We’ve decided to standardize the WordPress For iPhone application on the new OS 3.0 going forward.  We’ve seen a large percentage of users upgrading to 3.0, as have other apps, and there are new features we want to focus on which are OS 3.0 specific.  Overall, it seems like a good time to make the switch.

For those of you who wish to stay on an earlier version of the OS, be sure to grab a copy of the current version in the app store (1.3) and you’ll be able to continue using that version on early OS versions for you iPhone or iPod Touch.

We’ll also be posting details about an upcoming beta test of 1.4 this week with the updated UI and a slew of behind the scenes updates that should greatly improve the app in terms of speed and compatibility.

Thanks for all your support and we look forward to bringing you some of those new features soon!

19 Comments

This weekend there is a WordCamp happening in Wellington, New Zealand.

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.

I will be there, speaking on Saturday afternoon about the changes we’ve been making to the WordPress for iPhone application, along with some of the plans for the future. If you’re attending, please don’t hesitate to come and talk to me. I won’t bite

Also, for those of your who are not developers and have not had the pleasure of pouring through the latest commits to trunk, here is a sneak peak (although we may be tweaking this a bit before the next release):

5 Comments

So here’s a question for the mobile bloggers out there.  What has been your most unique, or most memorable mobile post?  Whether it was posting from Kazakhstan while riding steppe ponies, from under your car while changing your oil, or the best prose you’ve written while blogging from your iPhone — add a comment and let us know.

Keep it G-rated and come back from time to time to see what others have shared.

I’ll start off by sharing a not-very exciting example.  Recently I took the family to Zion’s National Park and we were briefly rained “in” at the main building.  Being the OCD developer that I am, I turned my wife and kids loose in the souvenir store and began testing some code I had recently written by posting several brief entries to my blog.  They consisted mostly of “test 1″ and “test 1″ but hey – that’s the kind of exciting life I live…  So, the location was a bit interesting, the prose – not.

I’m sure many of you can top that (not hard!) so drop a comment and get the ball rolling!

26 Comments

As you may have seen in a recent post, I asked for volunteers to help me test my code fix for the issue where the iPhone app couldn’t find the XMLRPC endpoint for a blog.  Around 15 l brave volunteers stepped forward and I’m glad to report that in those cases where that specific problem was the issue, the new code allowed the app to get to the endpoint successfully.

Many thanks to the volunteers for answering e-mails and changing settings etc.  This fix will be going into the next release.

For those who enjoy detail – the new code avoids using an XML parse to find the information and instead goes after it directly with a couple of regular expressions.  In the rare case where this does not find the endpoint, the application gives the user an opportunity to enter the XML-RPC endpoint directly via a new screen in the application.

14 Comments

We’ve implemented a fix in trunk for the XML RPC issue some WordPress app users have experienced. I’m looking for volunteers who have had that problem.  The error you see begins:

“We could not find the XML-RPC service for your blog”.

What I need to do is test the fix to be sure I’ve caught any edge cases. This means either A) temporary access to your blog with at least Author-level permission, or B) for you to run the simulator with the latest code.

If you’ve got an iPhone dev environment and prefer to run tests yourself, the expected behavior is that if all else fails, the application will bring up a view and ask for the user to input the xmlrpc endpoint URL manually.  If the endpoint is available, the blog should successfully load.  The new code tries some other things first, so if your blog loads without this manual input view, so much the better.

This input view should appear after saying “OK” to the error message about the endpoint.  Let me know if the new version of the app gives you the error above but does not bring up a view to add the XMLRPC endpoint manually.

Since this resolves mostly to a support issue, please read my post and add your responses on the support site here: http://iphone.forums.wordpress.org/topic/xml-rpc-service-for-you-blog-cannot-be-found/page/2?replies=32

Thank you,

John Bickerstaff

23 Comments

Version 1.3 is now live. This version addresses a few OS 3.0 compatibility issues that popped up. You can grab it now from the iTunes store.

Please note: Due to a strange glitch when submitting the app, the About page of the “1.3″ version will say version “1.21.1″. If you see that, you are running the correct version. We are working with Apple to understand why it would not accept “1.3″ as a valid version, yet displays that version in the iTunes store just fine.

