Browsy 1.2 goes above and beyond your iPhone with a ton of new features.

Here’s everything about the new features:

New Views

The Reading View

Last year, right after the release of Browsy 1.0, Marky, the API originally created by Brett Terpstra to Markdownify the web, was moved here to Sl’s Repository Ltd. I announced this move and promised some big improvements to Marky with the release of Browsy 1.1, and with Browsy 1.2 I’m proud to reveal the new Reading View, powered by Marky.
The Reading View allows you to read all of your favorite websites in a clean layout without any ads, menus or other content. Something that services like Pocket and Instapaper have been doing for years. But why read later when you can read now? Use the new Reading View or the Marky website, to read and share your favorite websites comfortably wherever and whenever you want, with different fonts and an optional dark mode.
You can also use the URL Scheme to open a URL in the reading view immediately, using browsy://?readq=(Your URL or Search Term).
You can dismiss the view with a tap on the X button or with a swipe from the top.

The Tabs View

Browsy now has support for multiple tabs. I don’t really know what else can be said about Tabs, but I worked a lot on this feature and I hope you’ll like it.

The Notes View

The New Notes View allows you to write quick thoughts, ideas and remarks you have while watching videos, reading and browsing and then allows you send that text to other apps.
The Notes view also includes an extra keyboard row that allows you to move the cursor with a swipe, select text with a two-finger swipe and move to the start or the end of the view with a double tap with two fingers on the edges of the row.
To hide the buttons on the Notes view, you can swipe right with 3 fingers. You can also dismiss the view with a swipe from the top if you hide the Close button.

New Settings

Disable Cache

From the start, Browsy was designed with Privacy in mind. Previously, due to the way Apple’s WKWebView is built, cookies and other website data were cached while using Browsy, but were never accesible. Now with the new Disable Cache feature, you can disable the caching of this data for each tab.
With Disable Cache enabled, no website data will be cached and you’ll be logged out of any website you log into.
Disable Cache is enabled per tab, meaning you can have one tab with the cache enabled and another with it disabled, enabling Disable Cache is not universal and does not change any tabs you already had open.

Recent Sites

Some users of Browsy asked for a way to make visiting frequently used sites quicker, so I thought how can I make it happen while keeping the users privacy, and the answer is Recent Sites.

It’s completely optional and works by matching your Omnibar input with the last 100 websites you visited.

The Feedback Center

With Browsy 1.2, I wanted to create a way to allow users of the app to have a quick way to contact me and share feedback or send in support. Users could contact me via Email and Twitter before but the new Feedback Center, powered by Apptentive makes it more easier and simpler. The Feedback Center is just another way to get in touch, you can still use Twitter or Email if you would like.

Support for the latest and greatest

iOS 9 brought with it a lot of great new features. And now, Browsy supports each and every one of them. Here’s the description of each of the new features taken from the Changelog.

• The font used by the app has been changed to San Francisco, the new system font on iOS 9.
• The app has been optimized for use with iOS 9’s iPad Multitasking features, you can now Slide Over Browsy for a quick browse, Use Browsy alongside another app with Split View and continue watching your video from Browsy in other apps with Picture in Picture.
• Keyboard Shortcuts for every view, available with iOS 9. Long press the Command key on your keyboard to view all of the available shortcuts for the view you are in.
• Spotlight Search - Search your Notes, Bookmarks and Recent Sites from your Home Screen on iOS 9.
• 3D Touch - Open the Notes View, Bookmarks view, Start a search or visit a website from your clipboard straight from your Home Screen on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, or use Peek and Pop to preview sites in the main view and the Bookmarks view.

While introduced with iOS 8, Browsy didn’t have support for Handoff, but the wrong has been righted and now you can seamlessly move your browsing session between your iPhone, iPad and Mac.

More Improvements

Browsy’s main web view, the heart of the browsing experience with Browsy received a few new improvements.
Now you can access websites that use authentication, view JavaScript dialogs, print websites, and also have a completely fullscreen experience by hiding every button (including the More button) with a 2 finger swipe. And when you encounter an iTunes link throughout the app, you will now be presented with a convenient in-app view that you can easily dismiss, instead of being sent to the iTunes or App Store app.
Also, Markdown Syntax in Markdownify is now highlighted with Prism and you can launch the app and go to the Bookmarks, Notes, Tabs or Settings directly using the new browsy://?view=(View Name) URL Scheme.

