OK, first the disclaimer: App Cooker creators are buying all my ad space on Building iPhone Apps. That being said, I'm a delighted user of App Cooker, a mockup and wireframing tool for iOS application design. The app is on sale for a very limited time at 14.99$ instead of 39.99$. Go get it now. This is THE deal.
Interesting article from imore on making our iOS apps ready for the iPhone 5. Adding support for this taller screen with a resolution of 640 x 1136 is not only a matter of adding the Default-568h@2x.png resource to the application bundle. Many applications will have to be reworking in order to take advantage of the added space. Plus, don't forget that we should wait to test software on an actual device. The simulator is not a physical device. This will have a direct effect on our ability to update our applications. In my case, I will try to run my application inside the simulator to see how it reacts but I'll definitively wait for my iPhone 5 to arrive to do more complete testing and eventually release updates.
After received a few but welcomed feedback, I spent some time redoing part of my tiles that will make up the board of pictures presented to the user. So here it is.
Here are a few designed tiles that would be presented to the user while browsing Tumblr's pictures. That was done with Sketch and Pixelmator.
The top right tile is a representation of browsing pictures from a specific Tumblr blog. The top right tile is shows a title without the metadata. The bottom left tile is an empty tile shown when the pictures are not loaded yet. And the bottom right tile is showing the metadata overlay.
How do you like this design? Post your comment to answer.
JF Martin
I'm constantly working on new versions of the application UI elements.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 18:57 | tagged design, development, mvc I think of application design when I'm drawing screens. I feel I design an application when I'm thinking about what will be part of the Model, what will be part of the Controller and what Views will be required in order to display things to the users. I'm designing an application when I start to list the open source modules and framework that will be needed in order to save development time. I'm designing an application when I start to look for application icons. I'm building an iPhone application when I'm building the list of features that will be part of the initial release and all the subsequent releases. Yes, I feel that I'm into something when and I'm looking back into previous WWDC videos I order to remember how to write code.
I'm still planning the features of my Tumblr Photo browser that I'll develop and sell on the App Store. The process of planning the application's features set is important. First, it will help me prioritize my development efforts. Second, I'm sure many features will be interesting to include but a few will be left out altogether or will be part of a subsequent release.
What features goes into 1.0 release? What features are essential to include from day one? Answering these questions is like asking myself: what is the essence of my application and this is critical. Features less important will be part of subsequent releases but I'm still think about them now because it may influence the design of the application, its behaviour and the visual look and placement of user interface elements. It is like thinking about application behavioural extensibility.
Right now I'm using Remember The Milk service to help me write down the application features and classify them in application releases. For this task, I created three to do lists the following way:
MyApp 1.0 feature set
MyApp 1.1 feature set
MyApp 1.2 feature set
For each feature, I put them in the correct release. When describing the features, I find myself pushing further the inclusion of certain features in a subsquent version if I feel the features will take too much time to include in the prior release or if it is not that important to the application.
As you can see, thinking about a mobile application (or any application for that matter) involves many things, not just coding and Photoshopping application's visual elements.
For iOS developers who hire designers to help them create their beautiful applications, here is a list of things they should communicate to the designers to get him started and know about your expectations. Many of these items maybe already be known to the designer. But, don't take anything for granted.
This list is a excerpt from the excellent article from Matt Gemmell.
As you may already know, Twitter acquired Posterous last week. The way I (and many others) understand their public press release is pretty clear: we should expect Posterous to close in the near future. Many Posterous users are already moving from it to other places. So I decided to stop publishing on Posterous. I must move to something else.
As of today, you should update your bookmarks and your RSS subscriptions according to the following new addresses where I will continue to publish abour iOS designs that I really like.
First, you can look at all my past screen shots directly on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/buildingiphoneapps/sets/
I will now use Flickr to post screen shots of iOS apps that I really like.
Also, you can follow posts on Tumblr: http://iosappdesigns.tumblr.com/
I will now use Tumblr to publish different things related to great iOS app designs. So bookmark this URL too.
This change is now in effect. Thanks for following me! Please, share.
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 9:10 | tagged UI Design, app cooker, design, prototyping As I prepare to leave home for a week, I wanted to get prepared to be able to do application UI prototyping while on the go. In this blog post, I want to share with you what tools I'll be using as well as write about a very impressive application that I find more and more useful for the iPad: iDraw.
So, I'll be leaving home with these on hand: my iPad, a stack of paper and pencil. I'll be using three apps in order to create the first digital prototypes of my first iPad application: App Cooker to simulate the application interaction, iDraw to draw UI elements and Eraser to create transparent background of pictures.
As you may know, I'm a big fan of App Cooker (my App Cooker review) but this application is not a complete drawing application. Recently I came across iDraw for iPad and fall in love with it. In summary, I would say that this is the most complete vector-based application for the iPad. For 8.99$, you get all what you need to draw UI elements: canvas control, all shapes, fills and gradients, layers, undos/redo, precise placement, precise sizing, copy and paste, export, etc.
Eraser is used to open a picture, set a transparent colour and then save it in order to be able to re-import it in iDraw or in App Cooker. iDraw export doesn't support transparent background. Eraser isn't universal but works perfectly on the iPad.
Along the lines in my previous blog post: Preparing a full description my first iPad App, here is a mostly complete description of my first iPad app that I'm planning to build and sell on the App Store.
Application goals
The goal of this application is to browse pictures on the micro blogging platform Tumblr.
