Innovative iPhone Apps GUI (Part 1)

Hi Guys,
Today I am going to talk about the innovative GUI designed by some of the coolest iPhone Apps. I have taken into consideration the way in which the information has been represented in this applications considering the screen size of iphone. The applications that I am talking about are all free apps yet so innovative so you can download and try them (Especially for Developers trying to make innovative GUIs).

The apps that we are going to talk about are:

1) E*Trade Mobile Pro

2) DayLite Touch

3) Capsuleer

4) USA Today

As we go on will add a few more to this list but for this post I am going to talk about these 4 apps that I found has a very innovative and cool GUI.

So lets begin with the E*Trade App:

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4

This app is amazing. It is basically meant for E*Trade users. But there are a few screens which you can view without logging to the application. The top custom designed menu in the application is an amazing way to show case the things. (A comment for iphone Developers). The tables in the Market Section (Figure 3) and Protfolio Section (Figure 4) shows a lot of statistics and data. I liked the way they have customized the behaviour of the native iPhone TableView. The view in the Trading Screen (Figure 1) is a perfect example for a customView. A very neatly desinged way to display data at the same time taking into consideration screen size.
I would give a 85 on a scale of 100 for this awesomely designed GUI.

Next in the list is DayLite Touch:

This app is an award winner application. If you look at the pictures above it clearly justifies the reason for it. If i talk about the GUI this application is totally a reverse of the E*Trade Application. The GUI is mainly designed the using the components provided in the iphone SDK. It has customization but not to a very high level which helps in maintaining the simplicity.

Oops I almost forgot to mention what this application is all about. This app is an extension to the DayLite Business Suite available for MAC Users. Daylite Touch helps their customers manage their business and team, keeping everyone on the same page and helping them stay on track and deliver on time.

The best part of the GUI is the Day View Calendar. In my opinion it is better than iCal. It has multitouch feature in it. So whenever you want to schedule an event using a Day View you just have to hold the screen with one of your fingers and drag your another finger from the start time to the end time of the event. A dynamic bubble kind of view be drawn on the screen which will display the event you want to schedule. Based on the type of the event it will have a specific color in the day View. Rest all screens are also neatly designed but the calendar view was the best one I found.
A clear 76 out of 100 for this Winner of a 2009 Macworld Best of Show award.

The next 2 applications are going to be in the Part 2 of this article. So just wait and watch.

Extreme Programming (XP) – A software Engineering approach

Hi guys today we are going to talk about XP.
Oh Sorry, this is not another Microsoft documentation on how Windows XP works.

By XP I mean Xtreme Programming. This terminology was introduced by Kent Beck a software engineer by profession and creator of Extreme Programming. XP is test driven Software Engineering approach.

Before getting into details of the Xtreme Programming let us understand what is the usual methodology used in most software projects:

1) Software Requirements and Specification

2) Creating a Design of Project

3) Coding (this is the where developers come into play)

4) Testing of project

5) Deployment

6) Maintenance and Rework

This 6 step process looks very cool but as we go on with this article i will tell you what are the pros and cons of this approach.

The above approach is called WaterFall Model in the world of Software Engineering. This is a very closed model. By closed I mean it does not have  space for flexibility.

I will demonstrate this by a real life scenario:

Suppose a very renowned Hotel like, Mariott  approaches an IT Company for developing a system for managing its Reservations for guest. The IT guys strictly follow the aforementioned steps. So after developing the design they start coding. The coding is done exactly as mentioned in the specifications and as per the design created by the team leads.

The developers are very happy with their work. Even the team leads are planning for a party. Everybody in the project team are happy with the way the project is progressing. So after having few sleepless nights and a few night outs at weekends, the developers finally finish their coding and the project is submitted to testers for testing.

The testers also sincerely perform the tests, trying to find out bugs in the project. All of sudden manager at  Mariott  calls the team lead and tells  him that he has come up with a new idea and would like to discuss about it.

There is a meeting between the manager and team lead and he tells him how excited he is about the new idea and that he wants to implement it in the Reservation System. The team lead does not want to discourage his client. But since the project is almost accomplished based on the previous specification he is now in a big trouble to adjust this new requirement in the project.

In this scenario, the project has reached testing phase which is the 4th Step and now there is a change in the requirement. All of sudden everybody in the company are shattered by this change.

They start cursing client and the team lead. But this situation would not have arisen if these people had used Iterative Development approach/ Xtreme Programming.

There were many projects failing because of continuously changing requirements of clients. Thanks to people like Kent Beck who gifted the idea of Xtreme Programming to the software Engineering world. So what is special about it. Hmm lets analyse it:

1) Use Stories (Specification by Client)

2) Testing

3) Coding

4) Design (Rework)

These are the steps followed in XP.

Hmm i know the immediate question would be how is this possible? How can Testing be done before coding? How can Design be at the end of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)? This is ridiculous.

I know the questions are quite obvious but I will elaborate more on how these technique is implemented in my next post. Hope you guys enjoyed this post. Please give your feedback and comments.

Bye for now and thank you for reading. Happy Coding.

Hello Everybody

Welcome to maulikadhia.wordpress.com. This is my first blog. In the next few days from now I will be posting tutorials related to programming in ASP.net,java,objective c,Iphone as well as I will be posting about the latest technology news.

Bye for now and hope you guys would keep on visiting my blog.
Thank you.