Tag: release

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Rootn Tootn 2.0: Out now!

Rootn Tootn 2.0 - Statistics Screen

What you need to know about Rootn Tootn 2.0, our baby feed timer and reminder app, in four bullet points:

  • It launches today
  • It still allows you to record your baby’s eating and sleeping routine, setting reminders, writing notes, and all without the boring pastel pinks and blues
  • It’s a substantial update that optimises the app for iOS 7 and puts your most important content front and centre
  • It’s now free for new users with an in-app purchase that unlocks the full functionality

For both new and existing users, Rootn Tootn 2.0 offers the following changes:

  • New, cleaner look for iOS 7, including improved blur effect and more space for your reminders on the home screen
  • Enhanced contrast between the background image and your data so you can see what’s important to you more quickly than ever
  • Rejigged interface, with a more logical layout, putting the information you want to see more prominently
  • Tap and hold when finishing a timer to go straight to the notes screen

The free version — did I say that Rootn Tootn is now free to download? — gives you all the updates, all the enhancements, all the features of the full version but limits you to the two standard reminders and and the default background image. There is no advertising, no limits of how much data you can enter or how long you can use it.

A lot of work has gone into this release. We hope you like it.

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Yummy 2.7.7

Last, but by no means least, in my programme to update all Wandle apps for iOS 7 is Yummy.

Yummy 2.7.7 Date List

I’ll be the first to admit that it has taken a long time to arrive. Yummy is a deceptively large and complex app, and the fact that it was originally written for iPhone OS 2 in 2008 has not helped matters. This means that this update has had much more work “under the hood” that you can’t see than changes that you can see.

That’s not to say that there’s no Good Stuff. The “edit bookmark” screen has seen another facelift — moving the tabs to the top rather than the bottom of the screen, adding a character count for the notes.

In bullet points:

  • Updates for iOS7
  • Enhanced edit screen
  • Notes character count
  • Removed “shake to refresh” function
  • Bug fixes
  • Note: the earliest supported iOS version is now 6.0.

I am currently evaluating the possibility of an update that is a better iOS 7 citizen, including background updates. This will likely involve dropping support for iOS 6 and below.

Keep an eye out for the new version on Twitter and, of course, your device.

Update (2 January 2014): Apple approved the update in almost record time and it’s not wending its way to the App Store.

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www.cut version 3.2.1

I’m pleased to announce www.cut version 3.2.1, which I like to call the Ted Rogers release. (Actually, I just made that up.) In fact it’s a very small update with just a couple of changes:

  • Fix for uCut.it
  • Improved visual feedback when shortening URLs

For the first bullet-point, it seems that uCut.it changed hands since I used it last and they managed to change the API — the mechanism apps use to communicate — in the process. This update allows uCut.it to work again.

The second it, well, part of the peril of developing on a fast WiFi network and using a decent 3G connection most of the time when I use it out and about. Shortening a URL typically requires a single network request so on a good connection it takes almost no time. So I didn’t put up any visual feedback that anything was happening. Eventually — and this would typically be a fraction of a second normally — the shortened URL or an error would appear. But when dealing with a poor network there was no indication that anything was happening. This version now shows an activity indicator so it’s clear that something is happening, even if that something is taking a while for some reason.

Unfortunately it’s unlikely to make it onto the App Store before the iTunes Connect shutdown (and therefore Christmas), but hopefully it will be available shortly after it opens again.

Update: Oddly, the shutdown was suspended on the 24th just long enough for the update to be approved just in time for Christmas.

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Smart App Banner 1.0

Two things to note about our Smart App Banner WordPress plugin:

  • Thanks to Borisa Djuraskovic it has been translated into Serbo-Croatian
  • I’ve bumped the version number up to 1.0. It has not needed updating in a year and has been downloaded over two thousand times (more than any other Smart App Banner plugin for WordPress last time I looked) so I think it should be considered stable, making the 0.x.x version number potentially misleading

The first item required some leg-work to make the plugin support language files but, with that done, it should be easy to support new languages. If you’d like to add a new language, the distribution now includes a “pot” file. Basically you just take the first lines (labelled “msgid”) and put the translation in the next line (“msgstr”). If you send the completed file to me, I can do the rest.

Otherwise it’s not an essential update but there’s not reason not to take a copy when WordPress next nags you to update your site. We always welcome five star reviews, of course!

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www.cut 3.2

This is the first of a few relatively small iOS 7 updates coming your way very soon.

Well, I say small. It looks like a small change but in terms of code it’s much more significant than you might imagine. I won’t bore you with the details but I will say that I managed to add “Send to iMessage” support as part of the upgrade. You might also notice a small tweak to the icon.

But something had to give and that is iOS 5 support. The old version should continue to work without problem.

One other thing: in previous updates I have had to remove some defunct URL shortening services. This represents the first significant release where that has not happened!

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Wandle and iOS 7

September 2013 Invitation

Tomorrow Apple are expected to announce a — or possibly more than one — new iPhone, likely along with the date that iOS 7 will be made available for the rest of us. I thought that made this a good time to talk about what can expect from Wandle Software.

Short version: updates are coming but probably not for day one.

Due to the changes that Apple have made with iOS 7 it’s difficult to make an app that is fully optimised for both iOS 7 and earlier. What we’re aiming for with each update is works with iOS 6, works and looks best with iOS 7.

