Small Things on Small Screen

Nodejs

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:35:58 +0900

Nodejs is trying to solve the right problem with the right language.

You can watch Ryan Dahl’s presentation to get the idea. It’s very early though but better keep an eye on it.

Readability

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:45:52 +0900

The web should be thankful for this clever little bookmarklet http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/.

Prediksi Masa Depan iPad

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:05:25 +0900

Dibagi kedalam 3 kubu berdasarkan hayalan masing2.

Yang pertama kubu yang membayangkan menjalankan iFart di iPad. Yang kedua yang menghayal bisa pake emacs di iPad. Yang gak kalah hancurnya kubu yang ketiga yang bermimpi menjalankan aplikasi yang belum ada (belum kepikir atau lg mikir2) di iPad.

Kubu yang ketiga sebenarnya menarik karna dia mungkin sudah atau lagi download sdk-nya.

Dropbox iPhone App

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:25:00 +0900

I’ve been using dropbox since it was first released to sync and share files. It just works.

Now Dropbox iPhone App is available.

Go get it. It’s free up to 2GB.

But unlike desktop app, your files are not downloaded automatically. To download and access file offline, you have to mark it as “favorite”.

The Best Notes App

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:44:00 +0900

It’s not built-in notes.app. It’s not simplenote.

For me, it’s mail app. I have special email account for notes.

Unread Badge

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:30:00 +0900

FAQ about NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone:

We’ve found that a lot of people really can’t stand having an unread badge. It just stresses them out. It’s one more thing to clear. We totally understand.

I’m one of those who can’t stand unread badge.

Postage.app

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:06:00 +0900

I adore its beautiful user interface. One of my favorite thoughtful UI designs is its bottom scroll view. Tap one of the buttons to choose postcard template category.

If you try to design this using standard UI, you will end up with UITabBar or UITableView.

Icon

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:41:00 +0900

Detik and Kompas are two news apps that I often launch but I hate their icons. I will never put them neither in iPhone’s dock nor in home screen.

Hidden Search Bar

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:38:00 +0900

Let’s compare search bar on mail app and notes app. It’s hidden behind navigation bar on both app.

Tap the list and drag it down. You will see search bar on both app.

Keep dragging and now you will see the difference.

Search bar is attached to the table in Mail.app.

On the other hand, search bar stays right below navigation bar in Notes.app. I like it better in Notes.app.

Instapaper

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:26:00 +0900

If you are thinking of cooking up something different today, just google for recipes. But the problem is you don’t have computer in your kitchen. Well, you can bring your notebook to the kitchen, but it’s still too big.

If you have iPhone, you should try instapaper. Browse the site you like and then click Read Later to send the page to your instapaper.

Bring your iPhone to the kitchen and open instapaper app to read that page in easy reading format. My wife loves this app.

User Interface Love

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:48:00 +0900

Here are two apps that I often launch even though I don’t need them. First is Convertbot.

The second is Delicious Library Viewer.

This app syncs your Delicious Library to your iPhone wirelessly.

I love both apps. They are just beautiful.

The Most Exciting Thing About iPhone

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:59:00 +0900

There are countries where somehow people there are not willing to pay for software unless it’s bundled with hardware. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just not that common there to spend money for software.

The app store is a huge leap forward. Imagine when people were starting to pay for bottled water. I guess for many iPhone users this might be the first time they experience how it feels to buy software. This is very exciting.

New Icons in iPhone 3.0

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:48:00 +0900

I wonder why stripes added to these four icons.

App for Toddler

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:02:00 +0900

If you are like me who has one and a half year old son then you love Peekaboo Barn. This app does it right. In the first screen below, the barn is bouncing while animal’s sound is playing. The door is closed. You can hear someone is knocking the door from inside.

While I’m holding the iPhone, my son will come and touch the barn. Since the barn is bouncing, he knows where to touch.

The door opens wide. It zooms to show you bigger image. The animal makes louder sound and a child pronounces the animal’s name.

And you can tap the screen to close the door. Now you can start again with different animal.

Network Activity Indicator

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:39:00 +0900

This is stated in iPhone Human Interface Guidelines:

The activity indicator in the status bar is the network activity indicator; it should be displayed when your application accesses the network for more than a couple of seconds. The larger activity indicator in the toolbar should be displayed if it will take more than a second or two for your application to perform the current task.

Unless users read the manual, chances are users don’t know that small spinning gear on top status bar is used for indicating network activity.

Both network activity indicator and general purpose activity indicator on the bottom toolbar look the same. They have different size though. But I prefer to have network activity indicator that has different appearance. Indicator that looks more like network activity.

iPhone Looks Fast

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:28:00 +0900

As soon as you touch the icon for an application in Springboard, a screen is shown quickly. It’s actually a fake screen. It won’t respond to your touch. Here is fake screen of Photo’s App.

iPhone apps typically take a few seconds until it is ready to use. If developers don’t include Default.png in application bundle, before you can see first window, you will see black screen right below status bar. It looks ugly and feels slow.

Put in mind that most of users don’t think it’s cheat screen. It’s not recommended to put controls like buttons or content inside Default.png.

Activity Indicator

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:49:00 +0900

Cocoa touch provides two types of activity indicators as shown below.

Network activity indicator in status bar should be displayed when network access is taking place for unknown duration. The larger activity indicator that usually put inside toolbar is used for other than network related processing task which probably takes a couple of seconds to finish.

Both indicators only indicate that processing is occurring. It doesn’t tell anything about what should user do. But there are some cases where explicit suggestion is more preferable.

Above, the activity indicator suggests user to wait by adding label to the spinning gear.

You can download the code here. To use it first retain shared instance inside your applicationDidFinishLauncing method.

 
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {    
  [[ActivityIndicator sharedInstance] retain];   
  [window makeKeyAndVisible]; 
}

And you should release shared instance inside dealloc method.

- (void) dealloc {
  [[ActivityIndicator sharedInstance] release];
  [super dealloc];
}

Now you are ready to use it anywhere inside your code.

// Default label is @"Please Wait..."
[ActivityIndicator show];

// To hide
[ActivityIndicator hide];

// With custom text
[ActivityIndicator showWithLabel:NSLocalizedString(@"Hang on a sec...", @"")];

This Mobile Thing is Taking Off

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:35:14 +0900

Since I have NetNewsWire installed on my 320x480, I stop reading RSS Feed on bigger screen.

Iklan: Ojek Gading :)

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:48:00 +0900

Ikutan2 an ojekbintaro.blogspot.com, saya mau merekomendasikan ojek langganan saya:)

Kalau Anda tinggal sekitar kelapa gading atau lagi kebetulan di kelapa gading dan mau atau pengen naik ojek, silahkan hubungi 021 95190379. Saya sudah berlangganan mungkin sekitar 6 bulan dan belum pernah sekalipun telat datang.

Myjalah

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:46:29 +0900

Ini teman ada bikin majalah gratis dalam bentuk pdf. Namanya myjalah. Silahkan download buat yang berminat.