How we built the new Exec iPhone App
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How we built the new Exec iPhone App
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#2You know it's built this year because of its heavy usage of Proxima Nova :)
Overall, pretty clean, but could definitely be cleaner. I'm seeing four different button styles with no discernible justification for them.
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#3I'm sorry, but I don't like this UI at all. It looks foreign on the iOS as if it were designed for some other device and the ported over. Such neglect for the consistency with a native look and feel is not a "fun experience", it's really quite annoying.
My iPhone is not an empty canvas for you to drop an arbitrary UI style on. It comes with Helvetica and a whole bunch of well designed controls. I insist you use them.
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#4For those unaware, Chad Etzel is behind this, founded the much-loved Notifo (YC backed).
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#5I wish this post had more specifics about the coding or design. As is, it's screenshots and generic descriptions of difficulty. It would be good to hear why you made specific design decisions, why you didn't want to use IB, breakthroughs you had creating custom UIAlertViews etc.
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#6I'm sorry, but I don't like this UI at all. It looks foreign on the iOS as if it were designed for some other device and the ported over. Such neglect for the consistency with a native look and feel is not a "fun experience", it's really quite annoying. My iPhone is not an empty canvas for you to drop an arbitrary UI style on. It comes with Helvetica and a whole bunch of well designed controls. I insist you use them.
On the contrary, I prefer if an app brings a unique and purpose-built UI. For example, 'Clear' the to-do list app is quite amazing. 'Paper' by 53 is another incredible interface. 'Figure' by PropellerHead is another awesome example.
Why do games get a pass, but everything else is expected to re-use the same library of controls and fonts?
I don't want all apps to look the same, they just have to be intuitive.
The examples that I listed seem to me to be developed more like a game engine... They are graphical environments, not drag & drop layouts.
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#7Please tell us you don't force people to use E-mail addresses as user IDs: http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/forcing-people-to-use...
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#8I wish this post had more specifics about the coding or design. As is, it's screenshots and generic descriptions of difficulty. It would be good to hear why you made specific design decisions, why you didn't want to use IB, breakthroughs you had creating custom UIAlertViews etc.
That type of post will be forthcoming in some of the deep technical dive posts I have lined up. They will be more interesting if I am able to open-source some of the code, but I wasn't able to get those kinds of decisions made by the time this current post was published for our launch announcement. Stay tuned.
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#9Really curious to know why you had to reimplement Uikit uiview subclasses instead of just extending them and use ib to position them. Drawrect overriding has always been the recommended approach, and at least you can position buttons and panes and tableviews using ib , simply changing the name of the class in IB...
Re: How we built the new Exec iPhone App
#10I'm sorry, but I don't like this UI at all. It looks foreign on the iOS as if it were designed for some other device and the ported over. Such neglect for the consistency with a native look and feel is not a "fun experience", it's really quite annoying. My iPhone is not an empty canvas for you to drop an arbitrary UI style on. It comes with Helvetica and a whole bunch of well designed controls. I insist you use them.
On the contrary, I prefer if an app brings a unique and purpose-built UI. For example, 'Clear' the to-do list app is quite amazing. 'Paper' by 53 is another incredible interface. 'Figure' by PropellerHead is another awesome example. Why do games get a pass, but everything else is expected to re-use the same library of controls and fonts? I don't want all apps to look the same, they just have to be intuitive. The exam…
"but everything else is expected to re-use the same library of controls and fonts?"
Because when people fire up an application, they're usually trying to get something done; not play Myst with the UI. "Clear" is a great example of what NOT to do. It pointlessly eschews established UI standards that work very well (table views, indentation, disclosure indicators), in favor of invisible gestures and a UI that fails to provide basic information. For example, there's no difference between items and groups of items in the list. Why?
The "skinning" fad died for good reason. It's a pain in the ass to have to go on an Easter-egg hunt for basic controls in one app, let alone EVERY app.
You provided your own answer with the game analogy. A lot of people rate the value of a game by how long it takes to finish. Applications are exactly the opposite.