Twiba

• Delay
• User Interface
• Performance
• Integration

YummyCocoa Website

MyShelv.es

Twiba – Delay

As you all know, our first product, Twiba, has been delayed somewhat.

We had originally planned on releasing it in the summer but due to varying reasons, we had to put things on hold.
Recently, we have returned, full steam, to developing Twiba and progress is being made almost daily.

Twiba – User Interface

With the release of the iPhone 4, and the “Retina” display (+10 to cheese factor),  I returned to the Twiba interface and set to work on making it compatible with the new high density display.

I couldn’t believe how long it had been since I’d taken a proper look at the interface I had created and while some choices I stand by, there are others which I decided to take a more relaxed attitude toward, namely the tab bar along the bottom.

From day one, we wanted to create an application for the iPhone that was both easy to use, but also that stood out from the hordes of applications that we were seeing submitted to the App Store (back then).

Twitter clients for example all looked essentially the same, and while there is only so much you can do to make your twitter client stand out from the rest, we felt that some weren’t doing enough.

What we decided to do was firstly, take the traditional top bar, the bar containing the title of the current screen and generally the most used buttons, in our case new tweet, and have it by default blend into the background. It was only when you started scrolling that you could see that it actually had a semi-transparent gradient applied to it, but by default, when launching the application, that alone looked different.

Secondly was to scrap the bottom bar.
Nearly every iPhone application has the same old bar along the bottom of the screen. There are reasons for that, and that’s fine, but if you want your application to stand out, you have to make changes.
While some may say that we are damaging the user experience, or creating unnecessary steps to reach parts of the application, we felt that it’s worth the sacrifice, and to be honest, we still do.
We are however also aware of the lack of customisation available in iOS applications. Everybody is forced to use most of the applications exactly the same way. You don’t have to put up with these kinds of restrictions on the desktop, and you shouldn’t have to on a mobile application (to a certain extent).

Whilst you are generally given the option to change the icons in the tab bar on a lot of mobile applications, we’re going to go one step further and give the users the option to hide the bottom bar, and use our original navigation method, which consists of tapping the title of any page to pull down a menu (and yes, this feature will be demonstrated during the first launch of Twiba).

When we came up with the idea of creating a twitter client (before the countless number that stock the App Store’s shelves), we wanted to create an attractive, simple user interface.

We wanted to create an application which would grace a prime location on a users homescreen.

I for one am very fickle when it comes to iOS applications. I refuse to have more than one homescreen of  applications, and if I fill a folder up and have found a new app I would like to give a chance, something has to go.

90% of the applications on my iPhone, I could quite happily do without, but there are some apps (besides the Apple ones which are stealing valuable homescreen locations) which I generally won’t even consider removing, and we want Twiba to be one of those.

Since I made some adjustments, and redesigned a few area’s of Twiba for the high density display on the iPhone 4, I really cannot put into words how beautiful Twiba is on that screen. I am biased of course, but truely, once I copied some mockups across (You should try it with the images in the previous post, use PasteBot though as syncing them via iPhoto etc will cause the inexplicable compression artefacts) and saw them on that display, the reasons behind creating Twiba were literally shoved in my face, and I loved it.

Twiba – Performance

Thanks to Tim, the methods he is using to turn my mockups into a workable interface allow the application to run well. Seriously well.
You can have hundreds of tweets in the timeline and the application will scroll like a searing hot knife blowtorch through butter.

Performance on older iPhone / iPod Touch models should also be impressive. Obviously we will be testing the application on older models once we are nearer completion but I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t most likely outperform competing applications.

Performance really is an area more suited for Tim to cover, but suffice to say, we are making it one of our priority’s with Twiba.

Twiba – Integration

When Twiba was born, iPhone’s couldn’t take video’s. Websites like InstaPaper were borderline unknown.
We have always agreed that we will add support for a wide range of services, and that range has grown during the development of Twiba.

We will be supporting all of the popular services for posting Images, Video’s and Audio to Twitter, as well as some extra file upload services such as TinyGrab and GetCloudApp.

We want to be able to offer our users the ability to use the services of their choice, with their various accounts and over time, we will no doubt add support for further services.

YummyCocoa Website

The delay on a proper website for YummyCocoa is entirely down to me.

When creating a website for myself, or for a project that I am heavily involved in like YummyCocoa, I have a tendency to be overly fussy, as some of you will attest to. Infact, it goes well beyond that.

I’ve come close to completing the YummyCocoa website on a few occasions, but I always find something I deem to be wrong with it and so, back to the drawing board.

The lack of an informative website is doing YummyCocoa no favours, and because of that, the version I am currently working on will be completed (and yes, the Blog will get integrated). Fortunately, I am actually mostly happy with it and will be pushing to get it completed as soon as possible.

MyShelv.es

And so we come to the latest/next project from YummyCocoa.

MyShelv.es is a collaboration between me, Keir Ansell and Fabio Basile (It will be released under YummyCocoa however). It’s something which I have been working on personally for literally, years and years. Something I have always wanted, but have never found anything quite up to the task of filling this void.

I’m not too keen on giving out much information on it as of yet as I really can’t put a date on when it will be ready. There is a lot of work involved, and I have no doubt that I will end up dragging my poor colleagues Tim Davies and Christopher Downer into it at some point, but I will say I am incredibly excited about the prospects of MyShelv.es and I really can’t wait to share what we have lined up for you all.

The idea’s for this project keep flooding in, and because of the fact that the feature list is constantly evolving, I won’t be able to work out a rough timeline for the project until we finalise a feature set for the launch version (which will be soon) and I can go through it with Fabio to figure out just how long it will take.

Conclusion

So, Twiba.
As I mentioned, development is storming ahead and so we are aiming to have the first version of Twiba released in the coming few months, with an update released soon after for any bits and pieces we hadn’t had time to fit in.

The YummyCocoa website is being put together and will be up in the next couple of weeks giving you more of an idea of what to expect from Twiba, and of course some eye candy to wet your taste buds.

And lastly, MyShelv.es. I hope that we will launch MyShelv.es in the first half of 2011, who know’s at this point, but be sure to check back often, and subscribe to the YummyCocoa newsletter and MyShelv.es Newsletter and the blog’s RSS feed to keep up to date on our projects.

A big thank you to everyone who has supported us and our projects so far and we really can’t wait until you get them in your hands!

Keir

- Tim

- Tim