QUOTE.fm for iPad 1.0.1 – our first small update – just hit the App Store. Here is a list of all changes:
- Added: Sharing menu in browser.
- Added: Resize animation when activating Social Reading.
- Added: Delete comment functionality.
- Added: Facebook sharing settings.
- Added: Prevent deactivation of the display in reading mode.
- Added: Success messages for sharing actions in reading view.
- Fixed: Improved downloading of images in Read.
- Fixed: Better behaviour of enabling/disabling buttons in browser.
- Fixed: No wrong articles will be saved to Read anymore.
- Fixed: Issue with download of some articles in Read.
- Fixed: The URL bar in browser now clears itself after using it. Like toilets from Japan.
- Fixed: From now on, the notification alert only alerts you one time.
- Fixed: Issue with loading recommendations in Social Reading.
- Fixed: The content area did sometimes not show any content, that shouldn’t happen again.
- Fixed: Crash when logging out while refreshing read later articles.
So go get the update and have fun. <3
QUOTE.fm for iPad on the App Store
Recently we changed our development process quite a bit by moving from self-hosted Subversion to Github. After some weeks working with the new set up I thought it may be the right time to write something about the whole story.
Before
Back then, when we started to work on QUOTE.fm I instantly created a Subversion repository on my server like I did it for all my projects. We used Redmine to track the requirements and found bugs and the built-in repository viewer was quite nice, too.
Like you may know I started to work on QUOTE.fm while I was still down there in Konstanz and working for another company. So I mainly did my work on the weekends. Martin always did his HTML/CSS work during the week and then sent me .zip files containing all the stuff and a nice .rtf to explain what to keep in mind. After some weeks this got quite confusing, especially when I wasn’t able to work for a weekend and ended up with 4 new zips.
Giving Martin access to my repository was the first big productivity push to our development process. I wasn’t handling a lot of Layouts-2011-XX-YY folders any more and could look up every tiny change easily using the diff viewer in Redmine.
My personal development process started with doing the most work directly in the repository’s trunk, because I was just too lazy to create and merge branches regularly. This situation got better over time, so actually everything worked quite good. But sometimes there were some troubles while merging or I lost track a bit and wasn’t so sure if everything’s gonna explode when I type svn up.
Finally, there’s Flo. XCode supports Git natively, so Flo did all his versioning using Git from the start. But one day I suddenly had the urge to compile the iPad app on my own and noticed that I got no access to his local repository. So we tried some ways to connect his local git repo with a remote subversion repo and, yes, it worked. But after some commits there were strange errors and we did not really want to spend a lot of time debugging this issues.
After having read some articles about companies/projects moving to Github and because I’m a fan of Github personally I thought we should give it a try.
The transition
We started with the repository of our iPad app. Connecting this to Github was absolutely no problem because it already was a Git repository. Yay!
The next step was moving Martins stuff to a separate repository. Until the switch Martin just had a “layouts” folder in my general repository, next to my branches/tags/trunk folders. I honestly do not know why I did this back then. But fortunately the svn2git tool can be configured really flexible, so that was not a problem.
The biggest part was moving my main repo. Before, I used to put API keys for Twitter, Facebook and so on directly to the configuration files and committed everything. That may not be very clean, but it’s not a real big problem if you are hosting the repository on your own server. But I did not want to have all the keys on the Github servers.
Because this problem seems quite common there is a great guide in the Github help that explains how to rewrite the history and remove unwanted stuff from your git repo.
Now
Everything’s really nice now. I can check out and build the iPad app every time I want and Martin can use the Github Mac app to create branches and commit things. Also I don’t have to maintain the Redmine and Subversion servers.
Switching to Github was not only a change of the software we used but also a big change to our development process. Now we try to work more strict. That means: branches for new features, pull requests and the master branch is always save to deploy. Sounds familiar? Well, we took this from Github. Maybe it seems a bit overkill for our small team — but we’re currently searching for new iOS and PHP developers!
The whole Github experience is much better, faster and more comfortable then Redmine. The diff view is so much more advanced and there are so many small but nice features.
Of course, you have to say that we could do all that with Subversion. A bit more discipline, some plugins for Redmine — but after all the switch was not that costly and we think it was a good move.
