1. A small detail in Happening v1.2.1

    I’ve just submitted Happening v1.2.1 to the App Store. It’s got a few tweaks in it, along with a small, subtle yet important UI enhancement. It’s one that got filed under ‘I really want it for 1.0, but it’s not a deal-breaker if I have to postpone’, and in amongst the work on getting the new UI and RSVP-ing into place this little change flew under the radar until one weekend when Anna mentioned it in the pub. Last week I sat down to make the change for the 1.2.1 update - and spent 6 hours teaching myself some more Core Graphics, as well as working on the logic behind a seemingly simple display issue.

    Here’s the subtle change:

    That’s a really, really small change: it’s just the name of the event, right?

    Not exactly! The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that the event name font size has been decreased (by a single point in this case), the name now uses two lines, and the event time / date moved down to accomodate that. In many ways, this is exactly the type of behaviour that Apple uses in the Maps application.

    For Happening, however, it’s not as easy as simply increasing the number of lines in the Event Name label: there’s the time of the day and time beneath the name that needs to be moved down too. In the case of the really long event names (greater than 40 characters) I actually downsize the event name font size by a further point, to fit just a little more data onto the screen. That two lines of text at a smaller size means I actually need to move the event time down a further pixel just to ensure the line-heights looked sensible.

    All in, it’s just 30 lines of code - and if I do say so myself, I’m actually rather proud of the change. The display of event data continues to be something I’m forever playing with - there’s a sketchbook of ideas next to my bed - and this subtle change finally checks off one of my own irks with my own app. Expect it in the App Store soon.

    Posted on Thursday April 15th, 2010