47 Comments

From the “no news” category of news, we have no update unfortunately since last week when the new OS 3.0 compatible version was uploaded. It’s currently listed as “In Review” on the iTunes Connect screen.

Our outstanding is that Apple is fairly backed up with the avalanche of updates and hopefully will be caught up soon.

In the meantime you may want to fire-up your iPhone simulator and check out some of the new UI treatments that are showing up in SVN trunk which will be part of the next release.

As always, we’ll post here as soon as it’s live.

10 Comments

Excited for iPhone OS 3.0 ? We certainly are !

Yesterday we submitted version 1.3 of the WordPress for iPhone app which includes a number of tweaks to make the app OS 3.0 compatible.

As soon as it’s live in the iTunes App store we’ll post an update.

The bigger UI changes we discussed earlier are well underway and will begin appearing soon in a future release.

25 Comments

Hi all!

John Bickerstaff here.  Among other things, one of the iPhone developers for WordPress.

We’re pleased to announce that the WordPress iPhone App (OS 3.0) beta is available for testing.  At this point, an XCode dev environment is necessary to compile and run the beta.

We’d love your feedback and (of course) appreciate hearing about any issues you find.

Please use SVN version 330 from Trunk as the version for testing.

Of course, for all things iPhone Dev, see http://iphone.wordpress.org/development/

17 Comments

Hi! I’m new here. I work for Clear Interactive. I live in Melbourne, Australia. I love great user experiences. I’m here to listen. I’ve brought some friends with me as well.

We’ve been talking with Automattic for some time now about the WordPress for iPhone application. About the project, the community and the passion behind it. We want the WordPress for iPhone application to be the best mobile blogging tool on the iPhone.

I’d like to invite you into the thought process currently going on inside our collective heads.

Thinking Out Loud

First impressions count, it’s what I’d like to focus on right now. When you open WordPress for the first time you’re greeted with this screen:

You have two options:

1. “Set up your blog”
2. “About WordPress for iPhone”

The second option is interesting, but I’m not sure why it gets equal billing on the home screen when all anyone wants to do the first time they open the application is to set up their blog.

The “Add Blog” screen should be shown by default if you haven’t already added one:

Speaking of which, the cursor should already be placed in the “Blog URL” field and the keyboard should be displayed. There shouldn’t be an option to cancel as the application is unusable without at least one blog present.

The “Save” button should be disabled until the “Blog URL”, “User Name” and “Password” fields have been filled in. They keyboards return key should say “Next” instead of “Done”, it should jump into the next field I need to fill in.

It should change to “Done” only when I’ve entered all the required fields. At the same time the “Save” button should become enabled. In fact the “Save” button should probably read “Done” as well. Something like this:

When I’m done, I want useful feedback. Currently there is a spinning icon in the top right hand corner where the “Save” button used to be. But the keyboard is still present unless I hid it while entering my details. For all intents and purposes this screen still looks like it’s in an editable state. Except the application doesn’t respond at all!  As a user, I require a clear indication of what is happening, otherwise confusion ensues, so we’ll fix that too.

After I click “Done” I’m back on the home screen. Why is that? Rather than adding another blog, it seems much more likely to us that you’ll want to start using the app to manage the blog you just added, so we’ll show the “Posts/Pages/Comments” screen instead.  You can add the rest of your blogs later.

Moving Forward

As you can see we’ve been doing a lot of thinking, scrutinising and playing with ideas. We’ve already started adding these changes to the Subversion repository in the user-interface-rewrite branch.

They say you need to walk before you can run, let alone fly. Right now we’re still crawling, but here’s a sneak peak into the changes that we’ve got planned for the future:

User Interface Overhaul

1. Home Screen
2. Adding a Blog
3. Editing a Blog
4. Removing a Blog
5. Change blog screen to use tab-bar navigation
6. Changing the way local drafts work and are represented

Comment Moderation

1. Activity Dashboard – Stream of consciousness for activity on a given blog
2. Ability to quickly approve/delete/mark as spam

Statefulness

1. Remember which blog I was working in. Go back to that blog when I restart the application

We’re Listening

While we’ve singled out these changes for the future, there’s every likelihood that you have other ideas. So while we’re thinking out loud, we would love for you to do the same. Add a comment, or post to the forums. We’re listening!

45 Comments