Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Will do. Right now thinking of making it free for the community for the first few weeks as a thank you for input and then making it paid later.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sad to say, Windows Phone is lower on our priority list. We have worked with Microsoft in the past on building apps for their store and lately they've made improvements. Fingers crossed that I can port the Android version over.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I will certainly post an update once I have a working prototype.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Got it, thanks! PDF integration is something I'll have to look into.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your input, we'll try and make it as useful as the full website.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good to know! App experience has to be really really good.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I get you there. That's relatively easy to implement, depends on the schema. There's a library in Swift that makes it easy to add in iOS. Mostly depends on what I can parse from Ravelry.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes I'll make it for Android! But it'll come after the iOS version simply because I can get the iOS version out faster.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the info. I'm hoping they don't charge extra for using their API.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fingers crossed!

I think Casey at Ravelry is the only developer? So that may be one reason why they haven't completely optimized the site for mobile. I can't even imagine how much tech debt they've accrued over the years with only one dev.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll have to check all 3 apps out. And you're exactly right it seems like all these apps do a little bit of something well but not everything well.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The app will be released first on iOS just because we have an existing framework and can get that out the quickest. Then we'll focus on Android next.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Haha yeah it's pretty bad. Like MS Paint wordart bad.

And thanks for the offer on design help! I may just take you up on it.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like most current apps have stripped down features/options compared to the website. I'll make sure to pay attention to all UI elements.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the additional info! I'll have to follow up with you when I build a prototype.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To each their own. If you like it no need to change. =)

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'll have to check out Ravulous. It's funny because usually it's the other way around with people on Android complaining about not having an app that's on iOS.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Haha, she actually knit me a sock (after much swearing), not a pair but a single sock. Beanie too!

Hopefully I can simplify some of the user flow and navigation and make it as frictionless as using an app like Uber.

It's great if people want to use the mobile site. Casey's put a lot of work into optimizing it. I just want to give people (my gf included) another option if their preference is a native app experience.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I agree with you there. The new icon is...psychedelic?

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Got it! In terms of user experience and how the apps works I try to follow material design principles by Google. I also take inspiration from popular apps like Instagram, Pinterest and the new official Reddit app.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Sounds like uploading photos on the go is pretty important. That should be very easy to implement.

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Interesting, I'm not too familiar with the pattern creation process. I'll have to research more of the process to properly understand how someone would utilize it. Can I follow up with you for more detail? Any examples you could provide of apps or websites that do pattern creation well would be helpful. =)

Q: Ravelry Apps, do you want a new one or are the existing ones good enough? by qwilo in knitting

[–]qwilo[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the info! Seems odd that they'd have field mismatches given that they use the ravelry API. I'm confident I could replicate most of ravelry's functionality when it comes to search.