Ben Roberts Blog

2008-11-01 19:40:21iPhone WebApp Store

My newest project, still in the works is the iPhone WebApp Store. Basically a web based iPhone optimized directory of other Web Apps. There still seem to be a few bugs that will be worked out eventually as well as a few features that need to be added, but overall a very cool application. Unfortunately apple.com and appsafari.com seem to disagree. I have submitted the application to both websites and it seems neither would put it up. Now maybe I am jumping the gun, and they just have not gotten around to it yet, but I have a feeling that they both feel it's a threat to their own sites or site sections and don't want to directly enable any competition, or maybe its just a shitty application. Either way, I know I have at least 3 people that read my blog (me included) so hopefully they will get a little use out of the app since I put quite a bit of work into it.

Anyways, I was not making a Webapp Store with the intention of competing with any site, my only reasoning behind it was it needed to exist, whether I created this or apple made one.

So here is a list of whats coming.

  • Further optimize the site for quicker loading
  • Ability to post reviews
  • Tell a Friend button
  • Bug Fixes (mainly the window position bug where the window moves for no reason)
  • Making the scrolling resemble native apps (if I can figure it out)

Update: Fixed the window position bug, cleaned up css, added a scrollbar, and added better buttons for the active state of the lower nav buttons. I also cleaned up the scrolling code, so you are less likely to hit a link while scrolling.

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2008-10-28 07:57:58Track Your Dominos Pizza Order From Your Iphone

Finished "Pizza Tracker" version 1.0 over the weekend. Random Iphone Web App for knowing exactly what is going on with your pizza. After you place an order with Dominos, launch "Pizza Tracker" and enter in your phone number. You will then receive a short description of your order as well as the progress of your pizza. When they started making your pizza, when they started cooking your pizza, how long the pizza sat on the rack, when your pizza left the store, and the name of the guy/girl delivering your pizza.

Coming In Version 2:

  • Store Locator
  • Ability To Save Location / Phone Number

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2008-10-11 20:55:52V.2 of ODOT Traffic Is Out.

So I said a month, ended up being a week. I figure since version 1 was such a hit, as you can tell by the feedback (1 comment from a friend, 0 dollars donated). I should hurry up and write a version 2. Actually, I just hacked out version one, and really wanted to get something cleaner up as soon as possible. Plus I was stoked to see version one as the featured "Travel App" on apples website and thought maybe this version would become the featured overall app since it was so packed with features that no other web apps out there had really taken advantage of. Ends up, it wasn't even cool enough to make "Staff Pick". I guess I don't know what people are really looking for. You can check it out at odot.spwire.com and decide for yourself.

Anyway, I knocked out version one in around 4 or 5 hours. But when it came out I was totally stoked to be the first one to take advantage of the full screen chromeless mode using the "apple-mobile-web-app-capable" tag. I even posted something about it on my last entry to let the world know how to implement it. Before, I posted that entry, searching for "apple-mobile-web-app-capable" on google led you to two dead ends. After posting it, within days, many people started writing tutorials about how to implemnt this feature, but did anyone give me credit. Nope. Lame, I say.

This version, uses even more little known features to web application developers including:

  • A client side database for storing all the locations.
  • Css Transforms via "-webkit-transform", this is cool because its hardware accelerated so its much smoother than just using "-webkit-transition".
  • It also uses "-webkit-border-image" to create stretching top nav buttons. There is a tutorial about this on apple's website.
  • To speed up page load time and decrease http requests, I also base64 encoded all the images and embedded them directly into the html & css.
  • I also mimified the js, and the css.
  • I also took advantage of the new javascript touch events. (notice how the window stay's in the same position when you slide your finger up or down, or how the header stays at the top and the footer stays at the bottom when you scroll the menu's.) More details on apple's website

I think thats about it, but still, the whole application is in my opinion, a breakthrough in iphone web apps.

With that, I wanted to kind of do a break through on how apple has progressed the web app development. Sorry if I get version numbers wrong but I don't feel like researching it.

  • Version 1.0
    • Apple says no native apps, just make web apps. Web apps kinda suck though because there is so much missing.
  • Version 1.1.1
    • Apple adds orientationchange javascript event
    • Apple ads device-width and device-height options
  • Version 1.1.3
    • Apple adds the "apple-touch-icon" option.
  • Version 2.0
    • Apple adds the following events (touchstart, touchmove, touchend, touchcancel, gesturestart, gesturechange).
    • Apple adds "apple-touch-icon-precomposed" so the effects don't get added to the home screen icon.
    • Javascript Database functionality.
  • Version 2.1
    • "apple-mobile-web-app-capable" to allow for a chromeless application, and "apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" to allow for status bar configurations. ("default", "black-translucent", "black")

Somewhere else along the way, they added css-transitions and somewhere later they added css transforms. I think this covers the major features new features.

What is still missing for perfect web apps.

  • CACHING, the caching on the iphone is crap. If an app is ran from the home screen, it will never be cached. If it is ran via safari, chances of the app being cached are highly unlikely. There are strict restrictions. All files must be under 25k, no more than 9 files will be cached. (im not sure if 9 is correct) and still it seems to suck.
  • More access to iphone features (GPS, Camera, Accelerometer).

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2008-10-01 02:07:10ODOT IPhone Webapp Completed

I spent a couple days deciding on my next random project and decided that since I still don't feel ready to jump into the Objective C programming language, I will instead try and write an Iphone Web App. So with that I decided on an app for viewing ODOT traffic cams.

I'd worked on a couple iphone apps in the past but was never very pleased with the end result and therefore scrapped the whole thing. This time around was different though. So alas, my first publicly available iphone web app.

A couple notes on the application itself:

  • Uses full screen mode to more closely resemble a native app
  • Taps into some of safari's webkit css animation features
  • Uses iphone specific touch events to handle one finger scrolling of div
  • Only works with iphone/itouch version 2.1 or greater

I just figure I should mention this as well since I found nothing about it on the internet when I was developing the site. When using apple-mobile-web-app-capable to trigger full screen mode, this will not work unless the application is launched from the home screen.

Version 1 is still messy and the code could be cleaned up significantly. Eventually, I will get to cleaning up all the JavaScript.

Whats coming: Version 2 will include much more data: weather, traffic speeds, traffic alerts, etc. It will also concentrate much more on a quicker load time and include client side database features for storing favorite cameras and what not. Look for that in about a month or so if the motivation sticks around.

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2008-09-13 17:27:55Spwire.com Facelift

So I decided that if I am going to showcase projects I have worked on, on this site, I should at least make the site look decent. So I took on the task of giving Spwire.com a face lift. It all ended up being a much bigger task than I had anticipated and is still not quite done, but overall I am totally happy with the results for being designed by someone who lacks any graphic design skills whatsoever.

Besides doing all the design, I also wrote every line of code from scratch. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, and PHP. The XML is actually generated by the PHP but that is beside the point.

Anyways, There is still plenty of bugs to work out and features to add to this site as well as many past projects, but at least It will be much easier to keep up with.

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2008-09-08 20:12:18TriMet Widget v.1.0

I just finished my first Mac OS X Dashboard Widget. Pretty sweet really. Basically you enter a TriMet Stop ID and it tells you when the bus is coming. It taps into TriMets API so it gives you down to the second readings. Pretty simple app, but fun to work on.

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