What will the iPad mini bring to the table?

Have you already hammered out adjustments so your app will run on the iPhone 5? Has it been submitted to the App Store? Are you waiting on it to be accepted? I have updated our app to run on the iPhone 5 but have not tested on actual hardware yet so I want to wait for that to happen before I submit.

It did get me thinking about the iPad mini. First off if it actually exists what resolution will it be? Should it be double the size of the iPhone 5? That makes some sense to me as they are looking at videos and deeming the wide screen presentation is the way to go. Will it be same resolution as the iPad 3 in a smaller package? Makes it easier on tablet development and really that resolution is fine for a 7-8" screen. Heck there are much smaller Android phones running higher resolutions than the iPad.

Let's say they go with a new resolution. You get to update your app yet again. The main app I have is universal - same code runs on iPhone / iTouch and iPad. The update to iPhone 5 was pretty simple as I try to avoid hard coding. Since I also wrote the Android version I already need to think resolution agnostic. I tend to not think in absolutes coming from a PC background. Hopefully my code will port quickly.

I have special checks in the code now for the iPad as the status bar is the same height in portrait and landscape mode on the iPad where as it changes height on the iPhone based on orientation. I really wish you could query controls for their current / minimum / preferred dimensions. Maybe in a future release of iOS.

At this point I think I am better off waiting to submit anything to the Apple Store until the iPad Mini release is confirmed for October or nothing happens. I can submit one app and catch all the new resolutions. I will have to decide if just testing via the simulator is enough. Since I know my app runs fine, as far as speed is concerned, on actual devices how far can I trust the simulator? It gets tough for a small company to buy a lot of testing hardware. I know I have already put a lot of faith in the various Android emulators and so far have not run into issues and I can see from our Google Analytic data that our users have a wide range of Android devices and we have yet to have a layout related issue reported to us.

Apple recommends testing on actual hardware always. I really do see their point but at some juncture you have to punt. I don't have an iPad 1, 2 and 3 along with iTouch Rev 1 - 4 and iPhone up to 5. I have already given up testing on each type. As a small shop, I am the only mobile developer, we just don't have a bunch of techies upgrading their phones in lock step with Apple. I don't know anyone with an iPhone 5 at this time. Heck my personal phone is only 2.2. I do have a Jelly Bean tablet.

iPad development to influence my PC code

I am converting the Java WebStart JIDE CellSpanTable based appointment scheduler to the iPad. It has a slightly different purpose on the iPad but needs to display the appointments in almost an identical way. The Java desktop application was recently converted from MigCalendar to JIDE CellSpanTable by me. I was pretty happy with the results but now I am thinking of refactoring it again.

Why bother? First there are some limitations to the CellSpanTable. I am using a JXLayer to get around some of them. That allows me to paint on top of the grid to show the current time line and for Drag and Drop support. Things are a little screwy when I attempt to scroll to a starting position in the grid. When I do that some of the paint offsets are incorrect. I have made all the adjustments in the code to handle this conflict between the JScrollPane and the CellSpanTable.

I also have issues with the time margin not fully painting in sync as you scroll the grid vertically. When you stop dragging the scroll bar everything lines up, just during the drag there is a stutter. This sort to thing always bothers me.

Since I am spanning cells based on appointment durations I can only pick one background color for the full cell span. This means if the appointment starts before normal business hours the spanned cells all get the "business is closed" background color which is not accurate. I also don't get the grid lines painting across any cell that has a spanning appointment.

I have to track extra information for cell spanning and the code is a bit difficult to grasp every time I look at it. I hate code like that. It is complex because it is not an easy process but it is hard to explain why I did what I did to make it work.

When I converted the code to the iPad I did not have a 3rd party grid control to help me out. The nice thing is I was able to concentrate on doing my own grid because I already knew how to do all the other appointment painting, time margin painting etc. I knew all the limitations of the JIDE grid that annoyed me. I was not overwhelmed with the full rewrite of something that I did not fully understand so I could initially concentrate on the grid. In fact I was forced to concentrate on how to get a grid to paint, there was no easy way out. I did some searches on the web just to make sure someone did not have a workable solution but I did not find anything to fit my needs.

I have written many a custom control so I was not afraid to tackle another one. I was able to use Quartz on the iPad to manually paint the grid and all the appointments. I solved numerous issues I had with the JIDE grid while coding the new control. I am fully in control of all the painting. I don't have any scrolling sync issues. I don't have to use an overlay painter - I paint things in the Z order I need. I am not using a grid data storage system that does not completely apply to what I am attempting to do. There are no scrolling coordinate offset issues.

This is not a generic cell spanning grid control for the iPad. This is a highly optimized grid for the purpose of painting an appointment schedule. Not that I couldn't take some time to make it more generic. My goal was to get something running that was super optimized for my painting needs. I want a very responsive UI for this application. I also will convert this to the Android platform in the near future. It should be a fairly straight forward port.

