Dapp

Yep, on sale for a very short time. 40% off for the next 48 hours!

Dapp has never been on sale, so for anyone who has been holding off, now is the perfect time to pick up Dapp.

Check out Dapp on the app store.

Finally . Apologies to our users that have been waiting a long time for Tab Bar Controllers. But, they are now available! I’ll try to get out a video tutorial on how to use them out today.

But that’s not all, I’ve also expanded the way table views work. No more duplicate rows for each section. You’ll also find that you can now set individual images and other settings for each cell.

Something else that should have been in there a long time ago is transparent images. Yep, you can now use transparent images . Just drop in your image files via iTunes file sharing and away you go. Dapp supports either jpg or png image files.

I’ve also included a new Dapp backup option that you can find in the ‘settings’. Backup Dapp as often as you like. You can then access your backup via iTunes file sharing and save it in a safe location. This will especially be great news for users that have a new iPad or iPhone and need to shift Dapp to a new device.

I’ve also gone through and added some more helpful info for various properties that should make things easier to understand. That and various minor tweaks.

I’d just like to say thank you to the testers that helped out to make this update of Dapp bug free… and of course, to all of our wonderful users that have provided feedback (not always positive , which is cool) and supported Dapp.

Also, each new update resets the reviews for Dapp . So I’d be soooo grateful if you could leave a quick rating or review of Dapp. The link is below, and it should only take up a few seconds of your time . Thank you!

I’m currently in the process of updating the Dapp and Manage websites to provide much more information on what’s going on. Also to allow you guys to participate more and tell me what you want to see in Dapp! Well, apart from an iPad version, that I’ve been flooded with requests for. I’ll make sure to keep you guys up to date on how that’s going too.

Just doing a final day of testing, thank you to the testers that have been helping out!

I plan to send Dapp up to the app store by this time tomorrow. So expect it to be available in approximately one weeks time.

Just to recap, I’ve added -

• Support for transparent images.  To use them, drag images (.jpg or .png) to your Dapp folder using iTunes file sharing.  It’s advised that you keep your images as small as possible (file size), due to the limited device memory on iPhones/iPads.
• Advanced table views.  Sections within tableviews now support different rows for different sections.  No more repeating rows .  I’ve also added in specific support for images, detail text, detail text color, push target and accessory view options for each individual table view cell.
• Backups.  You can now backup your dapp DB and image files to your Dapp home folder, which can be accessed through iTunes file sharing.  Great news for users who switch over to an iPad or get a new iPhone.
• TAB BAR CONTROLLERS.  Yes, this one has been a long time request.  I’ve made them very simple to use .  Just go into design options, select the tab bar controller and the rest is explained for you.

I didn’t end up adding images and video for this release.  I’ll see if I can add a tutorial on how to do this in Xcode for you guys that were keen to see this feature.

Pretty cool tagline huh?

The ugly side is that to get free access, you need to become a tester. So it’s technically not free … and then there’s all the work involved in testing.

Hmm… I’ve got to work on my marketing skills.

Anyways, it’d be cool if a few of you could step up and help out with testing . Really needs to be done, I’ll miss bugs for sure if I’m the only one testing :S.

Ok, tab bar controllers are completely in. Within live preview and everything.

With all these updates to code, comes testing and cleanup, which I’m now working on. I also need to go back over the various minor bug reports and fix all the niggling little issues.

The only thing that I’m tossing up in my mind and can’t decide on is whether to add in audio/video for this update, or release it sooner. I’d like to hear from you guys on what you think? Not sure how long audio/video would take. Maybe another 5 days?

I have a feeling the answer will be to wait, and just put them in??… heh. But will be good to hear from you guys anyways.

I’m also keen to hear about any other minor niggling annoyances that I can clean up in this update.

Not going to give any specific ETA yet, I obviously want to make sure everything is 100% before release. So there is going to be thorough testing involved too.

I’m looking forward to getting everything done .

Yep, they are done.

You can now go into one of your designs (projects) and setup your Tab Bar Items. I’ll do a video tutorial on it just before release, although I’ve also included detailed descriptions for each of the properties you need to setup for tab bar controllers, so it should be pretty easy to run through .

Which reminds me, I still need to hook up tab bar item images and get Live Preview with tab bar controllers working. I’m going to need to roll a custom tab bar controller to get it working through live preview. So I’ll probably work at getting that all finished up by end of tomorrow.

I know people have been waiting for tab bar controllers for a while now, so I’m weighing up when to release the next update. I’d perhaps like to look at adding audio and video and then push out the update.

All good, I can continue adding more features for future updates .

Mmm… solid few hours of programming.. and milestone!. I’m going to take a break.

It might not sound like a big deal, but being able to handle different rows for different sections, for code export, preview and viewing is reasonably complex. Oh! I also had to store all this data in a string and had to create the control in a way that was ‘modular’ and could be reused for other complex data types. Oh! Actions for each of these different rows in different sections is also supported.

But the point is I can now do some much funkier stuff .

Tomorrow I’m going to extend it further so that you can have separate images for each row in each section and separate footer text as well.

This is perhaps the best time for anyone reading this that is using Dapp to be making feature requests. I haven’t been this active in coding Dapp since well.. I coded it in the first place.

Needs more!
by mac man on Feb 20, 2011 version 1.2.7
This is a great start, but when using a group tableview, and having 2 or more sections, all it does is copy the cell names and makes it the same for all sections. Why? Lol

I can answer this . The reason why was that it used to be too hard to have different cells for different sections (with the way I’m storing data in the DB)!… and I didn’t know how on earth I could do it. But I got it done now.. only took 2 days .

After I’ve extended it a bit further, I’ll be moving on to Tab Bar controllers tomorrow. It’s going to be challenging because I’m still not sure how they are going to work from a UI point of view. Also, am I going to allow multiple navigation controllers sitting on top of tab bar controllers?…

Well, I’m tired so I’ll look into that tomorrow .

Chugging along with the patches, this update corrects an issue where actions were not being copied when cloning an existing project/design.

I’m still full time with other projects but hope to continue releasing small updates and patches to Dapp whenever possible.

I have found and corrected the issue affecting iOS 4.2 users in Dapp. Specifically, any changes to an on/off (boolean) setting were not being applied. The error was caused by a change in iOS 4.2 that now causes the iPhone to wait until the on/off animation is complete before applying the new isOn setting.

The patch has been submitted to Apple and should be available in the next week or so.

Thank you to everyone for your patience in this matter.

I’ve finally managed to get my hands on an iPhone 4. Blame our lack of supply in Australia . I was also happy to wait as I felt that the iPhone simulator would allow me to handle testing and debugging for iPhone 4 devices.

Of course, Murphy’s law stepped in and created a bug that only affected physical iPhone 4 devices with the latest iOS. From what I have gathered so far, the issue is that any ‘switch’ (boolean) settings are not being saved when a change is made. Now that I have an iPhone 4, I’ve been able to reproduce the issue and can submit a patch to Apple as soon as possible.

I’ll add a new post when the patch is submitted to Apple. Thank you to everyone for your patience.