I want to be clear about two points about this. Firstly, if you’re using iOS 4 or 5 then you’re most likely not going to get any further updates. With very few exceptions, devices that are still in use are capable of running iOS 6. If you’ve not updated yet for some reason, now is the time! Of course, older version of our apps won’t suddenly just stop working.

Secondly, “works best” in iOS 7 might mean some aspects might not look quite as good in iOS 6. Everything will be functional and I’m certainly not deliberately degrading the look.

Updates for all three apps, Rootn Tootn, Yummy and www.cut, will all be coming out over the next month or two. (For what it’s worth, Rootn Tootn is currently the closest to release, www.cut the furthest. I believe all current versions work in iOS 7 without further updates.)

More updates when new versions have been submitted to Apple for review.

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Yummy 2.7.6

Pull to refreshYes, just a couple of weeks after the last one, here is a new version of Yummy on its way to the App Store. Three changes:

  • Pull to refresh
  • Fix crash when there are bookmarks with empty tags
  • Fix crash when sharing a bookmark with no notes or a non-standard URL

Neither of the fixes affect very many users but I apologise if you were one of them.

As a thank you for your patience I have added “pull to refresh” in the “By date” view. This has been on my TODO for quite some time (and took more work than you might imagine under the hood!) but I think is a great new option.

You might ask: why add to the date view but not the “By tag” view? In short, I don’t think it makes sense. Pull to refresh works best when the list of items is ordered chronologically, such as a list of tweets or emails. Tags are ordered alphabetically so you don’t pull down at the top to get more items.

I could be persuaded that “consistency” trumps “chronology.” Let me know if you disagree.

Either way, I hope you like it.

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Yummy 2.7.5

Update: Yummy 2.7.5 was approved on May 8, 2013.

I just submitted another minor update for Yummy to Apple for review. Apple are taking about a week to approve new releases.

This version has the following changes:

  • Fixes duplicate tag issue (more accurately, tags with spaces at the end). You’ll need to log out and back in again if this affects you 
  • Remove post-to-Twitter functionality for iOS 4.x users
  • Use 1Password to get Delicious.com and pinboard.in passwords
  • Open URLs in 1Password
  • Only show Instapaper and Pocket icons if username has been added in Settings
  • Other bug fixes

Regarding the second point — the removal of Yummy’s custom post-to-Twitter functionality — this has been brought about because of changes in the Twitter API. If you are still using iOS 4 I would encourage you to upgrade. As far as I know there are no devices that can run Yummy that do not support iOS5.

The 1Password functionality isn’t quite as integrated as we all might like. Unfortunately this is due to limitations in iOS. Just as I can’t add a “Save to Yummy” button in Safari, I can’t add a “Get 1Password” button. Nevertheless, I think this is still useful in this form.

This update has been a long time coming but it’s very much worth having. Hope you like it.

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Rootn Tootn 1.1.1

Rootn Tootn History screen (v 1.1.1)
Rootn Tootn History screen (v 1.1.1)

I hadn’t intended to make this release. I made these changes back in December and planned to include them in the next major update (version 1.2) but the scope of that has increased somewhat and it’s taking longer to put together than I’d hoped. So, here are two nice, small improvements.

  • Edit a timer event, moving it before a previous timer
  • Date headings in the History view

The first is a fix for what, in hindsight, was a mistake in the original versions. I wanted to avoid the situation where you could have overlapping events. It seemed unlikely that anyone would want to do that. To keep the interface clean I made it so that you couldn’t update an event to clash with the next or previous one. Unfortunately this meant that if you missed a feed it became very difficult to add it back.

The solution? Simply relax the checks. 

The second change is to split the History view into dates. This breaks up the events so you can see what happened and when that little bit easier.

So, two small changes. But both, I think, make Rootn Tootn that little bit better.

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Yummy 2.7.4

Well, it’s taken more than a year to be available, but Delicious finally updated their API so that clients can use spaces in tags. And that’s what this new version of Yummy, submitted to the App Store yesterday, is all about.

In short, if you use Delicious tags are now delimited by commas, just like on the website, rather than spaces as has been the case in Yummy until now. If you use Pinboard, nothing should have changed.

Because it’s a change, I’ve also added a hint on the tag entry screen so you know what character to use.

If you have already downloaded bookmarks and Yummy has (incorrectly) split your tags into individual words, then I’m afraid that you’ll have to log out and back in again. This will download all your bookmarks again, but this time they should have the correct tags.

I apologise that this has taken so long to come about but, as I’ve said to everyone who has contacted me about this issue, this was a problem with the API and not strictly a problem in Yummy.

There are also a couple of other smaller changes in this release. Firstly, there’s a bug fix. Occasionally Yummy got the count of the number of tags wrong. Annoying but not disastrous. That should be fixed in this version.

Finally, until now when you logged out of Yummy, it kept all the old details up to the point where you start syncing with the new account. I felt that this was a fail-safe; an extra opportunity to cancel. But I’ve had a few emails from people saying that they like to log out to prevent other users from seeing and editing their bookmarks.

In 2.7.4, Yummy now allows this by wiping out all the previous account information when you confirm you want to log out.

At this stage I think it’s unlikely that Apple will approve the update this side of Christmas but it should hopefully be a nice New Year gift for everyone.

Update: Released on December 20.