Based on the painting I did on the iPad I have already improved the look of the PC Java code. Taking a second look at things and being under less time pressure I was able to come up with a nicer look to the appointments with the start / end time in a darker color to visually highlight them to the user. I also drew a pointing ball in the margin to visually enforce the location of the current time line that can get a bit lost in the grid especially the current time falls on the hour. Just adds to the professional feel of the app.

I don't have the issue with grid lines not painting as I paint them first then overlay the appointments. The proper background color is painted for the cells too since that happens independent of the appointment paint.

The appointment memory storage is much cleaner because I am not taking what I need and forcing it into the memory layout of the grid so it can ask me to paint the appointments as it is painting each cell. Using Quartz I just paint my layers - verifying that what I am painting is visible on the screen based on paint offset and component size - avoiding all sorts of callbacks and other overhead.

On the PC your scroll with the scroll bars but on the iPad you scroll via touch. I really like the way touch scrolling works on the iPad and I miss it every time I run the PC app. I keep trying to click drag the PC app just like I do on the iPad simulator. Maybe I will have to implement that on the PC too!

Other than the auto-scrolling of the grid as you drag and drop an appointment I think the conversion will be pretty easy. The JIDE CellSpanGrid did the auto-scrolling for me. Not like this is some super secret magic bit of code, just need to write it up and make sure it feels right when it is done.

I am looking forward to tackling this on the PC then again on for Android devices. I am sure I will optimize it just a bit more on each one. The first time you write code it always stinks, you have too big of a picture in your head. On the rewrite you can concentrate on the minutia. You are basically doing a code review of your own work as you convert your logic to each language / platform.

There was a lot of learning around Quartz during this project. Sure I will learn more about Graphics2D under Java too. I have used it enough to have a pretty solid grasp there but something new pop-ups with each project.

Thanks Apple, nice general settings on iPad simulator

For my iPad scheduler app I want to follow the overall settings for 24 hour time. Guess what? You can't set that on the simulator! Under Settings -> General they flat out skipped the Date & TIme options. Why? There is no reason to not have this setting available. I have to do all my testing of time and date formatting on the device itself.

I am trying to be as friendly a developer as possible. If you like 24 hour format then times should appear that way in all your apps. I am used to AM / PM so I generally use that format but Kevin != rest of world.

At least I am not doing a ton of time and date formatting meaning it was pretty easy to test on the device but I should not need to switch to that to test an OS related feature.

Released Android Version

We put the new Android version on the market yesterday. Should have been a really simple process and it started out to be so but one little piece screwed us over for a bit. I did the export in Eclipse and after we typed in the two passwords we have the APK file ready to roll. Logged into the publish side of the Market and uploaded the APK then went to change to screen shots and what not. Things did not work. I kept getting an error and was told to try again later. Later never seemed to be late enough.

I read that Chrome was having issues with the new market. Go figure, the browser from the company that owns the Market does not work. We tried I.E. figuring it had to work but it had the same issue. FireFox worked without a hitch. What the hell are they doing that only works in FireFox? Very annoying but it has been submitted and our various devices were notified there was an update so we know it is out there and working.

Our Beta test Doctor now has access. We have to flip on a bit on our server for them to be able to see the new functionality so everyone else will see some minor color scheme and little tweaks but they will not have access to the new functionality until we are ready to turn it on.

Of course I found an issue already. Not a crash but one of the tables was not loading all the data it needed as I only asked for Type 1 data and I needed Type 1 and Type 3 data in the table. Pretty simple fix and there is a good chance the Doctor will not need this. I can easily release an update if he does need it for this testing.

I also did some UI tweaks while I was in there. Some buttons needed to be larger to give them a better look and to make them an easier tap target. I took the iPad home last weekend to give it a solid once over but I have not taken the ASUS Android Tablet home yet to run it as a user out the the interruption driven office setting. I did have a little time to play with it today so I of course found things to adjust.

Next up is getting the iOS side ready to submit. I had to make the same table request changes on that side along with a few other tweaks. I got a note from Apple telling me I can get the Gold Master of the SDK and the updated Xcode. I really don't want to do that as it is a 4.6g download then I will just have to get the real release in a little over a week. If it was a patch that would be one thing but it is an overnight download so I am not going to do it multiple times. I have fallen in that trap once before.

The problem is I did the archive and tried to validate but it is annoyed in some manner. So I have to figure that out. Could be I changed the name of something and it does not think I am updating and existing application.

I decided to check out what changed in iOS 5 that may affect our app. I log in to the Apple Developer Network and it does not think I am a developer so it will not let me see anything. I ask my boss to check out the corporate account, which Apple has screwed up many a time, and it needed him to agree to a new terms of use. After that I was able to see the iOS 5 information on the site but I still can not validate out app.

From what I can tell we might be affected by some iOS 5 changes. It reads that way at first glance but until I am able to run iOS 5 in the simulator or upgrade one of our devices - probably the iPad 2 - I will not know for sure.

The sales guy stopped by to have the latest version put on his iPhone for a demo tomorrow. Luckily his phone has already been provisioned so that was easy. I also put the latest version in the iPad 2 and gave that to him as it is much easier to demo on a tablet. Will be interesting to hear what the clients have to say about the application.