9-bits by David Kaneda

POWERED by FUSION

August 31st 2010

I Want a Stupid 7-inch iPad »

Lance Ulanoff thinks The 7-inch Apple iPad is a Stupid Idea:

Kidding aside, I have not heard one good argument for the existence of this device. What’s more worrisome to me is that some companies like Samsung appear to be carving out this space as if 7-inch tablets are the “new black.” Why are they doing this? Was there some consumer outcry for a 7-inch device that I missed?

The rumor of a smaller iPad has been floating around for the past couple days and I have to say, I’m psyched. Honestly, the first thing that came to mind when on that glorious Saturday when the iPad arrived was, “Huh, bigger than I imagined.” Why? For me, it’s all about the keyboard. In its current state, the iPad keyboard is oafish in landscape orientation. It’s simply too big to be comfortably used as a soft keyboard. Portrait mode is even worse: Stretching your thumbs to hit keys like “T” and “Y”, all while delicately cradling your iPad in a near top-heavy manor. At 7 inches, a smaller iPad would be far more comfortable to type on, in either situation. A smaller iPad would also be easier to store, easier to carry, and less intrusive in places like restaurants.

So, then, what’s to lose? I don’t want to make a career out of analyzing screen resolution, but think about this: If you upped the pixel density on a 7-inch iPad (132ppi) to that of a non-Retina iPhone (163 ppi), you get almost the exact same number of pixels. Put it this way: You could double the number of pixels on the current iPad, and still comfortably fit them in a Retina-display, 7-inch iPad. The current iPad’s battery, which constitutes the bulk of it’s weight/size, also lasts much longer than I need. With a smaller display, the loss of any battery space would go unnoticed.

Perhaps there was no consumer outcry for a 7-inch tablet, and no, being a little smaller won’t make the thing any more magical — but Apple doesn’t make products just because people ask for them. Instead, Apple tries to deliver on what you don’t know you need. In this case, a more portable, more usable device. It’s not an addition to the iPad line, it’s what the iPad was supposed to be. I can’t wait for the stupid thing.

ipad apple rumor

iPhone iPad Summit: Twitter Contest »

Retweet this message to have a chance at winning a free ticket to the online iPhone iPad Summit on August 25 (regularly $179). The Summit is a one-day online conference around iPhone/iPad development. I will be speaking about building iPad apps with Sencha Touch, along with:

  • Jonathan Stark, presenting on iPhone offline mode
  • Jesse MacFadyen, presenting on Phonegap
  • Dan Rubin, presenting on Mobile Design with CSS3
  • And many more…

The winner will be chosen at random at the end of the week.

iphone ipad twitter contest
ipad app ui ux
minimalmac: Just a heads up for you iPad users. The nifty Movie-Peg that I featured a while back for iPhone now comes in an iPad flavor as well. An elegant, simple, and portable solution to prop your pad. Love the orange.

minimalmac:

Just a heads up for you iPad users. The nifty Movie-Peg that I featured a while back for iPhone now comes in an iPad flavor as well. An elegant, simple, and portable solution to prop your pad.

Love the orange.

ipad orange
keynote prototype ux ipad app
From the excellent crew at Teehan & Lax: TweetMag is an iPad and iPhone app that takes twitter feeds and turns them into wonderfully simple magazines. It works by finding links in a twitter user, list or search – then grabs their headlines, abstracts and media to create a TweetMag. Articles then become prioritized by what’s being tweeted about most. Looks like Flipboard may have beaten them to the punch, but I’m still psyched to get my hands on this.

From the excellent crew at Teehan & Lax:

TweetMag is an iPad and iPhone app that takes twitter feeds and turns them into wonderfully simple magazines. It works by finding links in a twitter user, list or search – then grabs their headlines, abstracts and media to create a TweetMag. Articles then become prioritized by what’s being tweeted about most.