One More Thing…

The last new feature of Browsy is… Browsy for Apple Watch!

You can use the Watch app to remote control the iPhone app from your Watch, view your Bookmarks, or do a quick search online. You can also have the Watch speak your search results to you through your iPhone and use Handoff and the Force Touch menu to move between the Watch and your iPhone (Handoff also works with your iPad or Mac).

A use case that a little surprised me at first is with people using Browsy with an Apple TV for presentations or “kiosk mode”. And I think the new Remote feature will be perfect for that.

What’s Next?

Now with Browsy 1.2 released, I plan on releasing some other things I have been working on this year and also another app that is coming soon.
My plans for Browsy 1.3 currently include some smaller additions to the app, including Downloads support, but we’ll see.
To help support the future of Browsy, I removed the In-App Purchases and made the app a paid app at 3.99$.
I really hope you’ll enjoy Browsy 1.2, the Marky website and everything else I got in store.

You can download Browsy from the App Store for 3.99$ here. Or check the full changelog for the app here.

If you download Browsy this week (May 16–23), 20% of your purchase will be donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

And as always, if you require assistance, have questions, ideas, suggestions, feedback or something to say about Browsy or anything on the website, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)

Browsy 1.1 is filled with a lot of new features and improvements that make the app so much better and more enjoyable. With the update, the app is no longer a nice addition to Safari, but a viable alternative. Like Safari, but without the Chrome.

Can’t wait to hear about all the new features? Then let’s dive right in :)

Safe and Sound

With Browsy 1.1, The app’s address bar has been bitten by a radioactive duck and is now known as Omnibar, savior of the web! With supersenses that allow it to search the web for search terms (with DuckDuckGo) and mind control to allow him to search inside other websites without going to those websites first (with DuckDuckGo !bangs).

I’m the translations manager for the Hebrew language in DuckDuckGo and their privacy first policy is a perfect fit for Browsy.

With great power, comes great responsibility. To keep your browsing 100% safe and secure, 1Password is now fully integrated into Browsy and allows you to fill in your passwords across the web and also create strong new passwords with just 2 taps, It’s Incredible. The 1Password extension is available in the Share button if you have 1Password installed.

Browsy’s URL Scheme has also been updated to use the new Omnibar, and by using this scheme:
browsy://?q=<Your URL or Search Term> you can open websites or search the web from everywhere. Here’s a Workflow app workflow you can use as either an Action Extension or a standalone workflow/button to use the URL Scheme from everywhere. Get it here.

New Pinboard Bookmarks View

As I promised when I announced Browsy 1.0, Version 1.1 includes a new Pinboard Bookmarks view. Enter your username and API token and Browsy will show you all of your latest Pinboard bookmarks. Currently the Pinboard view is only showing a list of bookmarks, but Search and tags are planned for a future release.

Keep Screen Awake

Browsy 1.1 includes a new “Keep Screen Awake” setting that prevents the screen from closing while using the app. This feature is perfect when you want to work on your Mac or iPad and keep Browsy open on your iPhone for searching something quickly, or if you are reading something at night and iOS keeps dimming or closing the screen for you in the middle. It’s been especially useful for me during the WWDC keynote at the beginning of the month. I couldn’t attend the conference physically, so I had the live stream open on my Mac and Browsy on the iPhone and iPad for keeping up with Apple’s news stream and tech websites live commentary.

Marky

Browsy’s unique Markdownify extension is an invaluable tool for anyone writing with Markdown on iOS. In Version 1.0, Markdownify was using heckyesmarkdown.com to turn webpages into Markdown. I worked closely with Brett Terpstra, the amazing guy that created Heck Yes Markdown ¹, and I’m proud to announce that Marky, the API powering heckyesmarkdown.com is now residing at Sl’s Repository Ltd. I’ve been working on improving Marky and making it useful for more than just Markdown writing, so stay tuned :)

In-App Purchases

Another promise I made on the 1.0 announcement, Browsy 1.1 includes new In-App Purchases that allow users that love Browsy to leave a Nice (0.99$), Great (2.99$) or Incredible (4.99$) tip and support Browsy’s future.

