I sure thought I would be done with the next version of our application by this time but we came up with a number of new features to add before it leaves the Beta stage. I have been adding support for favorites so the Dr. can toggle which CPT / ASA / Diagnosis and other fields quickly just using the ones they use the most.
One of the benefits of dual development is it forces you to look at problems from different angles. I had the favorites all set up on the Android side of things and the Beta clients for those devices have been using it and it appears liking it. What I did on the Android does not fit naturally on the iPhone as far as UI goes.
First off I had to take some time to write a new menu system for iOS to emulate the one I am using for Android. After getting past the initial scare of creating a full blown custom menu under iOS it went rather smoothly. My draft version proved I could do a menu that pops up over another view - including tables - but the graphics design did not pan out well on an iPhone, it looked fine on the iPad. I took a step back and redesigned the menu GUI so it worked great on both device form factors in both orientations. This is a universal binary so the same code is running on both devices.
Many tweaks later I have the menu system running in a lot of places in the UI. Without that I was not going to be able to pull of the favorites as designed. Here is where I ran into the next issue. I was using my menu in two ways on the Android to do favorites, one menu to select a mode and one menu to select which items to be in the favorites list. This would not play well under iOS. I also had allow the user to control the font size under iOS and its current UI left something to be desired. After taking a step back, many head scratches and many pen scratches on paper I came up with a new single menu system that is much cleaner and easier for the user to grasp and solved the font sizing issue too. I just finished phase one of my implementation on iOS and am pretty happy with it. Now I have to convert those ideas back over to the Android which technically should not be difficult but will be time consuming as I have to touch a lot of code.
Because I needed to make something work on the iPhone my Android users will have a better experience. This has happened in both directions as there are areas I wrote on the iPhone first and during my Android conversion I discovered better ways to accomplish the same thing. Some of it comes from just wanting to get something running but when you have to write the code a second time you think it through again and make it better. That has happened over and over during this process. I have deleted, modified and bug fixed a lot of code as I go back and forth between the two platforms. At times it feels like you are just spinning your wheels and will never get it all done. Heck it is not all done but I am in the home stretch.
I often wonder what it would be like if there was another developer working on iOS. Would we be able to come up with ideas together that work well on both devices? If you don't code on both do you have blinders on for the one you don't code under? Is it better for one developer to hash out an idea and get a working prototype and then show it to the other so they can shoot holes in it and make it better? You could have each developer tackle a non-overlapping area then swap ideas. Working on the same area at the same time, unless you are following a foregone UI pattern, seems a waste of effort.
There are a lot of "Oh man, I have to write this AGAIN!" moments when you are the sole mobile developer. At times you dread writing a tough hunk of code in another language using another IDE. Not sure if I am sold on the universal binary idea for iOS. Sure it beats a 2x version of your iPhone app on the iPad but Xcode / Interface Builder don't make is very easy to have NIB files per platform. It is easy to do on Android, just use same named XML files in different directories and everything is handled for you. I have a lot of IF checks for the iPad in the code already and am not looking forward to more of them. We might be getting close to the point of doing dual development there which would make my work load even more insane.
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