Laughable UI
The SlovoEd Deluxe English-Spanish & Spanish-English dictionary probably isnt the worst language dictionary app out there. Im a Spanish neophyte, and the content of this Spanish-English/English-Spanish translation dictionary is more than adequate for my needs. This app includes plenty of common Spanish words, with gender, parts of speech, and pronunciations. Conjugations arent provided, but that would be a great way to distinguish the content from that found in print translation dictionaries.
Anyone used to the general high quality of Apple applications is going to consider this UI a trainwreck, however. And the UI is awful before you even launch the app. The icon -- which is not even the same icon as the mediocre icon displayed in the App Store -- is simply an image of two stacked books, giving no indication of the apps purpose. And the name? "SlovoEd Deluxe English-Spanish & Spanish-English dictionary": such a catchy, punchy name, right? Too bad that the iPhone only provides a single line to display app names, so "SlovoEd Deluxe English-Spanish & Spanish-English dictionary" is truncated down to "Slovo..glish." Appallingly amateurish. Once the app is actually running, youll notice that the apps title bar reads "SlovoEd" rather than, say, "Spanish-English" or even "Dictionary." The tab bar at the bottom of the UI, meanwhile, labels the search/index section as -- thats right -- "SlovoEd." A tab bar item labeled "Dictionaries" leads you to a screen where you can select between English-Spanish lookup mode and Spanish-English lookup mode. But thats entirely the wrong way to do this; for the sake of usability and speed, the "Dictionaries" tab should have been eliminated to leave room for a "Spanish-English" tab and an "English-Spanish" tab.
Such a carelessly designed UI makes using the SlovoEd Deluxe English-Spanish & Spanish-English dictionary something of an unpleasant experience. While its true that the app does everything that I need a translation dictionary to do, its also true that my previous cell phone did everything that I needed a cell phone to do, and I still replaced it with an iPhone, because design and usability are things that should matter.
c.libre about Diccionario Inglés <> Español