And, yes. You may say that we did not consider any risks and are just using the new and currently popular technology, but that’s not true. We thought about the whole process for some days. Yes, our source code may be exposed, if Github had some security leak. But since we aren’t storing any sensitive information in the source files, this isn’t a big problem.
Conclusion
We use git, we improved our development process and everything’s got a bit better!
Hey! We’re hiring again.
This time we’re looking for a full time PHP developer who will support Philipp building our backend.
Here are some facts about us:
- Our backend is written in object oriented PHP and based on the Yii Framework (MVC)
- Data is stored using MySQL, pretty standard Lighttpd/FastCGI stack
- Oh, and we’re based in one of the coolest offices you could imagine to work in (hint: it’s a church!)
A few things we require from you:
- Experience developing PHP applications (object orientation, MVC pattern)
- Experience dealing with MySQL databases and database design
- Experience with Git
- Optional: Experience with Solr, Redis, Lighttpd, FastCGI and Linux in general
You should be located in Hamburg/Germany or willing to move here to join us in our office.
Please send your application (we don’t need all the formal stuff, though a quick introduction and maybe some links to projects you are/were involved in would be nice) to jobs@quote.fm.
<3
Today’s a big day for QUOTE.fm – in fact that understates it a bit because it’s the biggest day for QUOTE.fm since we kicked off the project initially. Today marks the biggest launch in our (young) history and we’ve never been as excited as this before.
Let’s cut right to the chase: QUOTE.fm as you know it is dead, long live QUOTE.fm. We’ve added something new that’s kind of a game changer. From now on, you’re not only able to find great stories on QUOTE.fm, you can also save them for later reading in a distraction-free social reading environment.
Introducing: QUOTE.fm for iPad
That’s where our brand new iPad app comes in. Finally, you can discover, share, recommend and read stories on your iPad. We’ve got to say we’re pretty proud of how it turned out. Recommending stories has never been more fun and you’ll quickly see that reading them is a whole new experience when you do so with our app.
The app is divided into two parts, QUOTE.fm Find and QUOTE.fm Read. Switch between them by dragging the menu from bottom to top. Find lets you discover what your friends are recommending, it’s basically what QUOTE.fm has been on the web until now. Click on one of the quotes to view the article. Swipe over a recommendation from right to left to unveil the menu. Now to the fun part: Tap on “Read later” to save the article to QUOTE.fm Read.
Switch to Read and you’ll see the list of articles you’ve saved for later reading. They’re stored offline, so you’re still able to read them even though you’re not connected to a network. Tap on one of those articles to read it. Don’t like how the text looks? You’re free to change how it’s displayed in any way you want.
But that’s boring. Here’s something more exciting: Swipe from right to left over the text or hit the button in the menu bar to activate Social Reading. This mode offers a whole new reading experience. See who recommended the article you’re reading right now and what they think about it, choose a discussion and dive into it right on spot. Reading just got social.
When you’ve read something, just select the quote you want to share, hit recommend, write a comment, choose a topic, press “Recommend” and you’re done. This works everywhere, whether you’re in Read or in Find.
When you open the QUOTE.fm iPad app while having an URL in your clipboard, we’ll ask you if you want to save the article to Read or if you want to read or recommend it right now. The latter is a nice way to recommend something you’ve read somewhere else.
Introducing: The new website & bookmarklet.
But there’s more. Everything that’s new in the iPad app is now also available on the web. We’ve added Read to the site, so you’re able to enjoy Social Reading in your browser as well. The site even syncs with the iPad app, so you never lose track on where you stopped reading an article.
One more thing: We’ve updated the bookmarklet, it now features two modes:
- Select the quote you want to recommend and click on the bookmarklet to recommend the article you’ve just read.
- Hit the bookmarklet without having selected anything to open the menu that lets you save the article to QUOTE.fm Read, read it directly in our destraction free layout or send it to your kindle (soon).
To add to all that: From now on there are plugins and extensions for all major browsers for all of you who don’t like to use bookmarklets:
We’ve been working on this for the last six months and we really hope you like it. This is the first version of QUOTE.fm Read and the iPad app, and we’re planning to update both as fast as possible. Bug fixes and new features are coming soon.
So… if you feel like it, go check out the app in the App Store. Also, we wouldn’t be mad at all if you decided to rate it (with as many stars as there are, right?) and write a review. <3
QUOTE.fm on the App Store
