It’s been nearly 8 months now since v2.2 of the Daily Maui Photo App was released, and after a ton of other projects since then, it’s time to get working on v2.3.
With that said, I’m listing out my current goals for the next version of the App and targeting a mid-summer release for the following updates and new feature:
- Improved support for the iPhone 5 screen size,
- Upgraded support for native Facebook integration (iOS 6+ only),
- Ability to mark images as favorites to view later,
- Support for opening photos in the App directly from Twitter Cards,
- Performance improvements for photo downloads and data updates,
- Integration support with my other Maui Apps.
I’d say that’s a pretty healthy list for a minor feature release, and it builds off of a lot of what I’ve learned while working on my last two Apps since August.
Comments, Mabye
One thing I’ve wanted to do for awhile now, but might not make it into this release, is the ability to post and read comments about each photo.
Currently on the website, I have a Facebook Comments widget that isn’t getting as much Aloha as it used to.
One option I might be looking at is how to incorporate those Comment boxes from within my App as well – that or linking to the comment threads on the posts that are syndicated to the Facebook page as well.
It never did sit well with me that there are essentially two sets of threads, one on my website and one on Facebook (despite both being powered by Facebook).
I’m sure Facebook has a reason why they must be separate, but I never bothered to look deeper.
Alternative to Facebook Comments
One other Maui App idea I’ve been tinkering would potentially use WordPress posts as source for comments, utilizing an API wrapper around the WordPress XML-RPC support.
It still needs to be proofed out, but it’s technically feasible. And it eliminates the Facebook requirement, wouldn’t require a login, and would hopefully be able to take advantage of the WordPress Akismet spam filtering, too.
More on that in a future post, I suppose
Oh, And New Photos…Finally
I probably should have put this at the top of the post.
Right now, there are about 425 photos in the Daily Maui Photo rotation. Given that the site has been up for about 4 years now, and the App for 2, there are folks that have been around long enough to repeat photos.
With all the other projects I’ve been working on, I’m starting to finally get through more and more photos from our previous trips, and getting things better organized to dive in and adding/replacing photos in the Daily Maui Photo rotation.
Hopefully that helps keep people interested longer, but if you’re in the same boat as me, any image of Maui sparks your own personal memories and then you’re mentally back on the sand before you know it.
Stay Tuned
As usual, stay tuned here for updates, and if you’re looking for a single source of all my Maui related work, check out the News page at my Maui Portfolio site.
Thanks,
– Kris
