Tag Archive for ‘Mobile’

I returned to work from my sabbatical last week and because of some changes to the division I’m a part of, I’m on a new team. I’m still working on Pocket Casts, but instead of the other apps and plugins I was supporting, I’ll also be working on Tumblr support.

But with this new team came new calendars to keep track of.

I like to limit what calendars are synced to my iPhone — I have an Apple shortcut I rely on that becomes too unwieldy if I have too many calendars syncing to my device. But I had a terrible time finding the webpage where you can select what calendars are and aren’t synced.

Luckily, I managed to stumble upon this Stack Exchange thread with the answer. The URL is google.com/calendar/syncselect.

➝ Source: webapps.stackexchange.com

There’s a lot you can do to improve the user interface of mobile web browsers, but I’m not convinced that sticking everything into a toolbar at the bottom of the screen and hiding crucial features is the right way to go.

➝ Source: 9to5google.com

Rob Pugh, writing on Jetpack’s weblog:

Announcing the new Jetpack mobile app, now available for iOS and Android — hooray! This robust app brings all of your favorite essential Jetpack features to your mobile device. Receive important notifications, keep tabs on site activity, restore a backup if necessary, scan for malware, view valuable site stats, and access other Jetpack features you love, anytime and anywhere.

It’s based on the WordPress Mobile app and designed specifically for Jetpack connected sites. I expect a lot of site owners will appreciate the streamlined feature set.

➝ Source: jetpack.com

As someone who’s had the unlimited data plan since the original iPhone’s launch day, I’m very annoyed by this news.

Matt Birchler:

I absolutely think that iOS is the future and desktops are going to be relegated to more and more niche audiences all the time. We’re reaching the point where these “mobile” operating systems are becoming better than traditional PCs at most tasks and for most people. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re damn close and I’m more than happy to move on.

I’ve been using iOS as my primary operating system since I purchased an iPad Air 2 in February. There are still a few tasks that are easier to perform on my MacBook, but the list is getting smaller and smaller. I’m excited about a future where I can do all of my work while tapping away at a piece of glass in my hands.

Google engineer Daniel Bathgate:

However, sometimes a user may tap on a search result on a mobile device and see an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content and prompts the user to install an app. Our analysis shows that it is not a good search experience and can be frustrating for users because they are expecting to see the content of the web page. […]

After November 1, mobile web pages that show an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page will no longer be considered mobile-friendly

I would be a lot more excited about this if I hadn’t already switched to DuckDuckGo.

(Via Pixel Envy.)

I’m not the first to point out the irony here, but this article is published on a website that routinely takes several seconds to load it’s multiple Megabyte webpages. As for the browser vendors, don’t blame them for Vox Media’s poor web development. I understand it can be hard to shrink page size and load time when you have five or more ads per wepage, but I never have problems loading websites that have a less hostile attitude towards their readers.

Adobe plans to discontinue Photoshop Touch on May 28, but will be debuting one or more applications that will replace the soon-to-be axed photo editing software. This video depicts their prototype retouching app effortlessly applying edits to high resolution images. It’s an impressive demo, I just hope that its running on real hardware and not iOS Simulator.