Drag & Drop between Readdle apps sets the bar for cross app interactions on the iPad
Today, Readdle makes it possible to Drag and Drop files on iPad* between its popular productivity apps Documents, PDF Expert, Scanner Pro and Spark. Plus, Documents 6 is getting a major update that turns it into a file hub on iOS.
* iPad Pro models, iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 4
The Power of Touch
Touch is the most intuitive computing interface invented. Even one-year old babies can learn how to unlock their parents iPhones and turn on their favorite videos on YouTube.
Touch to interact, pinch to zoom, rotate with two fingers — the power of these gestures lies in both intuitiveness and simplicity.
What’s up with Drag & Drop? It has been the easiest and the most common way for file interaction on desktop computers for years. However, the ability to drag & drop content is not utilized on mobile devices. Only a small number of apps support direct manipulation of content within the app. Today, this is going to change.
The Winds of Change: Drag and Drop files between apps on iPad!
One of the iPad Pro’s main productivity features, that turns it into a powerful computing device according to Apple, is its ability to have two applications running on the screen at the same time.
The iPad was screaming for drag & drop as a way to share content between two simultaneously running apps. Apple hasn’t introduced a way for those two applications to interact, but this didn’t stop our developers from finding a way to make cross app drag & drop work. We love a challenge!
Two Apps. One File
Now, we are ready to show you what’s possible when you can run two application side by side, and they are aware of each other.
This technology works on iPad Pro models, iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 4.
We believe that this is the way inter app communication should’ve been done on iOS since the very beginning of iPad Pro.
There are dozens scenarios of how users can have a stellar experience with iPad Pro using inter app Drag & Drop.
Here are some examples for Readdle apps:
- Easily save email attachments to your iPad.
- Quickly attach scans and files to emails.
- Sign and edit document attachments and send them back.
You should really try it. If you download the latest version of Spark, Documents, Scanner Pro and PDF Expert you will see what kind of a productivity device your iPad can be.
The Readdle Team hopes that Apple will introduce their own implementation of inter app drag & drop one day. That will support other apps and make iPad a much better productivity device than it is now.
Starting today, we are making drag & drop available for millions of our iPad users.
The technology behind Drag and Drop
Each Readdle app starts local http server. Documents discovers http server of a side application via Bonjour. The side Readdle application does the same. When drag&drop starts, source application connects to its partner and transfers drag data via that connection (mime type of draggable item, thumbnail view, its position, etc). Http protocol and JSONs are used. When drag&drop finishes, destination application connects to the source one and download a file via http. Credentials for the file connection the destination app retrieves via the 1st channel on drag&drop completion.
This was the best way to do it, according to our experiments. We also tried Darwin notifications in pair with system clipboard, but decided to use the 1st approach as it was more reliable.
Here are the links to download:
All-new Documents 6, Finder for iOS
Today we are releasing a major update to Documents , that makes it the ultimate file hub for iOS devices. You can learn more here or download Documents 6 FREE now!
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