mrgan:
Nial Giacomelli has done a bang-up job with Showtime, his web app for keeping track of your favorite TV shows. It’s not fabulous “for a web app”, it’s fabulous period.
John Gruber has two fair and true complaints about it:
- Scrolling (it’s slow even at maximum speed.)
- The ON/OFF toggle switch has to be tapped (instead of the deeply satisfying native ability to slide it as well.)
As someone who’s into iPhone web apps, I’m going to side with Nial and focus on the positive.
The latter problem, the toggle, is fully solvable. There’s no technical reason this can’t be done with Javascript; it’s just not a ton of fun recreating native behaviors (who am I kidding - yes it is, sometimes!) If Nial doesn’t fix this soon, I’ll take a crack at it. But here’s the punchline: when it’s fixed, it’ll be fixed on everyone’s copy of Showtime the next time they launch it. How much would SDK developers give up to gain that ability?
The former problem - scrolling - may be trickier, or even unsolvable (or not!) It’s a bummer. But, I can live with it. I know Nial’s developing this with a pocket knife and a can of plumber’s putty, so I’m granting him a generous handicap.
iPhone-style checkboxes with touch events are entirely feasible. There’s even a jQuery plugin available to do just this. I’ve never used it in a project myself, but their demo page works as expected on my phone, dragging and all.
Oh, and Showtime’s not so bad either.
staff:
Tumblr iPhone 1.1 Sneak Peek!
It’s been submitted to the App Store and should be live this week! Here’s a preview from its wonderful developer, Jeff Rock:
- Video posts. Choose from your camera roll or capture a new video right from the app (iPhone 3GS only).
- Native editing. Need to add tags or update a post on the go? Just tap the ‘edit’ button on a post in the Dashboard to load it up in a native post editor.
- Search. Supports searching across Tumblr, in your Dashboard or on just your posts.
- Built-in web browser. No more losing your place when you tap a link in Dashboard. Now a web browser will pop up and let you investigate the interwebs.
- Post upload status. Never wonder how long it’s going to take that Audio post to upload again.
- Post geotagging. Even I’m not sure what this is for, but I’m sure that it’s going to be awesome.
- Rewritten Dashboard tab (replaces the Sites tab). See all your posts from each of your blogs, including drafts and queues.
- Rewritten Advanced Post Options. New support for Save as draft, Add to Queue, Publish on, Custom post URL’s, Send to Twitter and Ask a question.
- Dashboard now only reloads on command. Not every time you tap the tab. Sorry about that one :P
- Better quality photo posts. Photos are now sent with less compression.
- New bookmarklet format for links. More info coming once 1.1 goes live.
Note: The rest has been removed for brevity’s sake.
Whoa.
I’m excited. And the first thing I did upon reading this was start playing with URLs. Turns out the tumblr website components of the 1.1 release are already up and running. See:
I still can’t figure out, however, what the URL is for viewing just your posts.
“Why doesn’t Google Docs update every half second like Etherpad does? Because it’s really, really hard. We’re fairly experienced programmers, and to make this work we had to solve problems that, as far as we know, no one had solved before.”
Etherpad. The site is much prettier than it was a few months ago.
In all seriousness, this is a handy-looking webapp I just found from a quick google search. See, today Canon announced what I believe to be the ultimate compromise between a crappy point-and-shoot and a prosumer-grade camera. It’s called the Powershot S90, and I’d absolutely love one. But alas, I am unwilling to pay more than $250. Why the arbitrary number? Good question. Anyway, now I’ll automatically be notified via RSS whenever its price drops on Amazon. The internet is swell.
To the elephantine minded readers back at home: yes, I did purchase a point-and-shoot last summer. Unfortunately it was stolen back in January. Tough luck.
davidkaneda:
Has anyone gotten a Default.png file to work on a full screen iPhone web app (either 2.2 or [REDACTED])? Was secretly hoping it’s possible.
As far as I can tell, that’s not doable. Sites running in the fauxapp mode from the home screen default to a screenshot of the last position the user visited prior to adding the icon to the springboard. In a way, this is kind of like the default.png, since it displays what the app looks like.
I’ve got a counter-question. Have you been able to get rotation detection working in full-screen app mode? For some reason changes in window.orientation don’t seem to register in this mode.
thesixtyone:
it’s pretty simple. we’re tired of people forgetting our name, so we’ve chosen a new one: thesixtynine. it’s catchy, screams “7 deadly sins” (hello max levchin), and, face it, it’s way more memorable than the lowly, often-overlooked “61.” who the heck is bob dylan, anyway?
more importantly, the switch has put us at the top of the heap as far as search engines are concerned. chief technical officer sam hsiung says “since rebranding to thesixtynine, we’ve seen a 234% jump in referral traffic. i’ve poured months into SEO (search engine optimization) tweaks with minimal results. i guess marketing trumps engineering.”
so remember, we’re not just a number anymore.
we’re thesixtynine.
This is one of the better April Fool’s jokes of the day. Amazing Super Powers might be my favorite though.
Via: Neven Mrgan's tumbl