All income from the new In-App Purchases during the 1.1 release week (June 28 - July 4) will be donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at Memphis. St. Jude are leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

More Buttons

With the new bookmarks button, I needed to find a way to maintain the fullscreen premise of Browsy. After trying a few solutions, I created Browsy’s new “More” button, a button that controls the visibility of all buttons (currently just the Share and Bookmarks buttons, with more to come), with a tap. The “More” button can also be controlled, hidden or shown in the Settings view.

I really hope you enjoy all of the latest additions to Browsy :)

You can download Browsy from the App Store for free here.

And as always, if you require assistance, have questions, ideas, suggestions, feedback or something to say about Browsy or anything on the website, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)

“It’s been a while since I posted on the site, and it’s time to reveal what I have been working on.”

-Brand New, June 30, 2013

“For Year 3, I hope to have more time to write, develop and improve my existing creations. I haven’t had much time lately, but I have big plans for Dropit and the site, and I also got a few other things in the works. I hope you will like all of these new things coming soon and thank you for being there and enjoying the site and my other creations :)”

-2.0, February 20, 2014

So I deleted the file for this post and thought: “How would I make this post different, so that you, my kind readers, read it and will be able to truly see my intentions for 2015?”
The Answer: by focusing not only on the what, and how to improve - sharing more the why and the background that led to it.

So to make it clear, this post is going to be about me looking back (both at Sl’s Repository and offline) at 2014, the ups, the downs, what I liked, what I didn’t, what I plan for 2015 and how I intend to really make it happen.

The Why

As I revealed on my interview for The Sweet Setup, my day job ¹ used to be as a Network Technician in an underground location where my iPhone and iPad don’t have reception most the time, and my development/writing time was usually over the weekends. I was interviewed at the end of June, and the interview was published on September 8.

I say “was” because on July, I was moved from my previous underground location to a different location which was closer to my home, above ground but still without reception.

Underground

I arrived underground on September 2013, where I met some of the most amazing people, who became like a family to me.
Some were older, some were younger but through my year, I found myself.
As Casey Liss wrote in his post “Falling in Love with Virginia”:

"This trip changed everything for me. It allowed me to leave behind any preconceptions of Virginia. The trip showed me what Virginia really is: not only a truly magnificent part of the country, but also my home.

Humans are social creatures. We value being connected. That’s why we stare at our phones all the time; always seeking yet another connection. It’s only when we disconnect from everyone else that we can really connect with ourselves."

Casey also mentions in his post how he considers himself a child of the northeast, and how he planned to “return to where he belongs - the northeast” after a few years.
My home is in the north of Israel and my workplace was in the southern center, 2–3 hours away ². With every commute there, I fell in love with the place and the people. I connected with myself, even today, I feel like home when I’m visiting my friends underground, not just when I’m at my actual home.

My iOS Setup Underground

I couldn’t bring my Mac to work, so I brought my iPad to work with me, with a special SIM that had reception, then when my iPad stopped reading the SIM, I bought a ZTE MF60 Router, and a SIM adapter to be connected underground.
I didn’t have a lot of time, so I used my iPad to mainly reading RSS and Twitter, so when I get home, I will get right into writing and developing my apps.
Editorial and Drafts were also the apps I used extensively, for anything text related (even starting to write some posts if I had the time).
Even when I got home, I got used to the iPad-only setup, inspired by Federico Viticci who recently shared his review of 3 years of the iPad as his main computer. I used my Mac only for Developing apps and modifying the site’s HTML and CSS. Also like Federico, I don’t work from my desk, I work on the living room sofa - It’s comfy and feels free.

The Move

On July 2014, despite efforts by me, my superior and his superior, due to medical concerns I was moved closer to my home.
While in a car the commute to the new place was just a 20 minutes drive, with public transportation, It could take more than 2 hours, which is insane.
The new place has zero work, it is a day job ³ and I really don’t enjoy my time there. After getting home I was always exhausted, so I had zero motivation to do anything at first. By anything I mean writing, developing apps, reading Twitter/RSS - literally anything. I started playing World of Warcraft again ⁴ to spend my time. I love the amount of detail Blizzard puts into the game and it’s lore, I like to refer to them as the Apple of games ⁵. They also published a documentary that gives a “behind the scenes” look into the game and it’s history as part of World of Warcraft’s 10 year anniversary.

