...and it turned out to be true. OpenCaching.com now has a great iPhone client, for free on the app store. This is part of the reason I've held off on heavy development here.
At first glance it looks to be very well done. Go have a look. Thanks for all your hard work opencaching.com!
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Cache Page
Well the cache detail page has proven to be somewhat annoying. Not that it's hard -- I've already gotten the information. It's been difficult to get things to where I feel they are useful without being just a bunch of information thrown at you. It's still a little bit that way, but it's vaguely presentable in it's current form, so I'll post a couple of pictures.
I don't love the details at the top, I'd like to do some kind of variation on the OpenCaching circle. For some reason the circle isn't doing it for me, but that may be user learning curve... so I'm going to play around some here. For now this will stay text but expect it to change. I should also note that this scrolling section is actually a number of custom views strung together, so I can, say, change the description completely if I want and still have all of the other details stay the same and flow along with that. Kind of a pain to set up but it should make tweaking this page to be much more reasonable.
There are a number of other cache details that may change here (for example, do I make the description go full length, limit it to a specific length that's scrollable, reduce the text size, etc) especially the details at the bottom. I'm liking the way that the logs look. I haven't filled in the date yet, but there's a field for it above each log on the right, across from the logged user's name. These may move into a "more" button along with some other misc cache details in the space you see set aside for it.
The buttons aren't quite perfect but they are functional. I'd like to play with the look of these some as well.
It's a bit generic but getting reasonably functional, and starting to look vaguely decent. There's plenty of work to go here, and most of it (unfortunately for me) is aesthetic with a few functional pieces. I'll do what I can here to make it not suck.
I should mention that along with the revamp here I also received my oAuth credentials today from OpenCaching.com. I will start in on making oAuth support work here soon. That's some exciting stuff because I will be able to do things like log caches (or edit logs) and possibly even edit cache details (or place caches) all in-app. Lots of possibilities here that will help make things really shine.
A Note on GPX files... I haven't done much here. I am (still) in the place where they are being parsed, but the uploaded GPX file portion isn't complete yet. I do have it listing all of the individual files, but I need to finish the view that lists the individual caches inside these files and sends them to the regular cache page.
Comments would be appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.
I don't love the details at the top, I'd like to do some kind of variation on the OpenCaching circle. For some reason the circle isn't doing it for me, but that may be user learning curve... so I'm going to play around some here. For now this will stay text but expect it to change. I should also note that this scrolling section is actually a number of custom views strung together, so I can, say, change the description completely if I want and still have all of the other details stay the same and flow along with that. Kind of a pain to set up but it should make tweaking this page to be much more reasonable.
There are a number of other cache details that may change here (for example, do I make the description go full length, limit it to a specific length that's scrollable, reduce the text size, etc) especially the details at the bottom. I'm liking the way that the logs look. I haven't filled in the date yet, but there's a field for it above each log on the right, across from the logged user's name. These may move into a "more" button along with some other misc cache details in the space you see set aside for it.
The buttons aren't quite perfect but they are functional. I'd like to play with the look of these some as well.
It's a bit generic but getting reasonably functional, and starting to look vaguely decent. There's plenty of work to go here, and most of it (unfortunately for me) is aesthetic with a few functional pieces. I'll do what I can here to make it not suck.
I should mention that along with the revamp here I also received my oAuth credentials today from OpenCaching.com. I will start in on making oAuth support work here soon. That's some exciting stuff because I will be able to do things like log caches (or edit logs) and possibly even edit cache details (or place caches) all in-app. Lots of possibilities here that will help make things really shine.
A Note on GPX files... I haven't done much here. I am (still) in the place where they are being parsed, but the uploaded GPX file portion isn't complete yet. I do have it listing all of the individual files, but I need to finish the view that lists the individual caches inside these files and sends them to the regular cache page.
Comments would be appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Slowly but surely...
I've not done a lot of visual changes recently with the open-caching project, so I haven't been posting here. I have worked a number of hours on GPX file support and I believe I am at the point of parsing open-caching.com's generated GPX files correctly -- I'm just not (yet) doing anything useful with them. I had hoped to do some development today on the app, but I may be hung up by waiting on a reply from Garmin on the oAuth login stuff. I may still spend some time on the cache details page as that's the biggest missing feature so far, followed by GPX importing. If I get something acceptable for public consumption done here today I'll add some pictures to this post.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Settings are in!
Well, at least a couple settings are done, and I can add more as we need them.
Currently you can choose to turn on and off metric measurements as well as choosing how many search results you find. There are a number of other possible settings but I'll add them as I go. For now these two settings work and are saved properly. Once the OpenCaching team opens up authentication to the 3rd party API users then I'll pursue turning on and off individual finds as well as other settings for logged in users.
I've done a bunch of playing around with icons in the tab bar and other colors. After looking at solid colors in the background of the search results and settings I haven't been impressed. I've decided to try out the compass background on all of the screens. It's very workable so far, we'll see how things go as I move forward. I'm not yet convinced I'm done here, but this does look reasonable. I've also changed the icon (which I don't think I've shown off) to be a reasonably distinct icon based on the OpenCaching logo.
I think next up I'll tackle the individual cache screen. I've been putting this off for a while as I'm still not sure how I want to proceed. However it needs doing, and once it is done I'll have most of the fundamentals done that I'm able to accomplish so far.
I should mention I won't release this until I can at least allow logging in the field, though I would be ok with beta testers to use it. Hopefully the OpenCaching API opens up for logging here soon.
Thanks for dropping by, more later.
Currently you can choose to turn on and off metric measurements as well as choosing how many search results you find. There are a number of other possible settings but I'll add them as I go. For now these two settings work and are saved properly. Once the OpenCaching team opens up authentication to the 3rd party API users then I'll pursue turning on and off individual finds as well as other settings for logged in users.
I've done a bunch of playing around with icons in the tab bar and other colors. After looking at solid colors in the background of the search results and settings I haven't been impressed. I've decided to try out the compass background on all of the screens. It's very workable so far, we'll see how things go as I move forward. I'm not yet convinced I'm done here, but this does look reasonable. I've also changed the icon (which I don't think I've shown off) to be a reasonably distinct icon based on the OpenCaching logo.
I think next up I'll tackle the individual cache screen. I've been putting this off for a while as I'm still not sure how I want to proceed. However it needs doing, and once it is done I'll have most of the fundamentals done that I'm able to accomplish so far.
I should mention I won't release this until I can at least allow logging in the field, though I would be ok with beta testers to use it. Hopefully the OpenCaching API opens up for logging here soon.
Thanks for dropping by, more later.
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