Categories
news support

Blank tags

This story goes back to January when Yummy version 2.0 made it onto the App Store. This was a major release with a significant amount of work both under the hood and in new features. Unfortunately two problems made it past my testing. The first was that with over about fifteen hundred tags, the tag screen ground to a halt. The second was that in editing your bookmarks you could end up with blank tags that would cause Yummy to crash when clicked on.

I rushed version 2.1 out and squeezed in a couple of extra features in as a “thank you” to all the patient users who had been affected.

Why do I mention this now? Well since then I have had a small number of users tell me that they were still seeing blank tags. It’s taken me a lot of time to track down the underlying cause but the reason for this post is that my findings may possibly affect other users and even other iPhone developers.

Since I had never been able to reproduce the problem, I had been left to look at the code and speculate where things might go wrong. I made a couple of small changes which while undoubtedly improvements I had a hard time imagining fixing the problem. I was right to be sceptical.

It turns out that the common trait for all the affected users was that they had “jail broken” their phones.

But first, what is “jail-breaking”? The name makes it sound rather naughty but it’s basically just the process of allowing software on your handset that has not been sanctioned by Apple. Given that there are over 27000 applications that Apple have allowed on the App Store, why would you want to go down this route? Well, there are certain kinds of application (such as ones that run in the back ground) that Apple won’t allow and certain customisations that are not available.

If you get more choices and more options then why does everyone not jail-break their phone? The main downside is that Apple does not support jail-broken phones. If your phone breaks and they determine that this is what you’ve done, they might say that you voided your warranty and send you on your way.

What I found over the weekend, quite by chance, is that jail broken iPhone’s often have a different version of SQLite, the technology that is used to store your Delicious.com bookmarks to disk, from the stock iPhone operating system. This difference exposed a problem that simply was not there when using a standard iPhone or iPod touch.

The good news is that I have now fixed this bug and it will be available in the next release, which should be on the App Store some time in the next week. The bad news is that I am likely to take a similar stance to Apple on jail breaks in the future.

Categories
news trivia

Yummy on iPhone OS 3.0

I have just been watching the video announcement of the new iPhone operating system and considering how it will impact Yummy.

What follows are my first impressions of the announcements. I am deliberately writing this before I’ve seen the SDK so I can be sure that I am not violating the NDA, but that does mean that some of the things I speculate may not even be possible. That is, these are thoughts and not commitments. These are also opinions as a developer rather than a user of an iPhone. As a user there are undoubtedly some useful new features but it seems to me that the SDK is where the real news is.

So, in no particular order:

Mail sheet. This is great. The ability to send a link by email without leaving Yummy will be a great improvement. I would also like the ability for third party applications to have similar functionality. How cool would it be for, say, TwitterFon to have an “Add to Delicious” button that showed a Yummy screen to complete the task. Or for Yummy to be able to send links to Twitter using a Twittelator screen?

Cut and paste. I am not as convinced as some people that this is an absolutely critical enhancement, but it’s still going to be nice to have. One particular scenario that I would use is copying some text on a web page, post the link using Yummy and add some notes that includes the quote. You can’t really do that right now without a notepad and paper!

Core data. This is a pretty technical one but it jumped off the page when I saw it on the slides, though it wasn’t mentioned much more than that. Core Data is an Apple-endorsed way of saving data to a database with fairly simple and well-tested code. My hand-crafted code won’t go away any time soon (since I’ll still need to support OS 2.x for a while yet) but this is going to make writing future applications much easier.

Spotlight search. Mac OS 10.4 was worth the upgrade for Spotlight alone, even in the fairly unfinished state it was in then. An iPhone stores much less data and the data that is there is fairly well compartmentalised so I’m not convinced that it’s going to be quite so useful here. Having said that, I would like to see Spotlight work with the title and notes fields held in Yummy’s cache of your Delicious.com bookmarks.

As far as I can tell, most of the other publicly announced developer-centric features probably don’t impact Yummy. As ever, there is almost certainly some other things that I missed or Apple didn’t tell us about. When I delve into the SDK I’ll have a much better idea. As ever, I’m open to suggestions if you have any ideas.

Anyway, must dash. I have some new code to write…

Categories
faq howto trivia

Spot the Difference

One question that I realised that I have not answered very clearly yet is, What’s the difference between Yummy and Yummy Browser? That’s what I hope to answer here.

