New format

I use an older tablet and have had no trouble with ether PDF. Looking forward to July’s issue.

Tablet vs wide screen

I use my Tablet and my PC. I downloaded for reading offline.

On the tablet the MRH Adaptive Edition worked fine, the MRH Wide Edition was small print even when turned to landscape mode.

On the PC the MRH Wide Edition worked fine.

BUT

When viewing in my PDF reader, the MRH Adaptive Edition for some reason put the cover on the left of the first page along with the blank Advertising page. This put the layout plan page 2 on the right side and page 3 on the next page left side. Thus defeating the purpose. (Foxit PDF).

My experience

I also use Foxit. The adaptive version acts just the same as the old portrait. The wide version acts the same as the old landscape. When I click f11 to get the HUGE page that is readable from almost across the room, the adaptive/portrait version is not good. It shows only the One page and that still leaves huge areas on the right and left. When I click f11 with wide/landscape version, it's just like the old one I am used to. So, I see no significant difference. Now how did Will get a different view with Foxit, I don't know. I can only report what I see. FYI: I use Google Chrome. NEW: I just used Firefox and adaptive view. Same results as above. So, bottom line is that the "wide" or landscape view is still the best for me. Hope this info helps.

Less grey space on Google Chrome

Wide Format For Me

I find the Wide format works fine for me, solving the few problems I encounter with the Adaptive format.

My biggest complaint with the Adaptive is when using Adobe Reader in Full Screen mode, only single pages will display.  WIDE works as expected in this mode.

I vote for the WIDE.

Not quite yet

On a Mac couldn't get the adaptive download to show two pages wide. Tried Safari and Chrome. The picture quality was great though.

Downloaded landscape and it worked perfectly as usual.

Wide Edition

The wide edition reads exactly the same as the old landscape version in Books on my iPad, which makes me a happy camper.  Thanks!

We'll be doing both

We will be doing both since they now both come from the same master.

For those who liked landscape and can't get the adaptive to work with their favorite software, the wide version gives you that, except now with a portrait cover.

Sounds good to me

Thanks for hanging in there!

The new wide edition is

The new wide edition is approximately infinity times better in firefox.

More info

I just tried various ways of "viewing" in Foxit. Everything I tried gave the same results. In adaptive view, only one page shows up in f11 full screen.

Adaptive  

Wide  

Hope this helps!

Morgan

Works great in iBooks

Thanks, Joe!

My observations with the various test versions

For the TL;DR crowd, for me Wide-Edition is the best version going forward.

Using the SumatraPDF reader for Windows I have tried the two different adapative format test editions (11 June and 12 June), the new hard-coded "wide edition" and the June 2020 RE landscape edition.    In all cases Page Up/Down and Left/Right arrows could be used to page through the magazine.   'F11' full screen viewing was no different than non-full screen viewing.   I've summarized below what I observed with the different editions and included the SumatraPDF View settings.

June 2020 Running Extra Landscape - Classic preferred embodiment edition with a wide cover photo.    Inside magazine pages were displayed as odd on the left and even on the right.   SumatraPDF View setting was 'Single Page'.

MRH Wide Edition - Black facing page on Left with text stating it was the wide edition with Portrait edition MRH cover on the right.    Inside magazine pages were displayed as even on the left and odd on the right.   Layout plan on pages 2 and 3 had NO gap between the pages.   SumatraPDF view setting was 'Single Page'.

11 June Adaptive Test Edition - Black facing page on Left with MRH logo and lots of text about the new adaptive edition with the Portrait edition MRH cover on the right.   Inside magazine pages were displayed as even on the left and odd on the right.   Layout plan on pages 2 and 3 had a narrow gap between the pages.    SumatraPDF view setting was 'Facing'.

12 June Adaptive Test Edition - Completely blank White facing page on Left with the Portrait edition MRH cover on the right.   Inside magazine pages were displayed as even on the left and odd on the right.   Layout plan on pages 2 and 3 had a narrow gap between the pages.    What I thought would have been the facing page for the cover page is now the final page and it appears on the left.   SumatraPDF view settings were 'Book View' and 'Show Pages Continuously'.    If I turned off the 'Show Pages Continuously' setting the MRH cover was centered, the inside pages were unchanged as to how they displayed and the final page was now centered as well.

Other than not having a large cover photo, the new wide-edition format is basically indistinguishable viewing wise from the previous landscape editions, at least with this test version.   It will be the version I'll download from July onwards.    Thank you Joe for providing this version.

One question regarding the wide-edition in the normal magazine, will the facing page for the cover be solid black with text or will it be blank or something else ?   Just curious.

John

You're looking at it!

You're looking at it, that's what we're planning to use for the other half of the wide edition cover. Black with a bit of text.

Liking the wide!

Thanks for accommodating most everyone (I hope)!

Neal

Now that's interesting!

