With the release of iOS 7, there are several changes in how you lay out and customize the appearance of your UI. In particular, the status bar is now transparent, and your views will show through it. Now this is a great opportunity to redesign your app and take advantage of this new look and feel, but what if you aren’t ready and you want to the old iOS 6 status bar back? Well, I’m excited to tell you that there is a way to do this!
Recently I started a project which required an iOS app to be locked in landscape orientation. The method mentioned below was always the standard for locking/setting the orientation, but iOS 6 deprecated this method. This post will show and explain some other options that I came across when investigating alternative options for locking the screen.
[code language=”javascript”]
[[UIDevice currentDevice] setOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight];
[/code]
I am very pleased to announce a major update to Grio’s memory matching game: Flipout!
Flipout! is a game of luck and skill where you need to match pairs of cards… similar to the game of Concentration. We throw a few twists at you, however, to add to the challenge. What if suddenly the cards decided to up and swap themselves? Can you keep track of entire rows moving as one? And just when you thought you had a handle on things, one of the cards explodes, scrambling all of the cards around it!
Today we launched a new productivity app for Mac OS called Filedart (filedart.com). Filedart allows users to share files and screenshots in seconds. Drag a file or take a screenshot and your file is on the cloud. A URL is instantly in your clipboard, ready to be pasted into chat windows, emails, or sharing tools. On the receiving end, users click on the URL link to access the file or image in their browser. No sign in or registration is required.
This isn’t a new concept, but we think we’ve done it better. We intentionally kept the feature set minimal, focusing on design and usability. As we developed the tool, we made frequent use of Filedart for collaboration. We darted screenshots of the product page, various iterations, of the logo, nightly builds, and marketing strategies. It quickly became apparent that we were settling into a new way of working. After a few tosses, using Filedart becomes as intuitive and natural as Copy/Paste. While you don’t need Copy/Paste to work on a Mac, most of us would hate to go without. Filedart starts to feel the same way.
In terms of privacy, we don’t request user data and promise not to peek at your files. We don’t know who you are, and we are not interested in snooping. Ultimately we hope that the tool we created is useful, reliable, and secure.
We would love to hear your feedback on how to make Filedart better – just email us at feedback@filedart.com. Happy darting!
Brad
When working on Filedart we wanted some statically served pages, but to use our site template(s) to have them fit the look and feel. Updating our site’s assets (javascript, css, images, etc) should be easy to update in our static pages as well. Here is a brief overview of how I made this happen.
Recently, I had the opportunity to work on an exciting in-house project for Grio called Filedart. This service, which will launch in the near future, affords the denizens of the web the ability to effortlessly upload content to the cloud by dragging photos or files to a small icon in their taskbar. After the file is uploaded by the client, the service automatically copies a mini-fied URL to the client’s clipboard. This URL leads to a brand-new, public web hosting wrapper for that file that they can easily distribute to their friends of colleagues to share. The service is free, and users don’t even have to log-in to use it.
Here at Grio we strive to constantly improve the quality of our software. But what exactly does that mean? Is there a way to measure software quality? What are the metrics? What are the tools needed for this endeavor?
Our most recent in house project was a fun children’s game called Whack Attack, and was built with Unity 3D and released for iPhones and android devices. Unity is a great tool, but it is definitely (and obviously) more geared for game crafting in the third dimension. Our game deals mostly with two dimensional sprites, although they are set in a pseudo 3d environment to attain some basic perspective.
Like any working professional, software engineers are extremely busy. There is more code to write than there is time. For this, we can be very picky with which tools we choose to communicate. A normal day can be filled with meetings, email , and then actually trying to write code. For the engineer, we have time for few things, and writing code is top priority. So, what’s the best method for getting a developer’s attention?
Here’s some tactics that will help you get in touch quickly with the guys building the next best life changing tools.
I’m writing this post from Mysore, India where I’m working for the entire month of February.
Coming here was a nail-biter for me, but not because of typical western concerns like bedbugs, heat, smog, or monsoons. What terrified me was the idea of traveling all this way and not being able to do my job effectively. I oversee operations and finances at Grio, participate in business development, and am currently managing two projects. If anything were to prevent me from working, I would need to grab the next flight and go home – arriving a minimum of 40 hours later!