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Category: trivia
Categories
Behind the scenes
I wrote an article over on my personal blog about some of the things that go on “behind the scenes” when developing any program but iPhone apps in particular. The example I use is a screen that was originally written for both Yummy and www.cut. If you’d like to read more you can check it out here.
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.
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.
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.)
Categories
Inside Yummy
If you’d like to learn a little more about how much work goes into Yummy and the kinds of design decisions that go on behind the scenes you might like to read a series of blog posts I wrote on my personal website. The one paragraph summary is:
“Last year Yahoo! announced, with no notice, a significant change that had far reaching consequences for all third party applications including my iPhone program, Yummy. This is a five part series of posts that discusses how I dealt with it.”
You can read it here: Delicious Debrief, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. Enjoy.
Unless you read this blog using an RSS feed you will probably have already noticed the new theme. I think it’s a bit prettier than the old one. The side bar is a bit wider and the main body a little narrower. Hopefully all the posts will still fit in the new format…
There are still a few design elements that don’t quite match, the obvious being the header. I will update this shortly but — teaser alert — it will have a new, updated Yummy logo/icon. More about this later.
This is something that I did a while ago but I don’t think I ever got around to telling anyone about it…
I created a Twitter feed for Yummy and Yummy Browser: @yummy_app. On there I tweet news and updates. Kind of the same thing that you get here but shorter plus some stuff that wouldn’t be worth a full blog post. If you also use www.cut it also has its own Twitter account: @wwwcut.
I also have a personal Twitter account (@sdarlington) where I post more about the development of my iPhone apps and life in general.
I know of a few people who have been holding back from buying Yummy while they wait for Yahoo! to release an official iPhone client. Now a post hidden in their support forums (near the bottom of this thread) makes it very clear that they will not be making one available:
“This has been covered in a few locations, but let me confirm once and for all that there will be NO Delicious iPhone app.”
In my experience — both as a user and as someone who sees a reasonable number of feature requests for Yummy — I’m not convinced that their reasons hold water. Nevertheless, that’s the way things are.
So if you do want a Delicious.com client for your iPhone or iPod touch you’ll need to pick up one of the third-party applications. May I suggest that you consider Yummy.
This isn’t directly Yummy related but I thought you might be interested. I have just launched a new, free iPhone application, called www.cut. It uses a bunch of code that’s already in Yummy but also has a number of its own tricks. Find the description below and its web page is here.
This isn’t one of those immersive applications that takes hours to figure out and weeks to master. Instead it’s a small but useful utility that shortens URLs for you so that they can be emailed, Twittered or Facebooked without worrying about character counts or line breaks messing up the link.
www.cut — we like to pronounce it “dub cut” — keeps out of your way as much as possible. For example, if there’s a URL on the clipboard when it starts it assumes that’s the one you want to use and immediately asks your configured shortening service to begin its work. When complete it automatically sends it straight back to the clipboard, so you might not even have to press a single button!
Of course you can also type the URL manually. If you want to email a message you can do it without leaving www.cut.
www.cut currently supports six shortening services:
The ones that support it allow you to log in so that statistics about your links can be gathered.
Simple but effective. That’s www.cut.
Just a quick post to note that Yummy is still on its half price sale! On Tuesday the price goes back up to $1.99 (or its local equivalent).