The Change

Since moving, I keep fighting to return to my previous workplace and I also visit there whenever I’m around the area.
At the beginning of December, I was there for a whole week again,
But on my way there, my iPhone 5s took a dive into the toilet.
Away from home for the week, I was completely disconnected for a week.
When I got home I sent the phone to a lab after putting it in rice for the entire week. I started using an Android replacement phone, but being away from my iPhone, away from all the apps I use everyday, I started missing it all.
After 2 weeks I was told my iPhone can’t be repaired. While waiting for the iPhone 6 stock to refill ⁶, I redesigned the website and started working on the Mac again. After 3 weeks with the Android phone I got my new Space Gray 64GB iPhone 6.

The iPhone 6

The iPhone 6 surprisingly felt like a bigger upgrade than I expected over the 5s. I’m not sure if it’s because of the 3 weeks of using an Android phone, or the bigger and better screen, but it felt like a big change.
I didn’t like the idea of bigger iPhone screens, and the iPhone 6 does sometimes feels less comfortable to hold, but after getting used to the new size (it took me about 2 weeks), there’s no way for me to go back to the smaller size. And lastly, the battery is amazing. When I got my 5s I was very happy with it’s battery, but the 6 is better and lasts even more.

2014 in Sl’s Repository

What I Did

At first, when I saw the stats for 2014, I was surprised that 2014 was my most successful year yet.
But after looking back into each month, I understood why.
I think I did I fulfil my promise from last year (quoted above), In the first half of the year I did bring updates to Dropit, Rodeo Blue, SOS Weather ⁷, Version 2.0 of the Site and also published a lot of great articles, I’m especially proud of the Unread review.

What I Didn’t

While I like what I did on the first half of the year, I’m disappointed I didn’t make anything new in the second half of the year.
I’m going to make sure it won’t happen again.

2015

Shortly after my iPhone 6 upgrade, I started writing the first draft of this post.
I also kept learning and experimenting with Swift ⁸.
For 2015, Year 4 of Sl’s Repository, I will try my best to have a lot of great content available on the site alongside new Apps and creations I’m currently working on.
To make sure it does happen, I upgraded my Mac to a 13" Retina Macbook Pro ⁹.
My iPad is also showing signs of age, in a non-usable level. It’s running iOS 8.1 and is prone to crashing, so I don’t even try. I wanna upgrade it too, but buying my new iPhone 6 and my new Mac is kind of heavy on my bank account, so I’ll make the upgrade in a few months, maybe alongside the Apple Watch :)
I’m going to make a longer review of my Mac and going back to using it for everything after my iPad-only setup, but there’s one thing I wanna share right now - I’m missing Editorial. It’s irreplaceable. I’m currently writing this on Byword on my Mac, but I am missing all of my Editorial workflows. Especially the Post to WordPress workflow, as I intend to publish this by copying and pasting to the WordPress Dashboard ¹⁰.
I hope you’ll enjoy everything I got in store for this year :)

As always, If you have questions/ideas/suggestions/something to say about this post or anything else on the site, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)

