Android Webview Complex Table Problems solved

Android Webviews are a great way to display content from a website. So most websites that have a companion app use webviews to show the comment. And most of the time everything will work just fine - but if you use advanced table layouts you might encounter a problems.

The culprit is .setLayoutAlgorithm(LayoutAlgorithm.SINGLE_COLUMN);

Normal tables don't seem to be affected by this setting, but complex tables using scope="row" or scope="col" or both. To fix this just replace the LayoutAlgorithm to normal.

Example:  mMessageContentView.getSettings().setLayoutAlgorithm(LayoutAlgorithm.NORMAL);

Thanks to Stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14624841/webview-is-not-displaying-table-properly-in-4-0-in-android

New content for the redesigned website

Beyond showing off some of my work I always tried to share insights and my perspective on new developments in the design and web technology space. Not only to empower designers to communicate better with developers, but also for developers and businesses to help them understand the creative process. With the newly redesigned website I go one step further by adding 2 new categories where I will post specific content aimed at businesses and developers. Main goal for businesses is to help them understand where the web is going and what technologies and trends they should pay attention to. For Developers the main topics will revolve around new tools that will help them deliver the crazy ideas designers come up with.

Since these articles are geared towards my clients and not so much towards designers I will share them on the Google+ Page dedicated to Frankie as a business, not my personal one. So circle this page if you haven't yet, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

#blog #development #businesses

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Levelling up in an App or website?

While I'm catching up with some SXSW talks through my Huffduffer Account (don't tell me you are an avid podcast listener and you don't know about Huffduffer), I came across the talk Tapworthy Touchscreen Design. While most of the talk was pretty straight forward to anyone who is a interface designer, the concept of using a level system for an application of website was new and intriguing. Not the average gamification bla bla - but just like in a game, where you get more capabilities while you progress, you would setup the application to expose more and more functionality the longer a user interacts with it.

I still have to wrap my head around how you could use this in an extended way, but I can see immediately the advantage of an uncluttered interface in the beginning, which you then fill with more and more functionality.

#ux #interfacedesign #gamification #development

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Teaching Touch: Tapworthy Touchscreen Design Discover the rules of thumb for finger-friendly design. Touch gestures are sweeping away buttons, menus and windows from mobile devices—and even from the next version of Windows. Find out why those fa...

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Cudos to Apple for changing the naming scheme for the iPad and updating the developer...

Guess what, not only has the iPad dropped the number from it's name, but it has therefore followed how "normal" people talk about technology. I'm not only favorable for how Apple handles things, but that John Doe comes into the store and wants "the new iPad" sounds true to me. So why not just embrace it. They talk about making things simple, and with 7 different iPad Versions the easiest way is to not use any specifics in the name. Customers on the other hand will talk about their iPad after the purchase, not about their iPad 3 4g LTE 32Gigs ...

But how about developers who have to identify the different versions. Well, Apple has already updated their development website - they call the "new iPad" just high resolution iPad - so alle the iPad HD rumours where not so wrong.

PS: After further inspection not all developer pages are yet updated, but I guess they will follow.

#apple #ipad #development #branding

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iOS Developer Library — Pre-Release Apple Developer. Search. Search iOS Developer Library. PDF Companion File. Table of Contents. Jump To… Download Sample Code.

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Use Git to update your customized Wordpress Themes safely

Using Git to manage Theme Versions in Wordpress is a little bit geeky, but can help you a lot if you customize off the shelf (premium or free) themes. As good as these themes are to get a wordpress site up and running quickly, they also need some tweaking. Preserving these tweaks is not as easy. How can you keep track of sometimes multiple files you modified? Why not use a version control system that helps merging code bases. It let's you test out your tweaks, giving you a quick way back if you break something and it's the best tool to merge your changes into an updated version of the theme. Git is such a solution and it's fairly easy to use, once you pass the first hurdle of grasping the concept.

Git (and Github, the web service where you can host your git repositories) are subject in books and many articles on the web, so I leave that part out. In this little step my step I assume that you have Git installed on the web-server you host your Wordpress installation and have command line (ssh) access.