Perhaps obvious, but worth repeating anyway, is that Yummy Browser is the “lite” version of Yummy. The practical upshot being that every feature in Yummy Browser is also in Yummy.

The name indicates the main difference between the two versions. Yummy Browser allows you to browse your Delicious.com bookmarks. That is, you can:

  • View your bookmarks by date

  • View your bookmarks by tag

You can also view all your meta-data, including the notes field, the date added and the public/private status. Of course there’s no point in just viewing them, so you can also open bookmarks in Safari or send them to Mail so you can send them to your friends.

Yummy Browser is built from exactly the same code as the full version and is, similarly, capable of handling thousands of bookmarks.

The full version of Yummy has a number of great extra features which can be summarised as follows:

  • Full editing support. You can add, edit and delete bookmarks directly on your iPhone

  • Search for bookmarks by tag(s) or keywords in the title or notes fields

  • Built-in web preview so you don’t need to switch over to Safari

  • Send bookmarks to Twitter

If you’re a heavy user of Delicious on the move, I think you’ll agree that these extra features are well worth getting. And it’s always nice to know that you can get a feel for Yummy for free.

Categories
faq howto support

Editing Tags

One of the constant battles you come across when developing an iPhone application is that between limited screen space and the desire to make new features obvious and easy to find. The ability to edit tags is clearly an area where I saved screen real-estate at the expense of making it discoverable.

I refer here to a suggestion added on the Yummy Uservoice page:

The other suggestion of auto fill all tags from a bookmark that others have added would be good too, although that would require a network lookup.

Actually this feature has been present since version 2.1! I consider it a failing on my part that users who are enthusiastic enough to send me feedback have been unable to find this feature themselves. I hope to make this easier to find and use in the next version.

But until the next release is available in iTunes the current mechanism is the only way to go. Here’s how it works.

First, open the bookmark screen. You need to be adding or editing a bookmark for the button to be enabled. In this screen shot I am adding a new bookmark. Note that the “bookmark” icon at the bottom of the screen is now enabled.

Press this and the Tags field will now be populated with the suggested tags for this bookmark. If you’ve already added some tags then the new ones will be merged, so don’t worry, you won’t lose any edits.

If you followed the link to look at the suggestion, you’ll see that the quote above was the second part. Here’s the first half:

As you are entering new tags, auto lookup of tags I’ve used before. Say I have already used the tag “iPod-touch”, as I type “ip…” it would display all tags starting with “ip”.

I would love to be able to do this. There are, however, two stumbling blocks. The first is entirely my problem: performance. Some users have thousands of tags and making this work without being painfully slow would be hard. But the main difficulty is with the user interface.

Look at the screen above. Where could you put those suggested tags? When you remember that I also need to leave space for the keyboard, there really isn’t very much space! In the olden days, back in release 1.0 of Yummy, you used to edit tags on a different screen. This would have given enough space to add a list of suggestions, but a few users complained that moving to a new screen was unnecessary and slowed things down. I agreed with this (even though that’s how Apple’s Contacts application works) and fixed it in version 2.0.

This is all to say that this is a feature that I am actively thinking about but is not one that you should expect to see imminently. If you have any suggestions of how you think this could be made to work, then I’m all ears.

Categories
news trivia

Yummy Browser Update

Yummy Browser, the “lite” version of Yummy, was first available for download late last Wednesday UK time. It reached its first major mile milestone this weekend: more people now have a copy of Yummy Browser than Yummy, which has been on sale since August 2008. It has far exceeded expectations. If you picked up a copy, I hope you like it. And please consider upgrading to the full version of Yummy!

Some interesting trends have also become apparent. After the US, more copies have been downloaded in Japan than anywhere else. This surprises me since the main Delicious.com site is, as far as I can tell, not localised. Also, while I have made a few sales of Yummy there, Japan is way down the league table, far below the US, Canada and most of Western Europe.

Still, Yummy does work with non-Western text (indeed some features have been much harder to implement since I was trying hard not to assume an English/Latin alphabet) so perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised.

My wife wrote a special message for Japanese speakers: “iPhoneとdelicious.comを使っていますか。Yummy Appを試してみませんか。yummyapp.com” (I’m told that it means “Use iPhone and Delicious? Have you considered Yummy?” although for all the Japanese I speak it could say “Own a donkey? Always remember to carry a shovel.”)

Something that I was hoping for was wider distribution, into countries that I had never made sales. Indeed that is exactly what’s happened. In the last couple of days I’ve seen my first downloads in India, Russia and Romania.

