Simon Willison's Weblog: ipad

What design techniques does Apple use in the introduction page of iPad Air?

2013-10-29T13:13:00+00:00

My answer to What design techniques does Apple use in the introduction page of iPad Air? on Quora

Apple used the same technique on their Apple - Mac Pro page. I first saw this trick used on the BeerCamp at SXSW 2011 page.

It's not that hard to achieve - the basic principle is to attach a JavaScript event handler to the onscroll event.

There are even a bunch of open source libraries to help you achieve this kind of effect, such as scrollorama and skrollr.

Tags: apple, design, html5, ipad, web-development, quora, frontend

Why didn't Apple release a gold (champagne) iPad?

2013-10-27T17:50:00+00:00

My answer to Why didn't Apple release a gold (champagne) iPad? on Quora

According to John Gruber: http://daringfireball.net/2013/1...

One other thing the 5S offers that the new iPads do not: a gold option. My understanding is that they tried it, and it just didn’t look good bigger. It works on the iPhone because the iPhone is so much smaller — more like jewelry.

Tags: apple, ipad, john-gruber, quora

Does the Quora iOS app allow one to give "Thanks?"

2013-01-31T12:21:00+00:00

My answer to Does the Quora iOS app allow one to give "Thanks?" on Quora

I'd really like to be able to do this - could there be room for it in the little cog menu, next to "promote"?

Tags: ipad, iphone, quora, ios

Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn't They Just Use HTML 5?

2010-05-28T12:13:00+00:00

Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn't They Just Use HTML 5?

A scathing critique of the new Wired iPad app, which weighs in at 500MB per issue due to storing every single page as two static PNG images—one for landscape and one for portrait mode. “The only real differentiation between the Wired application and a multimedia CD-ROM is the delivery mechanism: you download it via the App Store versus buying a CD-ROM”.

Tags: html5, ipad, wired, recovered, cdrom, multimedia

ZOMBO.com in HTML5

2010-05-20T15:26:00+00:00

ZOMBO.com in HTML5

Uses SVG (scripted by JavaScript) and the audio element. Finally, Zombo.com comes to the iPad.

Tags: audio, html5, ipad, svg, recovered, zombo, zombocom

Quoting Rafe Colburn

2010-05-05T12:10:00+00:00

The crisis Flash now faces is that Apple has made it clear that Flash will no longer be ubiquitous, as it won’t exist on the iPhone platform, thus turning “runs everywhere” into “runs almost everywhere.” As Web developers know, “runs almost everywhere” is a recipe for doing everything at least twice.

— Rafe Colburn

Tags: adobe, apple, flash, ipad, iphone, rafe-colburn, recovered, iphoneos

Quoting Louis Gerbarg

2010-04-12T17:24:27+00:00

Imagine if 10% of the apps on iPhone came from Flash. If that was the case, then ensuring Flash didn’t break release to release would be a big deal, much bigger than any other compatibility issues. [...] Letting any of these secondary runtimes develop a significant base of applications in the store risks putting Apple in a position where the company that controls that runtime can cause delays in Apple’s release schedule, or worse, demand specific engineering decisions from Apple, under the threat of withholding the information necessary to keep their runtime working.

— Louis Gerbarg

Tags: apple, flash, ipad, iphone, louisgerbarg

Popular Science+

2010-04-12T13:06:20+00:00

Popular Science+

Matt Webb’s write-up of the Mag+ project, the platform behind the highly praised Popular Science+ iPad application.

Tags: berg, design, ipad, magplus, matt-webb

Flash CS5 will export to HTML5 Canvas

2010-04-11T18:33:01+00:00

Flash CS5 will export to HTML5 Canvas

This looks pretty awesome—Illustrator CS5 and Flash CS5 can export to a new “FXG” format, and Adobe are providing a JavaScript library to load that format via Ajax and render the contents (including Flash animations) in a canvas element. Could be great for displaying newspaper infographics on the iPad.

Tags: adobe, canvas, flash, fxg, html5, illustrator, ipad, iphone

Quoting Jason L. Baptiste

2010-03-02T09:36:32+00:00

I'm not worried about guys like us. There will always be machines for us (powerful, complex, etc.). Why? Because if for some magical reason there wasn't all of a sudden, we're the type that would just make one.

— Jason L. Baptiste

Tags: ipad

Who Can Do Something About Those Blue Boxes?

2010-01-31T12:05:23+00:00

Who Can Do Something About Those Blue Boxes?

John Gruber makes the case for the fading significance of Flash, brought about by Apple’s point-blank refusal to support it on the iPhone or iPad. “Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There’s a big difference between “everywhere” and “almost everywhere”.”

Tags: adobe, apple, flash, ipad, iphone, john-gruber

Why the iPad may be just what we need for Digital Inclusion

2010-01-28T21:03:18+00:00

Why the iPad may be just what we need for Digital Inclusion

Chris Thorpe: “It may not be a Jesus phone, a Moses tablet or something that lives up to hype and hyperbole, but if it does something for the digital inclusion agenda it might live up to Steve Jobs saying it’s the most important thing he’s ever done.”

Tags: apple, chris-thorpe, inclusion, ipad, steve-jobs

Quoting Rafe Colburn

2010-01-28T09:54:56+00:00

If Apple is really successful, it’s likely that other companies will be more emboldened to forsake openness as well. The catch is that customers won’t accept the sudden closing of a previously open platform, that’s one of the reasons Palladium failed. But Apple has shown that users will accept most anything in an entirely new platform as long as it offers users the experience they want.

— Rafe Colburn

Tags: apple, ipad, open, palladium, rafe-colburn