New

SOS Weather

Around the end of February, Dr. Drang published a Pythonista script to check the weather from Weather Underground. Like me, the good doctor didn’t have a weather app he really enjoyed using. I have tried Check The Weather by David Smith, Today Weather by Savvy Apps, and also Perfect Weather by Contrast - but none of them really stuck with me. I also don’t check the weather so much so I gave up trying to found one and checked the Notification Center’s Today view when I wanted to know the weather. What I like about the Today view is that it’s minimal. I am not overblown by pictures and information I don’t need just “the weather now is X, the current temperature is Y, and the maximum temperature for today will be Z”. Sometimes there’s also a “Tonight is gonna be cold with temperatures of X” or “chance of rain today”. That’s all I really need to know. But what if I want to plan ahead? If I want to know what the weather will be like tomorrow or in a few days?
That’s where SOS Weather comes in. A few after the Pythonista script, Dr. Drang published a new version of the script without Pythonista. This script acts as a CGI script in your server and when launched, fetches your current location and shows you the weather. I like the script for it’s simple and minimal approach and it’s details - Unlike the Today view, the script includes more information like sunlightand hourly forecasts. It also includes a daily forecast for the next 3 days.
But since I don’t care about wind speed and pressure, and because I’m not in the United States I don’t a have radar map for my location I have modified the script to use satellite maps, chance of rain data, humidity and more forecasts (for the next 10 days instead of 3). I have also made the script into a web app you can add to your home screen, changed the styling with a different font and also made a Hebrew translation to the script. I called it SOS Weather - SOS stands for Swimsuit or Sweater? and you can use it with your own server by downloading it here. (The Hebrew version is here.) I also made versions for Pythonista (English and Hebrew).

The Changelog

All the release notes for all of my products (apps, scripts, extensions or anything else ) will now appear on the Changelog available from the Products Page.

Rodeo Blue

I have updated Rodeo Blue with the buttons it was missing and it will now also automatically update itself if I release a new update. It’s available here on Github.

Dropit

In September, I released Dropit, a Python script that uses Dropbox to allow you to listen to your music anyway you want, anywhere you are. In the release announcement, I wrote on my plans for the future of it. I wrote “Ability to trigger the script from your iOS Device” as one of the features I’m thinking of and on December, with Dropit 1.1 I have made the script run periodically so you have to rerun it, thus, a way to trigger the script from your device is no longer needed.

Dropit 1.2

Dropit 1.2, released in March, comes with the automatic running of the script improved ¹ and scripts that you can configure as Startup services, so Dropit will start running after you start your computer. So all you have to do now is just add songs to the folder (even from your iOS Device with an app like Documents by Readdle, and the feed will be refreshed automatically.

Dropit 1.3

This week, I found out that Dropbox is now requiring a Dropbox Pro account (9.99$/month for 100GB of space) to enable your Public folder. If you already had a Public folder, it won’t go away, but new users that want to use the Public folder can’t enable it without upgrading their account. Since the script is offered to you for free, it doesn’t make sense to make it work with Dropbox only. So in Dropit 1.3 I updated the script and you can now use it on any service that allows public sharing, for example Google Drive or Amazon S3. And if cloud services aren’t your thing, you can use it with your FTP or WebDAV server. All you have to do is put your folder’s link ² in the settings file. If you want to keep using Dropbox, replace the public folder token with the full public folder link. Get the update here.

And that’s it for now. I hope I will have more time to write in the coming months and I hope you will enjoy all of these new updates. As always, if you have anything you would like to say, I’m here for you and you can feel free to contact me.

If you have questions/ideas/suggestions/something to say about anything on the website, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)

The Experience

Shawn Blanc shared his thoughts about the design in his review of Unread:

“Unread is somewhat different than any other app I’ve used before. And yet it’s also quite familiar. It has all the expected features – you can send an article to Instapaper or share it on Twitter or text message it to your friends – and yet they feel unexpected. The share sheet slides in from the right-hand side, and feels akin to the bouncy and playful animations of Tweetbot 3. … …I can’t put my finger on precisely what it is, but if I had to explain it in one word then I’d say Unread is peaceful. … …The app has nearly both feet in iOS 7, but there is still a toe or two in iOS 6. There are little things – such as the design of the status bar at the top of the screen – that still feel reminiscent of iOS designs from yesteryear. But don’t read that as a dig against the app’s design… The status bar doesn’t look like it belongs in the past, but it does have a slight nostalgic feel to it that is reminiscent of the more skeumorphic, graphics-heavy iOS designs of old. I am a fan of the status bar.”

And I totally agree with his sentiment. Using Unread and reading with it provides a soothing distraction-free experience. It’s expected and unexpected at the same time.