But I think I should finish on Yummy Browser’s first review in iTunes. It was five stars, which is great. But it’s the text that stood out. Can’t say I’ve ever had a review like it: “Hi colliflower u can eat my poop u stinky hot dog . Enjoy your magic u little wizard.” I honestly don’t know what to think.

Thanks.

I think.

Categories
news trivia

Yummy 2 Screencast

Well, it’s been a busy week, what with the shorter-than-expected half-price sale and the release of Yummy Browser, the free, some would say “lite,” version of Yummy. I’ve also been making some good progress on the next version but there’s not a lot to add at the moment.

Instead I will leave you wish a short video showing some of the key features of Yummy 2.0.

Yes, it’s missing the saved search and tag suggestion features that I introduced in version 2.1 but it’s otherwise entirely up to date.

Categories
news

Yummy Browser 1.0

I am pleased to announce a new version of Yummy, Yummy Browser 1.0.

Yummy Browser is an iPhone application that allows you to view your delicious.com bookmarks. Key features:

  • Browse by date

  • Browse by tag

  • View all Delicious meta data, including the tags, date and notes fields

  • Open bookmarks in Safari

  • Mail bookmarks

  • Synchronise your Delicious bookmarks on demand

Yummy Browser is free and is available immediately in the App Store. If you need to add, edit or delete your bookmarks, want more sophisticated searching functionality, want to preview your bookmarks without launching Safari or send them to Twitter, have a look at the full version of Yummy.

Categories
news

Half Price Promotion ending soon

When, a few hours ago, I said that “Apple could approve Yummy Browser at any time, maybe an hour, a day or a month from now” I kind of assumed that it would be more like a few days than a few hours, but Apple were as unpredictable as ever and I just got this:

As promised, the full version of Yummy will be returning to its usual price ($1.99 or local equivalent) shortly.

Categories
news

Half Price Promotion

Rumour has it that patience is a virtue. But it’s not one that I have ever acquired, especially for things outside my control. (Maybe that makes me a control freak rather than impatient, but the end result is the same.)

How does this relate to Yummy? Well, those with good memories will recall that I announced a free version called Yummy Browser a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve not mentioned it since because it’s still in Apple’s review queue. Unfortunately there’s not very much I can do about that. But maybe there’s another way to get Yummy out to more people:

Until Apple approves Yummy Browser, the full version of Yummy will be half price.

Of course Apple could approve Yummy Browser at any time, maybe an hour, a day or a month from now. If you want to get Yummy for 99c (US, Canada), 59p (UK), 79c (Euro), 115Y (Japan) or $1.19 (Australia), now is the time.

Categories
news trivia

A week in review

It’s been a quiet week for the public face of Yummy but a lot has been going on behind the scenes. First, a couple of things that have not happened.

Yummy Browser has now been in Apple’s review queue for ten days and, unfortunately, is still not available for download. This is the longest I’ve had to wait for a a response from Apple, even including the initial version back in August. Given that the last couple of updates to Yummy have gone through in a few hours I am a little surprised. I’m hoping that publicly whinging works as well as it did for Owen Goss and his game, Dapple.

Secondly a user reported a problem where “blank” tags appeared in the “View by Tags” screen of version 2.1 of Yummy. I have been unable to reproduce this myself and have not got any further information. If you have seen this bug and would like to help me track it down and eliminate it, please let me know.

Back to things that did happen.

I made a few changes to Yummy that you’ll see in the coming months. As ever, there are some internal changes that I won’t bore you with. But I have also altered how the bookmark lists looks:

As you can see, there’s part of the URL and an icon indicating that a bookmark is private. I’m trying to balance the restricted amount of space with genuinely useful information. I considered, for example, adding a tiny preview or a favicon but in the end decided that they’d look neat in screenshots and videos but would take up valuable screen real-estate and not have enough utility to be worth the effort involved implementing them. What do you think? Is that the right call?

Finally, it’s always nice to hear from people who use Yummy. There have been some good suggestions on my Uservoice page, but this time I want to mention some reviews. Yummy only just fell out of Paul Boag’s top five iPhone applications and was also listed as one of klmontgomery‘s favourite apps.

Twitter has also been a great source of feedback. I like being able to say that Yummy is “100% anti-KRAPPS Certified app.” It has also been declared “iPhone app of the day” and “Cracking!“

Anyway, that’s the end of this brief immodest interlude and the last of this weeks blogs. See you next week.