Arachnid 1.2 Submitted

I've submitted Arachnid 1.2 to the App Store. With a bit of luck, it should be available within a week, although Apple occasionally takes longer to complete the review process.

I've added an integrated Google search feature. Tapping the search button will take the address bar into search mode, and suggested search terms will appear as you type. These are the same suggested searches that have appeared on Google's home page, as well as the integrate search bar in Firefox. This can be a real time-saver when typing search terms with the iPhone's virtual keyboard. It can also be pretty entertaining sometimes just to see what the most common searches are for a given string of characters.

Another new feature is favicon support in the bookmarks lists. If you aren't familiar with the term, favicons are the tiny, 16 pixels-square images that appear in your browser's address bar, just to the left of the URL. They usually appear in the bookmarks interface of desktop browsers as well. Not all websites provide them, but they can be a nice way to reinforce the branding or visual aesthetic of your site. I find them useful in the bookmark lists in Arachnid for quickly locating a desired bookmark. I find that my eye can more easily distinguish a unique image in a list than a unique text string, presumable due to the greater variation of shape and color, as well as an existing awareness of the image's association with the website in question.

Arachnid 1.1

This update fixes several bugs that slipped by in the initial release. I've also added a "Lock Orientation" setting that lets you read while laying on your side without the interface rotating.

Arachnid 1.1 should be available today, but the App Store has been extremely flakey lately so your mileage may vary.

Arachnid 1.0

It's been an arduous process and a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but Arachnid is finally available in the iTunes App Store. I first submitted Arachnid for review nearly a month ago, but it suffered two rounds of rejections before finally making the cut. Arachnid is a web browser that allows you to browse in full-screen mode. The interface can be easily toggled between modes by tapping the little spider overlay in the lower right corner. You can also have the interface automatically show and hide itself as you navigate from page to page.

I designed Arahnid's bookmarks functionality with an awareness of my own dissatisfaction with the bookmarking functionality of Mobile Safari, which mirrors the functionality of its desktop counterpart. This is to be expected, since Mobile Safari is synching bookmarks from desktop Safari. But when browsing the web on my iPhone, I found that I spent a lot of time navigating folders of bookmarks trying to find the one I wanted. Arachnid uses a simple Favorites system: any bookmark can be marked as a Favorite by tapping the star in the right margin of a list of bookmarks. Once marked as a Favorite, that bookmark will appear in the Favorites list, which is always the first list visible when accessing the Bookmarks sheet. This allows you to always have two-tap access to your most frequently used bookmarks. For the rest of your bookmarks, use the search function (which is aware of both the URL and the text of the page's title) to quickly filter the master list and find what you're looking for. For those who would appreciate more organizational tools for their bookmarks, look for tagging functionality to appear in a future Arachnid update.

Arachnid [iTunes link]

Tuning Fork 1.0

I'm excited to have had my first iPhone application accepted into the iTunes App store! Tuning Fork is a simple application that simulates the use of a tuning fork. The audio incorporates recordings of real tuning forks, and you can strike the fork by flicking your wrist as if you were wielding an actual tuning fork. This is a handy tool for musicians who like to use one note for reference and tune their instruments by ear.

This represents the culmination of several years worth of intermittent effort towards learning Cocoa and Objective-C. I've fiddled around in Xcode, worked through tutorials, and gradually started to get a grasp on things, but it was difficult to find the time to manage the sustained effort required to carry through an idea for an application. Cocoa Touch and the iPhone are well suited to minimal implementations of simple applications, which is what I needed to create for my first attempt.

I have a slew of ideas for other iPhone projects, so hopefully this is only the first in a series of Bugeye apps.

Tuning Fork [iTunes link]

BUGEYE 4.0

Well, here goes nothing. I'm going live with my redesigned site.  It's a bit sparse, but I'll be adding and embellishing in the coming weeks. It's funny how I spend so much time developing other folks' websites, yet my own usually ends up neglected. The holiday lull helped me find the time to finally get this done.  Being snowbound for a week helped too.

What's new:

• Look ma, no Flash!  I finally did away with the Flash interface. It was kind of cool, but these days I'm much more interested in xhtml/css solutions to user interface and navigation problems.  I am using Flash for delivering video, though, instead of Quicktime as before.
• Words.  Previous incarnations of BUGEYE have been largely devoid of text.  Just let the work speak for itself, right? Well this time I'm going to try to assume a more expressive and personal presence, and keep fresh content coming in.
• Blog.  We'll see how this goes. My idea is that I can have an outlet to post thoughts about my work and perhaps offer some useful tips for other designers/developers. I have benefitted greatly over the years from others sharing their techniques and experiences, and now I want to see what I have to offer.
• MODx.  BUGEYE 4.0 is powered by the MODx CMS. I started learning the platform a new months ago, and was quickly impressed with its power and flexibility. Normally I prefer to roll my own back-end tools, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to get up-close and personal with MODx and see if I can make it do everything I need.  So far, so good!
• Code.  In the last few years, I have been doing more and more development work – writing markup, scripts, and web applications for other designers as well as my design clients. I wanted to show some of this work on my site, so now I have a section of my portfolio devoted to these projects.