I showed what the two different screens look like in Foxit, both adaptive and wide. And it's apparent that with f11, the adaptive is not right. And now I see where John says his was no different. ?? So now it looks like we need SumatraPDF in order to view it correctly? If this is so, say so. For me. It's like the old Firefox vs other browsers. I have to use both Firefox and Chrome because some things work better in one than another. Adobe Reader was always a headache for me, hence Foxit. So if we now need SumatraPDF fine. The main thing is to make it work for Joe/MRH and for all the rest of us.

"This page intentionally left devoid of model trains"

Joe,

The adaptive version on Windows 10, within the Firefox browser it shows the layout page with a little gray bar. The wide version shows as it should.

In Windows 10 displaying in Acrobat Reader the adaptive version shows as if it were wide until you go full screen (ctrl-L) then it will display single pages only. The wide version displays perfectly in both modes within Acrobat Reader.

On a "Motorola Z 2 Force" running Android 8.0.0 with the Acrobat Reader app (version 20.4.0.13615) the adaptive version doesn't display in 'pseudo landscape mode' at all. Only single facing pages even when manually set to 'page-by-page'. The wide version displays fine.

Since you'll be publishing both with minimal effort extra, I'll be happy since I can continue to download the new landscape version and read MRH as if nothing changed. A big "thank you" to you for doing these test versions, it's really appreciated.

A suggestion for the landscape version: Is it possible to center the front page so the black bars are equal on either side? I'm assuming this likely means more manual work. Otherwise a "This page intentionally left devoid of model trains" text might work

OK Here's my conclusion

And of course. In My Opinion. I downloaded SumatraPDF and that's all it took. Adaptive & wide. With f11, they both viewed the way I thought they should. Like the landscape always did. Beautiful resolution. And FYI. The old portrait still did what it did with Foxit. Single page only. So, if you go with either of the new formats, SumatraPDF will work. This should be my final conclusion. Thanks Joe. For the terrific job you do for us, the hobby and for your own self satisfaction.

Try 2

I have set Adobe acrobat reader as my default pdf reader.

Running PC, Win 10, Edge.

Still opens single page, not double page.

If I right click on the download, I do not get the "save target as.." option.  It will let me open,  save, or copy the link, but no "target".

Opera, Win10

Adaptive edition:

Clicking on the link seems to download the whole thing, I got a progress bar that took maybe 8 seconds.  That's better than take 1 where I had to go through the save/as and view using the installed separate reader, at least it displays in the browser now.

But the display came up by default as one-wide, fit-to-page (meaning shrunk enough that an entire page showed top-to-bottom, with gray bars on the sides. In all, about 2/3 of the screen is gray. There are 3 icons that fly out from the right, a plus, a minus and 'fit to width', which zooms in so much that the entire screen is used, no gray bars, but you have to scroll to see the rest of the page vertically.

No apparent way to make it adapt to double-wide.

Wide edition: 

Same download behavior as narrow, only double-wide. Seems to be working as designed.

win10, firefox

My screen is wide enough for double-wide display. And that's what I get from the adaptive one, regardless of how big my firefox window is or becomes. That is, if the window is shrunk after downloading, the double-wide page is clipped, or even if the window is shrunk before downloading the double-wide page is clipped rather than dynamically switching to single-wide when that's all the firefox window allows. So it seems to be reading the screen width, not the window width.

Not sure what you were intending w.r.t. dynamic window resizing, just reporting what you implemented

On MY Mac

I did not try the browser at all, I dowloaded both versions.

In Preview had to tell the adaptive to do 2 pages.  The curser keys did work except when continuous scroll was off.

In Adobe Reader DC both worked as expected.  The adaptive had a small dashed line. The left/right curser keys did not work but the up/down did.

PDF Element had the same results as before.

Chrome: Adaptive edition 1-up, Wide edition 2-up displayed

Using Chrome version 83 in Windows 10, the Wide edition displays 2-up: both pages display side by side in the browser as expected, with some space on either outside margin.  Adaptive edition still only displays 1 page at a time unless I rotate the displayed page 90 degrees, at which point I get a 2-up layout - but instead of from side-to-side, the 2-up layout runs from top-to-bottom of the center third of the monitor screen and then I have to turn the monitor on its side to actually read it, so the adaptive edition is a total no-go for me.

Once either version is downloaded, I can open them up in Sumatra PDF and they both will display in a 2-up format.

Janet N.

Report 2

Adaptive version -  No good in Chrome or Firefox.  See other comments in this thread.

Hard-coded Version - Works good in Chrome.  In fact it pops!!  Colors are brighter, looks in focus,  the two page layout is fantastic.  Lines are black,  can read the text without zooming in.  It is great.

Works in Firefox.  About 80% of Chrome.

Sense the last time I did this evaluation Microsoft updated Win 10 64 on this laptop and Firefox was updated tonight.  

I have an ipad and a Samsung phone, of course.   I have tried using them for both recent posts and reading MRH mag on the ipad.  ipad is OK for both but too much of a hassle to download MRH mag.  So, for me all you have to do is make your mag run in Chrome or Firefox.

Mike Lee