David Emery OnlineThe Horrors at York Hall
More photos on Flickr.
Apple Reverses Course On In-App Subscriptions
Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the "same price or less than it is offered outside the app". There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.
This is a big deal, but doesn’t surprise me too much – Apple’s original terms (if you offer a subscription outside an app you have to offer it as an in-app purchase at the same price) were just untenable for most publishers.
Visit ➔New Mobile Safari stuff in iOS5: position:fixed, overflow:scroll, new input type support, web workers, ECMAScript 5
It looks like there’s finally some major improvements in mobile Safari, some of which I’ve found below on my “first glance” after downloading the SDK. Chime in if you find anything yourself!
Finally position:fixed works in iOS 5 – this should make more complicated designs a hell of a lot easier to implement.
Visit ➔So I wrote a book. It’s called Responsive Web Design.
“So what’s the book about and stuff I guess,” you ask. Well, Responsive Web Design expands on the ideas I articulated in the original article. It’s a crash course in how you can apply fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to your own work, but let’s face it: design is so much more than those three ingredients. As a result, I’ve tried to share a few stories I’ve picked up from working on real, live responsive projects: the lessons I’ve learned, the questions that have been raised, the hard choices made.
If you’re a web designer you totally need to buy this book.
Visit ➔Tune-Yards at the Scala
More photos (from a truly stunning show) on Flickr.
Is This iOS 5? Dunno, But It’s Likely The Right Idea
Notifications that come down from the top bar could be how Apple ends up doing things in iOS 5. After all, this would mimic already existing functionality — when tethering, a blue strip appears along the top; when on the phone, it’s a green strip. Might notifications (or at least Twitter notifications) produce a gray strip?
Should have blogged about this earlier – this is how I’ve thought Apple would improve notifications for ages, as it shouldn’t require any modifications to any apps out there at the moment (as in theory they should be able to cope with the double height status bar already).
Visit ➔Kaiser Chiefs ... but under your control
And so to The Future Is Medieval. Without any buildup, fanfare or whatever you want to call the pop equivalent of leaving Red Bull cans scattered around Leeds city centre, the successor to 2008's Off With Their Heads appeared on Kaiser Chiefs' website on Friday. In doing so, it effectively heralds the arrival of the world's first bespoke album. Ten songs from a choice of 20 for £7.50 – no more, no less – but what those songs are, and the order in which they run, is down to you.
An interesting variation of the “In Rainbows” model – I thought we were done with that, to be honest, as it’s a model that’s not actually very good at selling records if you’re not Radiohead…
Visit ➔Mobile + Websockets + CSS 3D
Thanks to Pusher hosting websocket service, i was able to create this quick experiment using smartphones' accelerometer, websockets (with fallback to flash) and CSS 3D magic.
This is very cool – it lets you control an object in 3d space in your desktop browser using the accelerometer in your phone, all just using clever javascript and CSS.
Visit ➔Microsoft unveils Windows 8
There'll be two kinds of applications for Windows 8, one that runs in a traditional desktop, and the other pseudo-mobile apps based on HTML5 and Javascript, but both environments -- rather, the entire OS -- have been designed from the ground up for touchscreen use. Keyboard and mouse will still be options for both sets of programs.
Well this looks pretty nice – which for Microsoft is generally no mean feat – but I wonder if it would actually work that well in practice? The information density is pretty low so I can see a lot of sliding and tapping to get to the content you’re after at any given time. Also, the look would fall down pretty quickly if 3rd party devs don’t stick to it carefully so either it’s going to be hemmed in tightly or it won’t ever look that nice in practice (imagine all the garbage that normally gets pre-loaded on a PC integrated into that demo and you get what I mean).
Also, don’t get me started about how traditional apps are integrated in – i.e, they’re not, you just use them exactly like you always have. So, in essence Microsoft have welded a tablet optimised version of Windows Phone 7 onto the top of Windows 7 in the hope it will all work out nicely…
Visit ➔