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I recently updated the Huffington Post reader application to the newest 2.2 Beta version via the App Store. Although it is clear that the Huffington Post takes its users’ feedback seriously and the software is a Beta release, there are still a couple of issues that remain yet until this application will be ready to be considered a fully polished release version.

As mentioned earlier, user feedback was taken, digested, and the option to enable Synchronized Scrolling was listed as a top feedback request by users of the application. Synchronized Scrolling enables all ribbons of story categories to be scrolled concurrently, in contrast to the “ribbon only” behaviour of prior versions.

As an example, if the Top Stories ribbon is scrolled to the left all other ribbons on the page are scrolled the same amount to the left as well. (a Three Musketeers’ implementation of scroll behaviour). I personally found that with the Synchronized Scrolling feature enabled, the response was very laggy due to the additonal overhead. So much so, that I immediately returned to Customize and turned it off.

I suppose I could be considered an “old school” reader, as the colloquial American expression goes.

Next item on the customization agenda: Themes. I found the dark theme was a bit sombre for my tastes, so I decided to get wild and switch to the White Theme. However, upon selecting any “slideshow” I found the sombre black theme returning. Slideshows are serious business it appears.

My biggest gripe about prior versions was fixed admirably, which was the seeming inability of older versions of this application to load any collection of photos in its entirety. Either one or more thumbnails would be missing, one or more photos would be missing, or a combination of the two that could only be explained by John Nash.

This one bug fix alone justifies a download of the beta version. I prefer independent scrolling, just fix the bloody theme issue soon please.

Verdict: Get the Beta goodness here.