Valley Cottage, New York – Natural Designs Software today is pleased to announce the release of PadKeys Keyboard 2.0, enhancing their well-regarded iOS custom keyboard for iPad users. PadKeys utilizes the extra real estate on tablet screens to provide number, punctuation and cursor keys in accustomed places, and to display expanded autocorrect suggestions. The innovative layout is also ergonomic, with frequently-used keys sized larger for typing speed and accuracy.
Why PadKeys was Created:
* Typing on an iPad in landscape mode can be surprisingly fast – until one needs to enter a number or common symbol like ‘%’ or ‘;’. The iPad system keyboard was designed for the iPhone, leaving keys out because screen space was at a premium. But on the iPad there’s plenty of room, so PadKeys can use a more traditional layout and speeding typing up accordingly.
* Moving the cursor in text has been the subject of many clever and innovative approaches, but when the text is small and fingers large, dedicated arrow keys are still easier to use. PadKeys puts these in the accustomed place on the bottom right.
* The iPhone-derived iPad system keyboard displays only three word suggestions in the middle of the screen, but these aren’t always useful. PadKeys on the other hand uses the full width of the screen to display suggestions, enhancing the chance of a “hit”. PadKeys also uses information about the key layout as well as the language being used to catch typos when finishing a word.
“PadKeys was stimulated by personal need,” says Adrian Robert, founder and lead developer at Natural Designs, “But clearly I was not alone. Our users have expressed great satisfaction and gratitude for the product, and our ratings are among the highest on the App Store for any custom keyboard. PadKeys has been most popular with users in English-speaking countries and in Germany, but we have a good following in several other European countries as well.”
What’s New:
The most visible change in Version 2.0 is colorful themes, a feature which many other third-party keyboards have but was left out of PadKeys initially in order to focus on core functionality. There is also now an option to show small labels for the shifted versions of each key, something that many users requested. And finally the autocorrect / suggestions engine has been made more sophisticated, doing a better job at picking out the words the user tends to use.
Supported Languages:
English (US, CA, UK, AU, and NZ), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French (France and Canada), German, Italian, Norwegian (Bokml), Polish, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Device Requirements:
* iPad 2 or later
* iOS 8.2 or later
* 12 MB free space
Pricing and Availability:
PadKeys Keyboard 2.0 is available for $1.99 US (or equivalent in other currencies) exclusively through the App Store in the Utilities category. Review codes are available upon request.
PadKeys Keyboard 2.0
Purchase and Download
YouTube Video (Keyboard)
Screenshot
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Natural Designs Software, Inc. was founded in 2007 to bring innovative user interfaces to education, entertainment, and utility applications. Software should work the way the user sees, thinks and acts, not the other way around. The current products are a Chinese language learning program for desktop and iPad, and an iOS custom keyboard extension designed for tablets. Musical and visual art creativity software is in the works. All Material and Software (C) Copyright 2007-2016 Natural Designs Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.