GSoC 2010 - Development of an iPhone app

[jens]

Hi,
first of all I want to introduce myself... My name is Jens Lukas from Germany, I am a 4th year student of Software Engineering at the University of Applied Science Fontys Venlo (in the Netherlands) and I currently write my bachelor thesis. Since my bachelor thesis is about developing mobile apps (iPhone, Android and Blackberry) connected to a web service, I already got some experience in iPhone development.

It would be amazing to contribute to the dreamwidth project by developing an iPhone application adding the possibility to use dreamwidth in a comfortable way on a mobile device.

I took a first look at the ljprotocol to get an impression of the functionality / data provided. As a result I want to give you a initial list of the features I think of implementing.

- Post entries / Add comments
- Read "Reading page"
- Read inbox and send messages
- Manage profile
- Push notifications for new entries on your reading page or new messages in your inbox

These are just some basic features I plan to integrate, but I gonna add more information within my proposal (also containing project plan etc.). I just want to get some feedback on my suggestions. Do you miss a feature? Is there something you think is not necessary?

So, I am looking forward to work together with the community and hope that you provide me with some wishes you got regarding the project and of course please pepper me with questions :)

Best regards,
Jens

Comments

[damned_colonial]

One thing I would suggest is considering making the app also iPad friendly. iPhone apps will work on the iPad, but the larger screen real estate means there are some UI considerations.

I for one will be getting an iPad in two weeks' time and plan to use it as one of my main DW reading tools.

[jens]

It might be quite nice to use DW on the iPad and I will consider aspects for the iPad, but I currently not planning to get one, so it will be difficult to check how it looks on the iPad. Hopefully there will be an iPad simulator in XCode, this will make it much easier.

If I get accepted, would you be so kind and be a beta tester for me? :)

[damned_colonial]

Gladly! And I'm sure there's a developer kit with emulator etc. People are already developing apps for it, and it hasn't been released yet.

[thorfinn]

Yes, there is definitely an iPad simulator in the current XCode. I would also be happy to beta test (but only for iPhone, since I'm not planning to get an iPad).

As far as push notifications go - I think it would be best to tie any such features in with Jabber/XMPP notifications generally - which is not yet scheduled for implementation as far as I am aware.

[jamoche]

I'm getting an iPad, and I'm a Cocoa developer though I've never done any iPhone work. I'd be willing to beta-test.

[jens]

I will put you on my list :)
Finally got the iPad simulator coming with the new SDK version, gonna read through the Human Interface Guidelines and informations on Universal Applications.