Jared, in the app’s Philosophy card (also available in the app’s website) wrote:

“Most RSS apps are patterned after email. Noisy parades of dots, dates, and tags… …overflowing inboxes instead of stately tables of contents. Toolbars bristling with options obscure the text. Putting it bluntly, using these apps feels like work. I’m a paper subscriber of The New Yorker magazine. I like to read it in a comfortable chair with the magazine folded down to a single visible column. When held that way, it looks remarkably similar to a screenful of clean RSS paragraphs. Reading on an iPhone should feel just as satisfying. I made Unread because I wanted to get back to a more deliberate style of reading. I designed it for times of quiet focus. With warm typography and a sparse interface, it invites me to return to the way I used to read before I fell into the bad habit of skimming and forgetting.”

Using Unread is unlike any other RSS Reader I have tried before and just as Jared intended, I use the app and the feeling I get is “This is like a newspaper, not an email client”. Also sort of like a newspaper ³, it has an header in the front page with the app’s name and today’s date.
With it’s design, Unread provides a more joyful reading experience that calls to read, not to check out.

Read Better, Not More

Unread was made to give you the opportunity to change the way you read. Read better stuff, not more stuff.
James Martin, writing for The Brooks Review:

“I added a new manual account to Reeder on my iPhone and then added four (4) RSS feeds to that account. … …If you find yourself overwhelmed by your RSS subscriptions, or unread count, or if you’d like to spend less time pruning your RSS inbox and more time doing something productive… …Export your current RSS subscriptions as a backup, then delete that account from your RSS readers (all of them). Add a new manually refreshed account to your RSS reader, then add up to five (5) feeds to that account. Think carefully about your choices. Select feeds that provide quality material.”

That’s quite similar to my RSS setup:
This is how Reeder is configured:
Reeder is configured with 3 services - Feedly, Feed Wrangler and a Local RSS Feed. Feed Wrangler is where I read the latest news, get ideas for articles and links and where I read what fellow writers and developers write. Feedly is for leisure, when I’m not writing but wanna read the latest news. It’s a lighter version of my Feed Wrangler account with less subscriptions. I use a Free Feedly account. And lastly, I have a Local feed set up with only 11 subscriptions including some of my favorite websites. I use this feed for when I’m short on time, for quick reading.

And in Unread:
I use Feedly and Feed Wrangler. I have created a “Favorites” Smart Stream in Feed Wrangler that includes my favorite websites - but with 25 feeds and not 11 and this is the I mainly read in Unread, because it includes the best content - not the most.

I encourage you to do the same - take your time, pick your favorite writers and add only them to a smart stream or folder.

Slide Left

Slide left anywhere to open the options card ⁴. It holds a different options depending on where it was opened from, but there are four options that I want to talk about - Change Theme, View on Web, Back to Browser and Share. Back to Browser and Change Theme always appear in the options, but Share does not.

The Browser

Unread’s browser unlike most app’s in-app browser don’t disappear. ⁵ The browser is always there with what you previously viewed in it, Back To Browser opens the browser with the last site that was viewed in it. View on Web opens the article you are currently reading in the browser and it only only appears when opening the options from an article. The browser is the only place in the app where I have suggestions for improvements.

As Shawn wrote:

“When you’re going to read a web page, the previously-loaded web page is there waiting for you until the new one comes up. Something about this feels slow or unconsidered to me.”

I also don’t like this behavior for the browser. I believe it should be that the browser shouldn’t open until the page loaded.
This is the only nit I can pick about the app. But I also have a suggestion for the browser. Adding an address bar. Adding an address bar will enable you to do all of your reading in unread. Found a website you want to read but want the reading experience of Unread? Put the address in the browser and read it like you should.

Sharing

The Sharing menu of Unread is powered by OvershareKit, a library created by Jared and Justin Williams that was born in Unread. And in born I mean created while working on Unread. It includes supports for sharing via AirDrop, Message, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, App.net, Copy Quote, Copy URL, Send to a browser(Safari, Chrome, 1Password Browser), Read Later(Reading List, Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Pinboard), Send to Pinboard ⁶, Send to Drafts and Search in 1Password. It’s great and I plan to integrate it in my future creations.

Themes

Always in the options menu, is the Change Theme option. There is a Day theme and a Night theme and Unread also includes some hidden themes. My favorite theme is the Night theme, but I haven’t found any hidden themes yet so maybe there’s one I’ll like more.

