Nic Wise

D3signerd on CALayer shadows A while back I had done a lot of work with CALayer shadows in iOS. Now I know there is a lot of posts on how to add one. There just is not a lot of information on how to

Clearly someone thinks they are a good idea. Embedded in the card is a tiny microchip. When it’s touched to a smartphone, the chip asks the phone to do something. Something you’ve told it to. Perhaps download your portfolio, play music or

The good folks over at Xamarin have posted Frank Krueger's latest seminar, titled Delight Your Users with CoreAnimation. CoreAnimation is the foundation for creating high-performance and whimsical user interfaces, but is often overlooked by app developers. Starting with the high level view controller transitions

Leonie and I went to Berlin this weekend. So far, this is my favourite European city, by a long way. Friendly people, I can still speak enough German to get into "trouble" (ie, I can order something, but if the questions come

One of the new browser features in iOS6 that I'd never noticed before is this litte gem - Smart App Banners: Website or native app? If we have both, now we can join efforts and connect our website with our native app. With Smart

From the "oh no, don't use something like MonoTouch, they take ages to update when Apple releases an update" files: Continuing our long history of delivering same-day updates for device platform upgrades, MonoTouch 6 is available today and includes support for all

Divshot looks very interesting. Drag-and-drop, semantic, responsive, bootstrap based visual designer for those of us who are scared by CSS/HTML. Divshot combines the speed of a drag-and-drop mockup tool and the beauty of hand-coded HTML and CSS. The fact it's based on Bootstrap,

With the release of the iPhone 5 - aka iPhone Longcat Edition - a few people have been asking about how to make MonoTouch apps work with it, and with iOS6. This isn't an exhaustive test, so I may have it wrong, but: MonoTouch

More comment on the HTML5 vrs Native "argument". Today, when someone decides to build a mobile app from HTML, it’s primarily a developer-focused decision and not a user-focused decision. What I mean by that is that often times HTML makes it

I have no idea if this Fast Company Design article is true - because Apple isn't exactly the most chatty company outside their own walls - but I hope it's right, and I hope the anti-skeuomorphic camp wins. What’s skeuomorphism? If you’ve

This looks interesting: Android Design in Action: Transit Apps Appears to be a video podcast type thing on Android design. From Google. Lovely. Also available in not-live flavour. (Hat Tip: Android UI Patterns)

The Xamarin docs team have had a massive docs push, with lots of new content around Cross Platform development, Android and iOS, including recipes. September is now in full swing, and you’ve got homework. The Xamarin Developer Center has added mounds of amazing

I'm sad to say that mobileAgent 1.9 has a bug in it, which may cause you to not be able to download your banking information. This results in a failed sync, and can render the application unusable. NOTE: THIS HAS BEEN RESOLVED, THANKS

Speaking of Android UI Patterns, they have a good article up on creating custom Android styles. At first I want to tell you that I am not a graphical designer and I don't poses the skills to create beautiful UIs. This guide is to

Mark Allison has a nice series of posts on using and customising the Android ActionBar, including ActionBarSherlock, which was ported (wrapped?) to Mono for Android recently. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Makes for a good read of the basics

Scott Jensen has released a beautiful iBook on the basics of iPhone UI design. This is not a pixel-pushing, put-the-gradient-here book, it's all about the fundamentals of design, getting the flow and the workings right. From creating icons to providing user support, iPhone Blueprints

Inspired by Dave Addey's post on using font's in your iOS app - and having a general love of the Google Web Font library - I thought "so, how do I do this in MonoTouch?" Turn out, using a custom font in

Today, I'm happy to announce that mobileAgent 1.9 is available in the AppStore. It has taken me a lot longer to finish this version than I was hoping or expecting, but in the end, I think it's a more stable, more useful version

Apple announced today that they are opening up the Volume Purchase Plan and Custom B2B apps for companies outside of the US. Whether you’re providing apps to ten employees or ten thousand, the Volume Purchase Programme makes it simple to find, buy and

Nick Arnott at Neglected Potential has a great Mind Map up showing all the different combinations for iOS testing I had previously posted about a mind map for getting started with mobile testing that I had come across on the Ministry of Testing website.

Android has long been the poor cousin from a design perspective. The older versions - ok, even the "most popular current version" (2.2) - looked dated, inconsistent and clunky against even the oldest iOS and Windows Phone 7 designs. That's not

So, the NZ Herald is going paywall. Eventually. Appearing on Media3, Mr Currie was asked about rumours that nzherald.co.nz content would be put behind a paywall next year. "I think see it as inevitable," the editor told host Russell Brown.

Craig Dunn, of the Xamarin docs team, has a post up about using the new Microsoft Azure Mobile Services from MonoTouch. Azure Mobile Services consist of an underlying REST API, so it didn't take long for someone (Chris Risner :-) to put a simple

Bytepie announced today that they are stopping the development of iAgent, which was a (competing) client for FreeAgent. Sadly, the journey for us has come to an end. We love iAgent, we really do, and it wasn't the easiest decision to make, but it's

Chris Downer from Realmac Software down in Brighton has a great post about his retina design workflow. When the Retina MacBook Pro was announced, I was excited that one of my favourite hardware features from iOS had made its way onto the desktop, but