent PowerPoint skills. Users simply choose from a range of templates, click 'edit data', fill in the required fields and hey presto! Spreadsheets made easy!
Using the 'Document Set-up' tool, users can adjust document margins by dragging the edges of the margins to the desired width. They can also add headers, footers and page numbers. Using the 'Settings' tool, users can turn the spell checker on or off, check word count and activate page guides.
Navigating lengthy documents is made simple by the Navigation tool. By tapping and holding along the right of the screen, a navigator that looks like a magnifying glass appears. Users drag this up or down to preview the document or jump to a specific page.
Organising documents is also very simple. From the document view panel, users tap and hold a document and drag it over another document. This will automatically create a folder that the user can rename. Adding more documents to the folder is simply a matter of drag and drop. Selecting 'Edit' in the document view panel lets users shuffle documents around, delete ones they no longer need and duplicate others. Users can also share documents from this panel.
Documents can be stored in iCloud, making them accessible across a user's iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. Any changes made on one device will automatically save across all devices. Users can also load content from iTunes, iDisk or WebDAV. Furthermore, documents can be stored in iWork if users have an account, so they can be shared with and downloaded by others.
Finished documents can also be e-mailed in Pages, PDF or Word format, or printed to wireless printers.
Aside from the one picture-adding bug, I cannot fault this app. It lets users easily create content-rich documents that are accessible across both Mac and PC platforms, are easy to share, but most importantly, easy to compose.
I imagine it will be particularly useful to students as well as journalists, writers or anyone who needs an efficient, comprehensive, yet simple, word processor.
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