The Articles List

The articles list is clean and inviting. Unlike other RSS apps, It’s not a list titles with buttons and icons and other stuff. It is just that - an articles list. Each article has a bold title, short summary and source site. If it’s a linked post, it shows an arrow and will point to the linked article and not the linked post itself. If the article has an image, Unread will also show a thumbnail above the title.
Articles are grouped by date, but can be changed to group by feed in the options. And the only bars appearing in the list are the status bar and the footer bar, that tells you what list are you currently in. It’s handy.

“A Call to Read Well”

I believe that, as Jared intended, The best way I can describe Unread as is a call to read well and to write well. It provides a pleasant and delightful reading experience you won’t find anywhere else. And you don’t have to take just my word on it, Federico Viticci, Shawn Blanc and Stephen Hackett also wrote amazing reviews about it. You can also read Designing Unread which is a “behind the scenes” post by Jared about the process of making Unread. Unread is 4.99$ on the App Store, and if read RSS on your iPhone, give it a try, I’m sure you wouldn’t regret it.

If you have questions/ideas/suggestions/something to say about anything on the website, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)

Launch Center Pro for iPad

Last month, one of my favorite apps, Launch Center Pro was updated to version 2.2 and brought some great new features like Dropbox Text Actions, VoiceOver Support, Dictionary Lookup, Text-to-Speech and New Group-related features. But alongside the update, Contrast also released Launch Center Pro for iPad. I have been waiting for an iPad version of Launch Center Pro for years, and it’s great to finally have one. Here’s Federico Viticci’s review of the iPad version. It’s 7.99$ on the App Store.

From The Sweet Setup

Thanks to The Sweet Setup I discovered these apps:

VSCO Cam

After reading the review of the best photo editing app for iPhone, I downloaded the app, and I really like it. It’s Free on the App Store.

Paprika

I have been looking for a good recipe app for my mom to use for a really long time (I even thought of making one) and my search was finally over when I read the review for Paprika, The best recipe manager for iOS. What I looked for in a recipe app is support for web import in different languages, support for creating grocery lists out (in Reminders or Clear) and sharing those recipes and grocery lists with other people. Paprika has all of these and more, and that’s what makes it the best. Get it from the App Store for 4.99$. You can get the iPad Edition here).

PCalc

For a long time, I used Calzy as my calculator and Amount for unit conversions and avoided using PCalc because I thought I don’t need all of it’s extra features…. until I read Dr. Drang’s review of it on The Sweet Serup. It is simply the best calculator out there, It’s Samurai theme looks really good (and is also customizable with different colors!), it has some sweet animations and offers great features like a history tape ¹ with gestures to undo and redo actions, unit conversions (with support for custom units), functions and even support for Binary and Hexadecimal numbers, It’s everything I could ask for from a calculator. You can get a lite version of it from the App Store for free and unlock only the features you want, but if you want to buy the full version with all the features straight away (I tried the Lite version and then bought the full version, I don’t like in-app purchases.) you can get it for 9.99$ by clicking here.

Pedometer++

At the end of January, David Smith, who is one of my favorite developers, released a major 2.0 update to his app Pedometer++. I didn’t use Pedometer++ before that update but because I enjoyed looking at my daily steps in Day One and I wanted to see if I have a healthy lifestyle with enough physical activity, I checked it out. The app is simple and accurate and shows your weekly step count. You can tune your gender, height and daily step goal in the settings and you can also share or export your step count. The default step goal is 10,000 since it’s a reasonable healthy goal and I kept it this way. I was happy to find out that I pass the goal every day except for Friday and Saturday when I rest. If you have an iPhone 5S (it’s required because Pedometer pulls the data from your iPhone’s M7 processor) If you looking for a way to track your steps or just see the step count taken by your iPhone, look no further than Pedometer++, Free on the App Store.

Reporter

Reporter by Nicholas Feltron is a nice little app to keep track of your life. The app sends you notifications randomly throughout the day and asks you a series of questions. It was made to help Feltron make his Annual Report of 2012, and includes question like what are you wearing, eating or drinking, if you are working or not and other questions you can set by yourself. It also fetches information on the weather, your location, your sound and your step count and includes it in each report. I use the app to keep track of what I think about and how I live my life and it’s perfect for that goal. If you want to keep track of your life, Reporter is available on the App Store for 3.99$, and it’s great.

