The art of user interface

Years ago I thought I had the ability to design a decent user interface. Back then, the concepts were quite easy as the screen sizes were limited (Palm OS) and we were dealing with essentially black and white. As long as I followed the UI guidelines, the interface looked good. These days, I don't think I could design a user interface to save myself. The flexibility of iOS, high resolution screens, full color displays and multi-touch add so much complexity to user interface design that it takes a professional, in my opinion, to design good user interfaces.

I'm quite lucky that I work with designers and artists do the design work which lets me concentrate on what I do best, writing code and solving problems. The lack of my own design ability makes it quite hard for me to come up with my own titles to publish. If I came up with a good idea, I'd need to find a good designer willing to take payment in the form of a split of revenues; good design isn't cheap!

Developers need to keep this in mind when releasing applications; a good idea even well implemented is only half of what makes a good app. The other day I looked at an app that had the beginnings of a decent app, but the UI had a lot to be desired, so it quickly got removed from my device.

Does experience count in mobile development?

The other day, I was instant messaging with someone and jokingly questioned why anyone would listen to what I had to say about mobile development. Then I realized that I've been doing mobile application development for almost 17 years! Just writing that sounds unreal. I wrote my first mobile application my senior year in college for the Newton. On a tangent, how did a college student get a Newton and the quite expensive developer tools? The Apple Personal Interactive Electronics (PIE) group licensed my NotifyMail application and exchange, I received a Newton MessagePad 110 and the developer tools when developer tools cost way more than the $99 Apple charges to join the iOS developer program.

The application was quite basic; it counted down the number of seconds until I graduated from college. Yes, I was tired of school and ready to graduate! I guess I kind of got hooked on mobile development and that's where I've spent a majority of my career; first Newton, then Palm OS, and now iOS. I've played with Windows CE/Mobile and WebOS, but never wrote anything for those devices.

I don't think I could write Newton or Palm OS code these days, but some of the concepts are still the same, such as limited screen size and limited memory. However, iOS is so much more advanced, it's unbelievable.

On the flip side, some may say that my experience is also a hinderance as I may be stuck in my ways. This may be true, but I'd like to think that it isn't the case. Hopefully my long history of mobile development continues to serve me well.

Life, a year later

It's been almost a year since I left my job running IT for a small company. As I've written before, leaving the job was probably not the smartest move as I didn't have another job lined up. However, it turns out that the move was one of the best moves in my career. Through a series of events, I ended up with my current job where I'm quite happy. Sometimes it surprises me how much work influences life, but considering how many of my waking hours I spend working, it really shouldn't be a surprise.

I'm not sure what was the actual trigger for leaving my last job, but I'm quite lucky that everything has worked out.

Life is good.

The utility of a URL shortener

I've setup Twitter Tools to post links to my blog posts to Twitter and that's been working well. I did this as one of my friends doesn't subscribe to my RSS feed, but likes to read my posts. He is a frequent Twitter user, so this solution works well. Since I haven't been using a URL shortener, some of my posts don't make it to Twitter as the URL and title make the post over the Twitter limit of 140 characters. The other day, I decided to see about solving this.

There are a number of URL shortening services out there, but I kind of have a problem relying on a third party for the service. Also, one of the most popular one, bitly, is under a Libyan top level domain. I found YOURLS the other day and set it up. It was pretty easy to setup and I picked a subdomain for easy management. The Wordpress Plugin for it kept creating extra links and that kind of annoyed me. I found that someone created a Twitter Tools plugin to work with YOURLS. I tested it and it worked perfectly.

So, now all my posts to Twitter are using my own URL shortener. The URL shortener is pretty maintenance free and easy to setup, so as long as I have my blog around, I think I can keep this running.