Categories
howto news support

Improved Yahoo! ID login in Yummy 2.5

Remember the bad old days? When you used your Yahoo! ID to log into Yummy you had to leave the app, go into Safari, remember a number… Well, it wasn’t really that hard but there were more steps than I wanted. 
Yummy 2.5 changes that.

Now you never have to leave Yummy how ever you log into Delicious. This behaviour is actually contrary to the OAuth spec but the user experience is so much better and simpler I thought that it was worth breaking some rules.

Yahoo! do not serve a mobile-optimised web site so it requires a little scrolling around, but I still think that this is more convenient that switching over to Safari and back again. Of course, this works better on the iPad, which has a much bigger screen.

Categories
howto news

Why the “experimental” label for Pinboard.in support in Yummy 2.5?

You might have noticed that the new version of Yummy has support for the pinboard.in bookmarking website for introverts, but that I’ve flagged the feature as “experimental.” why would I add a new feature and yet suggest that you might not want to use it? That’s what I hope to explain in this post. 
Implementing support for pinboard.in was pretty easy. They use mostly the same API (way of talking to the server) as Delicious so it was just a matter of changing a few links and adding an option to the log in screen. 
The devil, however, is in the word “mostly.” The Delicious.com API is, bizarrely, not great for syncing your bookmarks, especially on devices with limited memory like an iPhone. The pinboard.in guys agree, which is why they didn’t implement the few concessions that Delicious made to allow syncing. 
What this means is that, technically, Yummy never syncs with pinboard.in, instead it downloads all your bookmarks every time. Also, it’s not possible to download bookmarks in “batches” which means that the more links you have the more likely it is to fail. (There is also a limit with Delicious but I’ve never heard of anyone reaching it.) Unfortunately it’s these “packrats,” with huge numbers of links, who are drawn to pinboard.in’s service. 
Having said all that, I still thought that it was a feature worth adding. There is some demand and I don’t know what the limit is; hopefully it’s high enough to be useful. 
So, what does “experimental” mean? In short it says that I have not fully decided what to do with it. If I get a disproportionate amount if support requests I may remove it. If successful I may create a separate app. 
But if you do use it, please let me know how you get on. 
Categories
howto support tutorial

Pinboard.in Support in Yummy 2.5

Yummy 2.5 adds support for the social bookmarking site for introverts, pinboard.in. It is, however, disabled by default, so today I want to talk about how to enable it.
The first step is — obviously — to enable it. You can open the Settings app or use the settings option from Yummy’s main screen. Either way you should see something like the screen below.

Flip the switch at the bottom of the screen to “On.”

You’ll note that it’s flagged as “Experimental.” I’ll explain more tomorrow about that and what that means for future updates, but it short it’s no more likely to eat all your bookmarks or do anything else nasty than the interface with Delicious.com.

Once support has been enabled the log in screen — accessed either by logging out from Delicious or launching the app — should now have a pinboard.in option.

The rest is exactly the same as when you’re logging into a normal non-Yahoo! ID Delicious.com account.

There is one caveat to this. If you don’t have a Delicious.com account and you want to log into a pinboard.in account on first launch you may find that the option you see in the screen above is missing. This is a bug that will be fixed in Yummy 2.5.1 but there is a work around: after you’ve changed the settings, try killing Yummy from the task switching menu (double-tap home, press and hold Yummy, press the “jiggling” icon).  You should find the option available next time you launch Yummy.

Categories
news trivia

iPad Support in Yummy 2.5

This came out if nowhere to become the number one request from users of Yummy. At the time I was, in all honesty, sceptical. I thought the iPhone version would be okay running on the iPad and that the full website would be usable. 
It didn’t take long using an iPad to realise that I was wrong. 

What do you get when you use Yummy on an iPad? 
All the same features but — to paraphrase Eric Morecambe — not necessarily in the same place. It uses the full screen of the device, supports all four orientations and, where appropriate, uses popups and so forth. 
Since creating the iPad version was a lot of work I did consider creating a new app or making it an in-app purchase, however in the end, because there are no iPad exclusive features, I decided to make it free for Yummy customers. Users of Yummy Browser will still get the pixel-doubling. 
Categories
news

Introducing: Yummy Browser 2.5

In all the excitement over the new release of Yummy we should not forget that it’s little brother, Yummy Browser, also got an update. 
As before, Yummy Browser inherits all the core features of the full version of Yummy. That is: the improved log in process; the support for iOS4 and iPhone 4; the count of bookmarks behind each tag. 

Users stuck on older versions of iOS will note that it now remembers which screen you were on last.

For the sake of clarity, Yummy Browser lacks the following major features from the full version of Yummy:

  • Add, Edit and Delete bookmarks
  • View webpages directly inside the app, i.e., without switching to Safari
  • View your Tag Bundles
  • iPad support
  • pinboard.in support
  • Search bookmarks
  • Post bookmarks to Twitter or Facebook
I’ve also taken the opportunity to switch from AdMod to Apple’s iAd.
Categories
news

Introducing: Yummy 2.5

I am pleased to announce that Yummy 2.5 is making its way to the App Store ready for download. It’s a free update for all existing users and the usual “tier 2” price for everyone else — that is, $1.99, £1.19, €1.59, ¥230 or your local equivalent.


What’s new?


Visually, you might notice the revised icon:





And there’s quite a lot of new functionality too:

  • iPad support
  • iOS4 support
  • “Retina display” support for iPhone 4 and the new iPod touches
  • A count of the number of bookmarks that each tag has
  • Experimental pinboard.in support
  • Improvements to the Yahoo! ID authorisation process
  • Post to Twitter using Osfoora
  • Shorten your links using uCut.it
  • The usual other bug fixes and refinements
I’ll be posting about each of these features — or at least those that make sense — over the following week. I’ve already written about what you can expect in the iPad version and what effect the multi-tasking will (or won’t) have.

Or you can just download your copy now!
Categories
news trivia

Second Anniversary


Two years ago today, on 2nd September 2008, Yummy 1.0 first hit the App Store. A big thank you to everyone who has downloaded a copy.

I was going to commemorate the occasion with version 2.5, unfortunately my laptop had other ideas.

Broken Hard Disk
I made the final build and shut the lid while I ate dinner. Afterwards, I just got the spinning beachball of death. No access to any of the files; no way to submit the new version to iTunes.
The good news is that I have installed a replacement disk and am well on the way to restoring my MacBook to its former glory. With luck, version 2.5 will hit the App Store not two years after version one but two years and one week later. (Nearly 90% of updates are being approved within seven days.)