If you have questions/ideas/suggestions/something to say about anything on the website, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)

New design for text

The body of all articles, pages and posts has been updated to sport a new font: Source Sans Pro by Paul D. Hunt of Adobe. Even the slider captions have a new design for the new font. And to make sure everything looks especially great, I updated the style of all custom text decorations: Footnotes (more on them in a bit), Italic text, Bold text, Code blocks, links

Blockquotes

Headers

• And lists

All have a new look and feel. Footnotes were given special treatment and are now powered by bigfoot.js by Chris Sauve so there is a popover with the footnote content instead of the old way of sending you to the bottom of the article and then sending you back up with a click on an arrow. It’s really great and better than before ¹.

New post type

Meet Short Posts - marked with a + and act like links, short posts are new kind of posts that are just like links - except they don’t link to anywhere. They are there for when I want to share a few thoughts about an app or something else, but it’s not enough for an article and doesn’t have a place to link to. Starting today, All the new Appdated posts will be short posts instead of links.

Improved Webclip behavior

The Webclip/webapp feature of the site ² has been improved and is now following the latest rules set by iOS 7. No more black status bar or an iPhone 4 version of the site on your iPhone 5. Also new is staystandalone.js that keeps you in the webapp instead of opening links in Safari.

What Next?

For Year 3, I hope to have more time to write, develop and improve my existing creations. I haven’t had much time lately, but I have big plans for Dropit and the site, and I also got a few other things in the works. I hope you will like all of these new things coming soon and thank you for being there and enjoying the site and my other creations :)

Currently, there are 2 main ways to listen to music on your iOS device - Transfer songs with iTunes or use a music streaming service. When I ask people about music on iOS, I constantly hear the following sentences: “iTunes is annoying”, “I don’t want to use a music streaming service because it’s app drains the battery 10 times more than the Music app” or “I don’t want to use a music streaming service because it doesn’t have the songs I want”. I personally don’t transfer songs to the Music app, and use both Rdio and Grooveshark to listen to my music.

Rdio is great and it has superior social features and stations, it also has an app for Mac and iOS, but there is a feature it’s missing - support for uploading songs not in available on Rdio(or playing songs not available in Rdio alongside my Rdio Collection) - If Rdio accessed a folder of music in my Dropbox and allowed me to play them with songs on my collection, It would be perfect. Grooveshark has this feature, it lets me upload songs to it, a lot of other people I know use it and I like it more but it doesn’t have an app and it’s HTML5 site doesn’t support playing songs consistently so I use Rdio on my iPhone, iPad and Mac, and Grooveshark on the web.
The idea to listen to music from a folder in my Dropbox and my idea to treat music like podcasts, brought Dropit to life.

By managing your music as a podcast - There are many ways you could use Dropit. You can stream your songs or download them to your device, you can make a playlist or listen to just one song, you can share songs with friends or keep them to yourself, you can listen on any device no matter the OS version(you can listen on iOS 4 and you can listen in iOS 7) and you don’t have to worry about syncing or backing up, because it’s all in your Dropbox.

Here is how to use Dropit - On your computer, Download Dropit, unzip it to your Dropbox Public folder(if you don’t have a Public folder, you can enable it here), enter your Dropbox Public folder token in the Dropit Settings, put songs in your Dropbox Public folder, run the Dropit Python script, copy the link to the created dropit.xml file, paste it in your favorite podcasts client (whether it’s Instacast, Pod Wrangler, or even Apple’s Podcasts app) and that’s it, you are done.

I think Dropit 1.0 is a solid initial release version, but I already have plans for it’s future. Here are a few features I’m thinking(not promising anything) of implementing:

• Showing song metadata like album name or album art
• Native iOS app
• Ability to trigger the script from your iOS Device
• Easier installation
• Mac App to manage the folder and run the script

You can get Dropit from here for absolutely free. Follow the instructions above and start enjoying your music, in your way.

If you have questions/ideas/suggestions/something to say about anything on the website, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)

If you have questions/ideas/suggestions/something to say about anything on the website, feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or App.net, Thanks for reading! :)