Setting up a theme with Git

1. Install new theme with Wordpress Install as usually with the management tools provided by Wordpress  
2. Create a new repository on the web-server SSH into the /wp-content/themes/ and create a new repository git init                         // create new repository git add .                        // add all files in folder git commit -m "original version" // commit with comment  
3. Get ready for future updates git branch ready4update          // add new branch This will create a branch in which we will then copy the updated theme files when we need to update
4. Make your modification to the themeNow you can make your changes to the theme as you like - you will continue to make changes to the master branch. You need to commit your changes to register them with git and I highly advise to use the workflow approach described in ProGit to make your work even more efficient. To commit your changes just enter git add .                                // add all files in folder git commit -m "Insert your comment here" // commit with comment  

Update the theme

Now comes the neat part. You have an updated theme and you need to merge it with your customized one. To do this we need to activate the branch we prepared in step 4.

1. Install new theme files git checkout ready4update     // go to branch

   Now copy the updated theme files into the folder and overwrite everything and commit the changes to the ready4update branch.

   git add .                     // add all files in folder git commit -m "updated theme" // commit with comment  

2. Get Master branch ready We go back to our master branch and make a temporary branch to have a save update. git checkout master          // go to master branch git checkout -b tempupdate   // create new temporary branch from master and change to it  
3. Merge the update into the temporary branch And now we merge the two branches git merge ready4update       // merge with tempupdate

   The trick here is that the master and ready4update branch have the original theme as common ancestor. Git can merge this way the changes made by the author of the theme and yours - and if you have conflicts git will help you resolve them.  

4. Test the website Since we have created a tempupdate branch we are working in, even if something brakes badly you can still go back to your previous stable master branch (git checkout master).  
5. Merge into master and get ready for next update If the test went well and your wordpress site works well you should get ready for the next update git checkout master         // go to master branch git merge tempupdate        // merge the branch into master git branch -d tempupdate    // delete temporary branch git branch -d ready4update  // delete ready4update branch git branch ready4update     // create new ready4update branch  

Now you are ready to update your theme or make additional changes to it. Believe me - it looks more complicated then it actually is, so go ahead and try it.

Why Feature Selection is so important - The Case Remember the Milk

I read a lot about the importance of "less" features and better experience. The mobile first movement comes to mind and I can totally see that it makes sense to not get caught in a Featuremania, but sometimes one feature is more than important, even though it's small. Example: How Remember the Milk (a popular Todo-List App) got me back to their service

Remember the Milk has a lot of features, actually it had all the features I needed - Super Easy Task property input through shortcodes, Locations, Web Interface, Mobile App with Widgets, Automatic Syncing etc. but one ... You couldn't create a new task with the Android Share Menu from another App. This feature would have been super easy to implement and a small update would have fixed this.

The developer preferred to make a complete overhaul of the Android App (without telling anyone) and didn't update the App for months.

This made me look for other solutions and try about 10 other services and get really frustrated. Not only because the user experience was different with other services, but mostly because they where lacking one or another feature I used to love on RTM (Remember The Milk).

I settled for Google Tasks and a nice Mobile App to manage them, even though it lacked a nice web interface and the ease of adding Task properties with shortcodes - but it had the feature I was looking for - the Add Task through the "share menu" in Android.

And here comes the update to the Android App of RTM today ... a lot of bells and whistles and improved use experience, but more important for me ... the share functionality is included.

So I'm back on my favourite Todo-List App/Web Service ...

What I learned Designers are often focused on the experience and try to simplify the functionality to make a slick web/mobile app - but sometimes the little bit more on functionality is more important than the updated icon or slicker dashboard screens

#RTM #UX #Design #Development

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The ginormous Remember The Milk for Android update - Remember The Milk Blog ARCHIVES. October 2011; September 2011; August 2011; July 2011; June 2011; May 2011; April 2011; March 2011; February 2011; January 2011; December 2010; November 2010. View all archives, October 2011,...

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