WPhone Admin Plugin

Viper and Stephane have been hard at work making some behind-the-scenes improvements to WPhone, so much so that it calls for a full .1 version bump (and not simply a +.x.1 bugfix bump). We’ve done some code clean-ups as well as some performance tweaks that should make sites running WPhone just a bit faster than they already are. *chuckle*

Plus, a very cool and oft-requested feature — the straight dope from the release notes for what’s new/changed reads as follows:

• Plugins management: You can now activate or deactivate installed WP plugins from the new Plugins screen. [Woot! -ed.]
• Addressing a rich interface false positive with Nokia/WebKit based devices until we can gain access to such devices to try and fully support them under the CSS+JS interface. [i.e., once we win the contest. *grin* -ed.]
• Backward compatibility fix in the post/page form.
• Ajax improvements in global navigation and dashboard links.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes, tweaks and improvements.

That about sums it up for us. You can of course get the release in the usual spot or you can wait for your Plugins page to ping you.

Some might ask themselves why we decided to rewrite and develop a separate WordPress Admin in close parallel to what is being done in the WP core, instead of simply re-skinning the standard output to seemingly achieve the same goal.

Although the above statement is in itself not entirely accurate given our thorough adherence to the WordPress Admin API and development guidelines wherever possible, the answer can be summed up in two word: universal access.

Because we’ve committed to support the widest array of platforms possible right from the beginning (from iPhone to braille readers), based on the overwhelming feedback from the original wp-hackers thread that instigated this project, things such as low memory specs, slow processors and networks, common lack of server-side scripting, countless navigation and usability paradigms and so on truly defined the core of our design choices when it comes to both WPhone’s back and front ends. The fact of the matter is that these elements are not a focus of the standard WP Admin, nor should they entirely be (although accessibility has always been an important part of the WP core team’s efforts).

Will these decisions pay off for us personally in the competition context? I’m not sure; both contestant apps are pretty neat tools. But what we’re sure of is that it’ll pay off for our user base, and is ultimately the most important to us. :o)

While we anxiously await the results of Matt’s judging, I thought I might point out something interesting I’ve noticed. WPhone has been out in the wild for a couple of weeks here and I’ve noticed that quite a few sites are starting to link back to us, a most welcome outcome, to be sure. What has really surprised me, though, has been the level of international interest we’ve been garnering.

For instance, we’ve gotten English-language attention from Philoking, Qualitypeoples, Switchblog, Awsom.org, iPhones in RTP, and AppSafari, among others. In addition to those, though, we’ve been picked up by iPhoneClub.nl (Dutch), Another Pinky Punky (French) (translated), Bloggerpl.com (Polish), Blogwinkel (German), and iFun.de/iPhone (German) (translated).

What could explain this interest? I’m betting our commitment to i18n’ing our plugin as well as the overall greater use and interest mobile browsing gets in non-US countries could account for a good bit of the interest.

Good things, all-around. Here’s to hoping we win!

Since I was looking for a diversion from thinking about tonight’s deadline, I thought I’d whip you up a fresh batch of screenshots to showcase what the 1.3.1 release is all about. Thanks once more to Andrew for providing us with native iPod Touch screenshots of the latest release.

Check them out on our screenshots section, and if you haven’t yet, maybe give the plugin a try. C’mon, you know you wanna! :-)

Here’s hoping you’ll have as much fun using it as we’re having writing it.

Well, our pre-contest work is officially finished, pending any show-stopping bugs that users might report. We actually released two versions of WPhone today. Version 1.3.0 was freshly ported over from the dev tree and included:

• Latest Activity: added a new section to the dashboard to replicate the WP’s Latest Activity features, but without requiring JS as WP does (incoming links).
• Quicklinks: Added quick links to the main features directly from the hide/show “Go…” panel for easier global navigation.
• User search: Added a search form/feature to and tweaked the output of the search listing screen.
• Added display preferences select list in the appropriate user/profile edit forms.
• Styles and xhtml improvements for both the rich and lite interfaces.
• Further improved output compression scheme for faster download and processing performance.
• Bug fixes, thanks to loads of wonderful feedback we had from the WordPress users community.
• Improved on the already pretty good WP backward compatibility front.
• Code: Improved adherence to WP’s coding standards, added function documentation (phpdocs), more hooks, etc.
• And more (see svn log if interested).

Version 1.3.1 was a cosmetic change and simply included better bundled screenshots.

You can grab it from the usual spot or you can just click the link in the sidebar to the right. As always, let us know what you think or any bugs you encounter over in forums.

I’ve updated the Screenshots page with a slew of images captured natively on an iPhone, graciously contributed by forum denizen “andrew”. Many thanks, andrew!

In development news, we are looking to finish off version 1.3.0 which should be our final version of the plugin prior to Monday’s contest deadline. We’re looking into usability and performance improvements as well as a few tools to give blog owners greater insight into the goings-on on their blogs. We’re pretty psyched and hope that y’all will like what we’ve been cooking up.

Given the *ahem* history involving mobile Apple devices and the number 1.1.1, we figured we’d give that revision a miss and head straight to 1.2.0. Plus, there’s more functionality in 1.2 than a simple maintenance revision number bump.

Stephane put a lot of work in this weekend, due largely to the generosity of his new employer who loaned him a Touch for a couple of days. He was able to do a bunch of testing, bugfixing and addressing of nagging UI issues. I’ll let his release notes speak for themselves:

• CSS tweaks to fix spacing issues in the original and updated iPhone/iPod Touch firmwares, as well as in desktop safari, instead of just the latest iPhone/iPod Touch.
• Convenience links on email and URL field where and when appropriate.
• Now launching some links in a new window (target=”_blank”) on devices supporting the feature.
• Added a View/Preview button to the post/page edit forms.
• Misc. navigational tweaks.
• Improved the user experience on webkit devices with no or disabled Javascript support.
• Better browser detection for rich v. lite versions of the interface.
• Custom changes to iUI, submitted upstream to the original project.
• Better, more consistent location bar hiding.

We’re really pretty psyched about this one. All users ought to update ASAP and if you happened to do so this afternoon, well, update again. A version incorrectly tagged as 1.2.0 (oops on my part) slipped out for a few hours. The current trunk/ contains the definitive 1.2.0.

Happy upgrading, and we guarantee that it won’t brick your iPhone.

We’ve released version 1.1.0 of WPhone — grab it from the usual place or just do an svn up if you’re keeping up with trunk.

We established a /branches/dev/ branch in the Subversion repo, so if you’re interested in keeping up to date with the bleeding edge, switch your svn checkout to point to http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wphone/branches/dev. Stephane and Viper did a bunch of coding on the back-end to account for some strange spacing issues we were seeing on mobile Apple devices. The top navigation bar and forms should now size correctly.

We’re still on the lookout for bug reporters and testers on all platforms. Drop by the forums and let us know your experiences.

Stephane found a few quirks in the way the older iUI that we’ve based a lot of code on was handling the iPhone’s default viewport width of 320 pixels, so he made a few quick fixes and then committed the result to the repo.

Hopefully this will take care of the odd sizing and “dancing” that some users have reported when accessing the plugin, especially when using the iPhoney emulator and Safari 3 beta.

We need users of any mobile device to help out and test WPhone, but particularly iPhone and iPod Touch users. Windows Mobile, Palm (Blazer), Nokia N series, etc. are all welcome.

If you’re an owner of just such a device, we’d really appreciate feedback over at the forums.

Thanks!