RevMobile first impressions?

[Petrides, M.D. Marian]

Thanks for all the details, Sarah.

Is it possible to install an app onto an iPhone the way Ben appears to  
have done in the demo?  I know you probably don't want to actually do  
it with a pre-alpha version for risk of seriously messing up your  
iPhone, but just wondered if it is possible.  (If it were, then I  
might just try it on an iTouch if I got daring enough.)


On Mar 4, 2010, at 8:11 PM, Sarah Reichelt wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Marian Petrides <mpetrides at earthlink.net 
> > wrote:
>> I'd love to hear your more detailed impressions, Sarah, and I bet  
>> others would too.  Meanwhile, thanks for the early preview!
>
> Here is some more info:
>
> Set your stack's font to Helvetica 14, the backColor to "200,200,200"
> and the look & feel to Motif to get the best preview of how it will
> look on the iPhone without any skinning.
>
> A multi-card stack works fine and moving into & out of sub-stacks  
> works fine.
>
> Not all text decoration works: there are no fonts and you can't
> specify bold or italic, but all the other text styles work and you can
> set colors.
>
> I have used the photo picker and it works really well, but don't leave
> an image on screen if you leave that card or the app usually crashes.
>
> Images are a bit crashy - sometimes they work, other times they crash.
>
> File handling: I have been able to list files in the app bundle,
> create a new one and display it, download an image file and save it,
> download a web page and show the htmlText.
>
> File paths: you can get the defaultFolder which gives the full folder
> to the app in my Library. Getting the filename of my stack gives a
> much shorter path, with the app bundle being the root folder. I
> haven't worked out yet how to save a file to the app's Documents
> folder.
>
> iPhone specific commands: I have tested the command that accesses the
> photo library (& would do the camera if I was using a real iPhone) and
> they work really well. Shaking & multi-touch all seem fine, although
> on the simulator I haven't actually been able to multi-touch.
> If you shake when typing in a text field, you get a dialog saying that
> there is nothing to undo, so the shake has been correctly linked to
> the undo mechanism, but the actual undo is not operational yet.
>
> Rotation: seemingly not implemented yet, although the handbook
> mentions that they cause the stack to get a resizeStack message. I
> haven't been able to detect this, so I have no idea how they plan to
> implement rotation. I tried activating the accelerometer but I can't
> test that without installing on a real iPhone. It didn't make any
> difference to the rotation - you still just see all the controls
> turned sideways. I even tried changing to a wide stack to see if that
> would help, but it didn't make any difference.
>
> So basically, although it all looks weird, there is an awful lot of
> Rev that just works. Images are the most flaky things I have
> discovered.
> As is usual with iPhone apps and Rev apps, errors don't make a fuss,
> although the app can just quit quietly if something weird happens.
>
> As regards future revMobile programming, the main things I will be
> looking for are the native look & feel, rotation handling and better
> image handling. Of these, the rotation is the most important as I need
> to know how this will work in order to be able to plan my development.
> The look & feel will not stop me developing, but you couldn't release
> an iPhone app that looks like it's running under X11 :-)
>
> Image handling is crucial because it has caused a lot of app crashes
> in my tests.
>
> Adding an icon to your app is super-easy. You just make a 57 x 57 png
> file and tell revMobile the plugin. When the app installs, the iPhone
> rounds the corners and adds the cool lighting effect.
>
> If anyone would like me to test any aspect in particular, just let  
> me know.
>
> Cheers,
> Sarah
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