I've just got back (after a not very good at all period) to finishing off my Sudoku App and I've had some awesome ideas for it (this morning and last night in bed)

Anyway, I'm sat at work and not able to put any of it to use until I get home tonight!

ARGH!

My idea is absolutely brilliant and will completely change the feel of the app. At the moment it's very boring and looks like it's come straight from 1995 onto an iPhone. (The menu does anyway).

My update will make it an actual iPhone app and also help drive the user through the app.

It will also give it a theme that I can run through the entire app and I'll be able to get rid of the awful stuff that the "designer" has done. The guy I'm working with paid a designer to make a load of buttons after about 2 weeks of writing the app. I swear he's got his head on backwards.

LOL!

I now know where the sh*t design comes from. The guy told me (ages ago) that he wanted to match the brand of his other app.

I just found it on the app store. It's called Str8ts lite and is free.

It looks like one of the Windows Games that you get on Windows 95.

GET IN!

The menu works exactly as I wanted it to!

I've only created the first menu but the way it all fits together is perfect!

It slides in and out of the screen and fades in the text under the menu icon. I absolutely love it!

If the other guy doesn't like it he's from a different planet!

Tomorrow I'll be fitting together the rest of the menu system. With this new system I have a theme I can set over the whole app I just need to get it right. It was fricking hard to get it to do what it does now but having done the heavy lifting it should be a lot easier to get the rest of the menu working.

Ok, so I know I might be going on a bit but I've just spent the last 6 hours creating this and I absolutely love it.

I thought I'd show you all before and after pics so you can see how much of a change/improvement it is

Ok... Before (bare in mind this was thrown together just to get the buttons on the screen but also that the other guy was looking at this as the final menu)

And after...


The new menu has a single menu item on each "slide" when you press the arrows it does the following...

Arrows and text disappears.
Menu image slides off the screen and is replaced by the new menu image sliding on from the other side.
Arrows and text fade in.
Finally the little dot nav bar is updated to let you know where you are in the menu.

The top bar of the screen stays static all the time. The cog in the top left is settings and the ? In the top right is and "About" screen (although not yet implemented).

This is probably one of my best pieces of work on the iPhone so far

Took me 5 or 6 hours tonight to write it.

I also feels that it guides the use through the app more and is more inviting for them to explore.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=53.842481,-1.532666

Oh, another thing.

I can now add more menu items when necessary just by adding a single entry in an array.

I give it...
Image name
Title
Text
Function (this function is run when the menu item is tapped).

Just by entering that extra entry in the code it will add a new menu item (with the image and text and animations etc...) and then expand the little navbar thing to have the correct number of dots in it.

All I need to add then is the function that it runs. Everything else is sorted

Question, do I make the menu circular (I.e. when you get to one end it rolls round to the other end) or do I make it stop when it gets to the end?

Much more native looking! When will it appear on the beta!?

Thanks!

Well, first off I need to convince the other guy to go with it. He'll either really love it or he'll hate it as it isn't in keeping with the "brand" of his other app.

I'm trying to think of an argument that doesn't involve saying something like "yes, but your other app is a pile of w*nk".

LOL!

I've been sat at work for about half an hour just clicking through the menu on my app to see it working!

I have never been as pleased with anything as I am with this.

Even with Doodle Sub. Doodle Sub is a good little app but it was written as an adaptation of a tutorial I was reading on Cocos2D so I didn't really invent anything new with it.

This is all my own work. OK, so the menu behaviour is one that has been used before but everything on it is my own. How it works, how it feels, all the code is all my own, etc...

The more I look at it the more I like it too! Seriously pleased with it. It almost has the look of an Apress style text book cover with the black header and coloured text etc... And essentially, that is what the app is. It's a learning app rather than a playing app. It works perfectly!

Also, I'll be able to use it in the future with a few copy/pastes as I have done all the hard work now

Spent another 3 hours on it to tonight.

Fixed a couple of bugs with the main menu and added the same look and feel to a couple of other screens.

I've done another first too which is to add a custom table view to a view. Ive made it transparent and changed the colours and font to match the rest of the look and feel. The best bit... it worked first time (picture below)



I think I'm finally getting the hang of this iPhone stuff. I remember when I first started and I was sat net to a tutorial book struggling to write a hello world app. Even with doodle sub I was doing the same. With this I've done it all from what I know only checking the api docs to find out what I can do with certain objects.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=53.842658,-1.532780

Don't read the above post before you have had your first coffee of the day!

I read "Strategies: Naked Paris"!