Looks like Flipboard may have beaten them to the punch, but I’m still psyched to get my hands on this.

ipad ui ux twitter
ipad app ux
ipad ui chrome
It is my honor to present Sencha Touch, a brand new HTML5/CSS3 app framework for touch devices. I have secretly been toiling away on this for the past few months, and let me tell you: it is an incredible relief to finally be able to discuss it. Sencha Touch represents a new era of mobile web app development. Firstly, the number of visual components we have included is, as one friend put it, “incredibly ambitious.” We have tabs, carousels, forms, lists, buttons, toolbars, maps, overlays, and more — all with myriad options for manipulating their design and UX. And, most importantly, all built entirely with web standards like HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript. On top of the actual components, we have a robust data package (inspired by Ext JS), that is essential for developing content-based applications. We provide simple ways to get data via Ajax, JSONP, or YQL, and let you easily bind that data to components like lists or render it into HTML templates. I built a data-driven app for Kiva, a fantastic non-profit micro-loan organization, in under a week. And lastly, there’s the style/theme layer. This has been my real brainchild within the project. I fear it may take some time for developers to really see how much power is in there, and I hope to explain a bit of it in some forthcoming posts and screencasts. At its core, the theming/CSS system is based on Sass, an abstraction layer for CSS that adds things like variables and functions. To give you some idea of its potential, check out the source of the Android theme we’re offering, which is written in under 30 lines of code (check out a preview here, in a WebKit browser). My other favorite part of the styling layer is that it is resolution independent. Through a combination of CSS3 and relative sizing, we have managed to make our UI elements (like buttons and toolbars) the same physical size across devices with different resolutions/DPIs. It’s somewhat hard to describe how unique this is, but I think people will see the benefits of this very soon. It’s been a great ride, working on this over the past few months, and I’m looking forward to seeing this library grow into the best mobile app framework around, web or native. For the jQTouch fans and followers out there, worry not — development is about to ramp up there as well, with help from my good friend Jonathan Stark, which we’ll be posting about tomorrow. For 9-bits follower in general, I apologize for the lack of posts lately (hopefully this helps explain) and promise I’ll be ramping up news posts again soon. And lastly, to everyone who has helped make this possible, including our early private testers and the rest of the Sencha Team, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you have any questions about Sencha Touch, jQTouch, or mobile web apps in general, feel free to send them here and I’ll try to answer them here on the blog. Now go download the thing and start building apps!

It is my honor to present Sencha Touch, a brand new HTML5/CSS3 app framework for touch devices. I have secretly been toiling away on this for the past few months, and let me tell you: it is an incredible relief to finally be able to discuss it.

Sencha Touch represents a new era of mobile web app development. Firstly, the number of visual components we have included is, as one friend put it, “incredibly ambitious.” We have tabs, carousels, forms, lists, buttons, toolbars, maps, overlays, and more — all with myriad options for manipulating their design and UX. And, most importantly, all built entirely with web standards like HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript.

On top of the actual components, we have a robust data package (inspired by Ext JS), that is essential for developing content-based applications. We provide simple ways to get data via Ajax, JSONP, or YQL, and let you easily bind that data to components like lists or render it into HTML templates. I built a data-driven app for Kiva, a fantastic non-profit micro-loan organization, in under a week.

And lastly, there’s the style/theme layer. This has been my real brainchild within the project. I fear it may take some time for developers to really see how much power is in there, and I hope to explain a bit of it in some forthcoming posts and screencasts. At its core, the theming/CSS system is based on Sass, an abstraction layer for CSS that adds things like variables and functions. To give you some idea of its potential, check out the source of the Android theme we’re offering, which is written in under 30 lines of code (check out a preview here, in a WebKit browser). My other favorite part of the styling layer is that it is resolution independent. Through a combination of CSS3 and relative sizing, we have managed to make our UI elements (like buttons and toolbars) the same physical size across devices with different resolutions/DPIs. It’s somewhat hard to describe how unique this is, but I think people will see the benefits of this very soon.

It’s been a great ride, working on this over the past few months, and I’m looking forward to seeing this library grow into the best mobile app framework around, web or native. For the jQTouch fans and followers out there, worry not — development is about to ramp up there as well, with help from my good friend Jonathan Stark, which we’ll be posting about tomorrow. For 9-bits follower in general, I apologize for the lack of posts lately (hopefully this helps explain) and promise I’ll be ramping up news posts again soon. And lastly, to everyone who has helped make this possible, including our early private testers and the rest of the Sencha Team, thank you, thank you, thank you.

If you have any questions about Sencha Touch, jQTouch, or mobile web apps in general, feel free to send them here and I’ll try to answer them here on the blog. Now go download the thing and start building apps!

ipad iphone senchatouch webapp html5 css3 javascript

Also noted: