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Isaac Keyet 3:41 pm on May 29, 2013
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Dev chat summary for May 29 2013 Chat…

Dev chat summary for May 29, 2013. Chat log

Agenda

  • Android
  • iOSiOS The operating system used on iPhones and iPads.
  • Other Platforms
  • Mobile Handbook
  • GSoC Update

Android

The WPcom Notifications release is in Beta. Everybody with a Jetpack-enabled blog and/or a WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ blog is encouraged to download it and help test it, as well as reporting any issues that arise.

iOS

NUX update has been submitted with a heap of languages at 100%! A lot of people have been involved in this release, most notably @sendhil, @hugobaeta, @koke, @karmatosed. It provides a much better first experience for all types of users, wether you have a blog already or you want to sign up. It’s also bringing the UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. of the app up to par with the latest around the WP ecosystem, expect a lot of this to cross-pollinate to other parts of the app and other platforms as well.

WPcom Native Reader update: last week we’ve focused on wrapping up the comment form, topics list, and a bunch of smaller functions. We’re hoping to release a basic BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. sometime next week but it may be pushed out a bit further.

In other news a 3.6.1 is already being planned, and the work on better global Accounts for WPcom users will be merged as a part of the Native Reader update.

Other Platforms

Filing Windows Phone tickets for the next update, other than that not much going on on the other platforms we govern.

Mobile Handbook

I acknowledged the state of the Mobile Handbook in the chat, and let people know that our editor Rachel will be ready to review and edit content shortly. Everyone is urged to attend to the sections of he handbook that they’re assigned to. Eric mentioned that the state of the Android section in the handbook is looking pretty good, and that that may be a good place for Rachel to start looking at.

The BlackBerry section is looking really good as well, and this may in fact be the best place to start.

Mobile Handbook Todo.

GSoC Update

The selection process is over, and there will be two mobile Google Summer of Code projects this year.

Native WordPress app for BlackBerry OS 10

Daniele Maio will create native WordPress app for BlackBerry’s exciting new OS 10 platform. @daniloercoli will be mentoring.

More info.

FirefoxOS WordPress for webOS port

Sayak Sarkar will port the fabled WordPress for webOS app to the FirefoxOS platform. @aerych will be mentoring.

More info.

Congrats guys!

Next Week

The next dev chat will be on June 5, 2013 at 15:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode. The next two weeks @aerych will lead these chats and post the summaries.

#android, #dev-chat, #gsoc, #handbook, #ios

sendhil 5:54 pm on April 8, 2013
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New User Experience I’ve been working on the…

New User Experience

I’ve been working on the New User Experience for the WordPress iOSiOS The operating system used on iPhones and iPads. App and I wanted to share with you guys our direction and get your feedback. Most of this work was initially seeded by this post from @karmatosed. The hope and desire for this feature is to introduce users of all levels to the app and to help users navigate the app.

I initially experimented with a few different signup workflows to see how difficult each technical implementation would be. I was able to reproduce a Circle like workflow which @karmatosed detailed in her post along with a few standard horizontal paging workflows. While we liked the visual appeal of a Circle like workflow, we decided to go with a more traditional horizontal workflow for this first release as most users on iOS are used to that pattern and we felt it’d be difficult to do a Circle like workflow well. That being said, we are hoping to get a parallax like pattern going for the horizontal workflow so as to make the whole experience more beautiful, but we may drop it if we feel we are just trying to force it in.

We are also going to add tooltips that will appear as the user explores the app. We are going to start out with an initial set and add more as needed.

Initial Walkthrough

The initial walkthrough will consist of these screens:

  1. Welcome
  2. General Intro
  3. Posting
  4. Notifications
  5. Stats
  6. Reader

Tooltips

Here are the tooltips we are currently planning on including as a part of this 1.0 release:

  • Access SidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme.
  • Sidebar Open
  • Reader
  • Notifications
  • Posts
  • Pages
  • Comments
  • Stats
  • Jetpack – For self hosted users

I look forward any feedback you all might have.

#ios

Eric 7:20 pm on March 20, 2013
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Weekly dev chat summary for Mar 20, 2013

Chat log.

Agenda

  • Moving meeting time
  • Google Summer of Code
  • iOSiOS The operating system used on iPhones and iPads. & Android development
  • iOS NUX

Moving meeting time

We’ve decided to move the weekly dev chats back to 15:00 UTC due to daylight savings time.

Google Summer of Code

GSoC is open for applications. A conversation has started about what mobile projects we might like to see as a part of this. Let’s keep suggesting projects and take it from there.

iOS & Android development

The Automattic side of the mobile team is pursuing a few new priorities for WPiOS and WPAndroid in addition to iterations currently in progress. The new priorities are:

  • iOS: NUX, exploring a better new user experience
  • iOS: Reader, building a native WPcom reader for the app (details TBD)
  • Android: Notifications, a better way to keep up with your WPcom or Jetpack-enabled blog

We noted that these Automattic specific priorities are not intended to dictate the direction of the apps as a whole.

We also commented on the current state of WPiOS and WPAndroid. In WPiOS, nailing down the best solution for remote auto-saves is a continuing effort but getting closer. The new UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. refresh for WPAndroid is very close, and final graphics for icons and styling tweaks are currently in the works.

iOS NUX

Sendhil is tackling a revamped intro and signup flow for WPiOS and will be collaborating with @karmatosed for some of the design. We’re going to experiment a bit with a circle style NUX to test its feasibility.

Next Week

The next dev chat will be on March 27, 2013 at 1500 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

#dev-chat

Eric 5:23 pm on March 7, 2013
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Weekly dev chat summary for Mar 6 2013…

Weekly dev chat summary for Mar 6, 2013

We had a short chat in IRC this week. The mobile team is enjoying lots of face-to-face conversation while in the midst of a meet-up in Seattle.

Chat log

Agenda

  • WordPress for Blackberry
  • WordPress for Android UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. Update
  • WPiOS Mockups

WordPress for BlackBerry OS 10

Version 2.2.7 is now available in the BlackBerry store. This is a minor update to fix a bug.

WordPress for Android UI Update

Progress continues. Will Norris reports that blog management has been to the app settings page to be consistent with the iOSiOS The operating system used on iPhones and iPads. app. A few more changes and the old Dashboard will be fully replaced with the new UI.

WPiOS Mockups

@karmatosed shared a new comp. She’ll be posting about it on https://make.wordpress.org/mobile to let everyone weigh in.

Next week

The next dev chat will be on March 13, 2013 at 1600 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

#dev-chat

Eric 7:55 pm on February 13, 2013
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Weekly dev chat summary for Feb 13, 2013

Chat log.

Agenda

  • WPiOS
  • WPWindowsPhone
  • Mockups

WPiOS

We discussed which feature we’d like to work on next.  On the table

  • a visual editor
  • sharing to wpios from 3rd party apps
  • improved media management

The visual editor would be developed with CoreText, casting aside a previous htmlHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. based effort. We talked about writing the editor so it was its own library and sharable as a cocoa pod. We would also look at improving the editor flow as the visual editor is implemented.

For sharing, we’d expose an interface for 3rd party apps to share content to the WPiOS app.  We talked about whether we could return the user to the app that initiated the action once sharing was complete, and whether we should also share from WPiOS to other apps as part of a larger sharing release.

The app is missing some media management options. We’d like the app to be able to manage a posts media regardless of whether the media was added from the app or not.

WPWindowsPhone

This week @daniloercoli has been working on some bug fixes and improvements to the stats feature.

We briefly debated what the next major feature could be and considered three options:

  • gallery support
  • web based stats just for Windows Phone 8,
  • native Reader.

We decided to go with gallery support since already have a patch ready to go (props @sendhil).  Our plan is to release version 2.0 with galleries along with the bug fixes and stats improvements.

Mockups

@karmatosed shared a new mockup with us and we talked about what we would like to see in a tutorial for first time users of the app.  We all liked the idea of a walk-through that tells a story.  After some discussion it came down to two use cases,

  • a walk-through that starts once a user signs in the first time
  • a walk-through that is accessible from the welcome screen for new users who are curious, but out of the way of power users who just want to get started

Based on the discussion, @karmatosed is going to work up a couple of new mockups that show a welcome page with a button to get to the walk-through and a walk-through that happens when that button is clicked.

Next Week

The next dev chat will be on Feb 13, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

#dev-chat

Isaac Keyet 4:47 pm on February 6, 2013
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Weekly dev chat summary for Feb 6, 2013

Chat log.

Agenda

  • WPiOS 3.4 is out, what’s next?
  • WPAndroid UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. Updates
  • WPiOS Welcome Screen Wireframes
  • Mobile Handbook

WPiOS 3.4 is out, what’s next?

We highlighted that version 3.4 of WPiOS is now out! There’s a bug fix release in the works that should help with some of the issues that users are seeing. Among other things people are having trouble with the Stats screen. Fixes are coming but we have to resolve the critical issues first.

Next, we’re working on the Previews release which leverages the new XML-RPC endpoints in WP 3.5 to provide “real” previews of posts and better revision control (don’t want people losing their content ever, if we can avoid it).

A proposed new release schedule for bug fixes was proposed, where we’d release/announce major versions of apps on Mondays, spend a few days testing and hearing feedback while working on any bug fixes, then submit any bug fixes that Wednesday/Thursday the same week.

WPAndroid UI Updates

We have an ActionBar in trunk, and @willnorris got commit access. Things are moving along nicely. The new menu drawer exists in a branch currently that’s being merged to trunk, should be in before the end of the week in a rough state (possibly no icons, and in need of polishing).

Will has been creating some wireframes/mockups for the app that’s out of scope for this release but should be interesting to see for future discussions (and wrapping our heads around the new style updates and what they can lead to). There will be a few options posted to the dev blog shortly.

WPiOS Welcome Screen Wireframes

We discussed the wireframes made by @karmatosed at WC Norway and concluded that we’re all very excited to get started on something like this. Karmatosed opted to create some additional wireframes and start mocking it up, as well as start a discussion around the copy which is going to be a central piece in the project.

We agreed that a new user flow like this could work for all the main apps we have and would be a good starting point for a more unified experience, so we decided that this is a project that could go in parallel with any other updates to the app that we’re working on.

Mobile Handbook

We’re slightly behind in the contributor handbook schedule and are looking to catch up. We’re currently supposed to have the Requirements sections of the Handbook ready. Some parts of the Mobile Handbook are in good shape and are close to being finished from our end. We all vowed to iterate more on the contents and to talk more about it in next week’s chat.

Other

@daniloercoli noted that v 1.9.3 of WPWindowsPhone has hit the store and that WPBlackBerry (OS10) 2.2.7 is in review, both being bug fix updates.

Next Week

The next dev chat will be on Feb 13, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

#dev-chat

Eric 5:25 pm on January 30, 2013
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Weekly Dev Chat Summary for Jan 30, 2013

This week’s chat log.

Agenda:

  • WPiOS French translation
  • WPWinPhone 1.9.2 : status
  • WPiOS 3.4 : Releasing (today?)
  • WPAndroid : status
  • Wireframes

WPiOS French translation

Frank Klein (fklu) mentioned that the French localization of WPiOS has new translations waiting to be verified. (Props Frank for taking the time to do the translations.) Glotpress shows the French translation at 65% so it would be great to get these verified and get that number higher.  We’re making an action item to pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” polyglots and help get the ball rolling.

WPWinPhone 1.9.2

@daniloercoli submitted version 1.9.2 to Microsoft on Tuesday.  This is a bug fix release addressing 12 bugs and crashes. Two more significant issues were identified shortly after the app was submitted. Since there is no mechanism for the developer to reject a submission we will have a 1.9.3 version ready and waiting as soon as 1.9.2 is approved.

WPiOS 3.4

Apple has approved the app and it is pending developer release, however, at the last minute a server-side issue was detected.  Our plan is to release the app later today once the server-side bug has been squashed.

@beaucollins is drafting an announcement post for the blog.

Congrats to everyone who helped make 3.4 happen!

WPAndroid

Version 2.2.7 is in the Google Play store and is looking stable.  We’ll submit to the Nook and Amazon stores today.

The team is moving forward on the planned UI updates.  Will Norris (willnorris) has already made progress on the new sliding menu and is working on integrating in all the right places.

Wireframes

@karmatosed has posted some updated wireframes that are the result conversations with @isaackeyet.  The team will take a look at these and leave comments on the post.

Next week

The next dev chat will be on Feb 6, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

#dev-chat

Tammie Lister 4:39 pm on January 30, 2013  

Wireframes from a session at WordCamp Norway dev day

@isaackeyet and me got together during the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Norway dev day and talked through some possible interfaces for the starting screen and sign in section. We talked through various approaches in other apps and took forward some ideas from the dev chat last week such as single sign in.

I’m attaching the current idea here.

A few notes:

  • The first 2 screens are just showing suggestions for the initial screen which will be a step by step guide through (walkthrough) the features. Think Circle for the scrolling down and potential animation possibilities.  The plan is our own take either with custom backgrounds/photos or icons (such as the WordPress icon set perhaps).
  • The 3rd option shows the ‘slide in’ log in screen. This would slide up to show the form – showing the under page so you can easily get back again.
  • The last option shows the keyboard in size comparison.  This will probably have the return button changing depending on context.

Looking forward to what people think.

Isaac Keyet 5:47 pm on January 23, 2013
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Weekly Dev Chat Summary for Jan 23, 2013

This week’s chat log.

Agenda

  • WPiOS Status and What’s Next
  • Navigation UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. for WPAndroid
  • WPiOS Sign Up Wireframe Discussion

WPiOS Status and What’s Next

Version 3.4 of WPiOS has been submitted, the main new feature is a Notifications panel for WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ and Jetpack-enabled blogs. It also features stability improvements.

A bug fix update is in the works, in which the UI/UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. around Notifications will be improved further. Tickets going into this bug fix update will be listed on the WPiOS TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/..

We’re also working on better Previews for WPiOS, this will likely be the next major version of WPiOS – would be v 3.5 then. Since we have feature-based dev cycles this may be subject to change though. Any new contributors should jump in at #wordpress-mobile on Freenode to a mobile group member for starting work on any major new feature.

Navigation UI for WPAndroid

Background.

We decided to iterate on the UI in an upcoming WPAndroid release:

  • Add ActionBarSherlock and ‘convert’ our homegrown action bar to the native one
  • Remove the ‘dashboard’ home screen and instead put the items in a slide-out menu
  • Make small style updates around the app (lists etc) to better conform to the Holo UI pattern

Tasks delegated so far:

Previews is also in the works, @koke says it’s about half-way there. Whatever finishes first will be v. 2.3.

WPiOS Sign Up Wireframe Discussion

Background courtesy @karmatosed.

We had a discussion around what a sign up flow for WPiOS could look like, based on the wireframe. We like the direction but concluded that some basic improvements to the sign up/login flow might be nice altogether. The team highlighted plans to remove the “Select Blogs” step from the set up flow altogether, but this doesn’t have to happen at the same time.

We decided that another round of wireframes may be in order that ditches the first screen altogether and moves straight into a combined self-hosted/WordPress.com log in form. We want to make sure there’s enough space there for some explanatory copywriting and that there are ways to highlight fields and provide additional instructions (at least for the URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org field). We’ll wait to discuss more until we’ve seen some more wireframes.

It was a big discussion, if you’re interested be sure to check the chat log.

Next week

The next dev chat will be on Jan 30, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

#dev-chat

Eric 8:27 pm on January 16, 2013
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Weekly Dev Chat Summary for Jan 16, 2013

Chat log (once its available).

Agenda

  • WPiOS 3.3.1 Released
  • WPiOS 3.4 Status
  • WPWinPhone 1.9.1 Status
  • WPAndroid 2.2.6
  • WPBlackBerry for BBOS10
  • Wireframes and User Test (karmatosed)
  • Handbook Status/Questions

WPiOS 3.3.1 Released

WordPress for iOSiOS The operating system used on iPhones and iPads. version 3.3.1 was approved by Apple last week and is available in the App Store. We have seen an early trend of a 50% drop in crash reports with this release! (Go Team!) We noted three major issues remaining are:

  • Draft posts disappearing
  • Issues with logins
  • Issues with media uploads

We will plan to address these following the release of 3.4.

WPiOS 3.4 Status

We’re continue to test version 3.4. There are a few todos remaining but the hope to submit to Apple Thursday.

WPWinPhone 1.9.1 Status

Microsoft rejected version 1.9.1 due to an issue with localization. According to their email:

The application’s UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. text is not localized to the targeted language PortugalPortuguese. Instead, it is displayed in English.

No changes to localizations were made in this release which leads us to think Microsoft changed something in their app review process regarding localizations. We believe specifying a specific localization culture instead of a neutral culture (“pr-PR” instead of “pr”) will satisfy the app review issue. We are submitting the app with this change, but will also reach out to Microsoft directly for any insight they might provide.

WPAndroid 2.2.6

@mrroundhill has new version of WPAndroid is betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process.. Announcements have been made on the dev blog and on twitter. The new version includes the holo theme support for Android devices running a more recent version of the platform, fixes to httpsHTTPS HTTPS is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The 'S' at the end of HTTPS stands for 'Secure'. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. This is especially helpful for protecting sensitive data like banking information. and two crashes, and other optimizations. We’ll plan on releasing the app on Google Play Monday. Props to @willnorris for his contributions to this release!

WPBlackBerry for BBOS10

@daniloercoli has updated WPAndroid 2.2.6 to be supported on BlackBerry OS 10 when it launches. The new BlackBerry OS will be officially announced January 30th. We will submit the updated app to BlackBerry this coming Friday or Monday so it will be available to BlackBerry users as soon as the new OS and devices are available to the public.

Wireframes and User Test

@karmatosed has posted some updated UI examples and also provided a write up of her experience using WPiOS. We skimmed these quickly and decided for @karmatosed and @isaackeyet to talk more in-depth after the dev chat.

Handbook Status/Questions

@raggedrobins (irc: siobhan) joined us to field any questions we might have about the handbooks and offered to help out where able.

@isaackeyet reminded all that the draft mobile handbook is located at https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/handbook/ and of a conversation about the TOC on the blog.  We also have the goal of finalizing the table of contents by January 25th.

We talked about adding a “Ways to Get Involved” page after the introduction section and a General Guides section before tips and tricks.  We also commented that it would be nice to have screenshots where possible.

Next week’s dev chat

The next dev chat will be on Jan 23, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

#weekly-dev-chat