The Dossier

Slow and steady wins the race!

Wow, what a fight it’s been! The promised update to The Dossier is inching closer. We’re still getting the finishing touches on the update process, and hope to submit the update to Apple early next week. You’ll hear it here first when we do.

In case you’re interested in the technical details of what we’ve been doing, here’s an overview:

• Having multiple photos turned out to be a big ol’ memory hog because we were loading the entire image and displaying only the zoomed, cropped piece. As soon as we added the ability to have multiple photos, memory became an issue, so we had the rewrite the way we displayed and edited the photos.
  
  It was also a massive speed problem. Having 3 or 4 photos on a dossier was taking up 30+mb (which is about the time that iOS says “hey, yeah. No.” and shuts down the app, and it was taking several seconds to open. With the changes, dossiers with a dozen photos now open nearly instantly, and take up a couple of mb, tops, with a jump of about a mb when editing, keeping us well below the crash threshold.
• Coming up with an elegant way to associate a dossier with a contact was awkward. We’d tried a few different methods, but ultimately decided to keep it really, really simple. When you’re editing the title of a dossier, you can now select a contact if you want to from a popover. If you don’t want to, just don’t select anyone! If you accidentally select someone, simply tap the None button to have a dossier that isn’t associated with anyone again. 
• Migrating the data has turned out to be very difficult. In the current version of The Dossier, we’re storing the entire original image in Core Data. This turned out to be very, very slow (and prone to crashing). So, we’ve changed how we store the images internally, but this has meant working hard to make sure that when you migrate from 1.0 to 1.1 you won’t lose your photos. This is where we’re currently focusing most of our energy.

We’re profoundly affected by the comments you send us, both the positive and the negative, so please do keep them coming.

Big changes are coming!

When we first started writing The Dossier, we had pretty strong opinions about how it should work. Since we didn’t have the actual device, we had no idea how well those opinions would hold up to real world use. Now, a few months in, we’ve heard from enough people about what they like and what they don’t, and have reevaluated some of our opinions.

So, without further ado, here’s some of the big changes that are coming in The Dossier 1.1:

• Dossiers now need to be explicitly created. When you start up the app, instead of seeing empty folders for all your contacts you will only see the dossiers you’ve actually created. If you want to create a new dossier, you tap the New Dossier button at the top. This was probably the single most common request from people.
• Dossiers no longer need to be associated with a contact. When a dossier is created it doesn’t have to hook to a contact. You can create a dossier for any topic you’d like. If you do want to, you can easily associate a dossier with a single contact, and get the benefits from doing so (birthdate display, star sign, ability to view their contact info, etc), but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. This is the second most common request.
• Photos are not longer fixed to the top right corner. People wanted to put in more photos, and they wanted to position them in other places. So, we’ve made photos first-class blocks, just like clothing sizes and notes. You can position them where you’d like, and can have as many as suits your needs.
• Search. You can now filter the dossier list using the search box in the toolbar. Another huge request.
• Speed improvements. Load time for the application is now well under a second, even with hundreds of dossiers! Load time for individual dossiers is also greatly improved.
• Stability improvements. All known crash bugs have been fixed.

We’re currently working on the finishing touches to make the update go smoothly for everyone who already has The Dossier installed. This may take a week or so, as there is a lot to keep track of. Once that’s done, we’ll submit it to Apple for approval, and will let you all know when that happens.

Thanks again for all your comments and support. It really helps keep us motivated!

Quick patches!

We just pushed out a minor update to The Dossier which fixes a crash if you put a space in someone’s Twitter username. Oops! :-)

We’re still working on a larger update. If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to contact us at support@thedossierapp.com.

<3

A different kind of iPad

A couple of days ago, my PixelPads came, and I’ve been sketching like a fiend ever since. I’ve spent a lot of time using various tools, including the excellent Balsamiq Mockups and the iPad clone iMockups, but nothing is as fast or as easy as using a pen and paper. Having something that perfectly matches the size and shape of the iPad really helps focus the mind.

If you’re developing iPad apps you really should order some of the iPad pads. The paper is thick and feels great to draw on, and the backing is firm so it doesn’t bend in your hands while you’re holding it.

I’m using mine right now to finalize the design of the new gift blocks that we’re planning for an upcoming release. :-)

Good news, everyone!

The Dossier 1.0.5 has been approved and should be in the App Store shortly. We’re really happy with the improvements in this update, and hope you will be too!

We’re already hard at work on the next update!

A delay.

Apple is reporting a crash bug in the update to The Dossier that we submitted that we’ve been unable to duplicate so far. We’re working to get this resolved as quickly as possible so that we can resubmit.

Sorry for the delay. :-(

The Dossier 1.0.5 Submitted!

We’ve submitted an update to The Dossier to Apple for approval, so hopefully it’ll be available Tuesday or Wednesday. We didn’t get everything we’d hoped to into this release, but we’re hard at work on the next version already. Here’s what’s been done:

• Improved integration with the address book. We now get the photo and birthdate from the contact record, as well as let you tap the person’s name to view their contact information. You can even tap on an email address or web page, and it’ll send an email or view their website accordingly.
• Photo zooming and positioning. You can now use a slider to zoom in on the dossier photo, as well as position it with your finger, so you can focus in on one face from a group photo.
• Cached tweets. If you’re not connected to the internet, you can still see tweets from the last time you viewed the dossier.
• Improved moving. No more false starts when moving blocks around the screen.
• Saved state. When you enter The Dossier it’ll return you to where you were previously. This is expecially great when you make use of the contact actions mentioned above.
• Improved stability. We were using ridiculous amounts of memory, and the iPad wasn’t having any of it. We’re now well within the limits, with fewer memory spikes and therefore fewer crashes.
• Bug fix. The Done button was sometimes hidden behind the keyboard when editing notes.
• General speed improvements. This is especially noticeable when dealing with large numbers of dossiers.

We still feel that searching and an index are extremely important improvements, and we’re working on them for the next update, as well as a few other nice things (like the gift block).

Thanks to everyone who has purchased The Dossier, as well as all the kind words from people. It’s really kept us going these last two weeks!

Headway!

We’re about a day away from sending our first update to The Dossier out to Apple for approval. There are a lot of behind the scenes changes that have been made to make The Dossier more memory friendly and feel better on the iPad. Additionally, we’ve moved to address the major requests people have made:

• Search. Yep, that was an oversight that is being remedied. 
• Caching Tweets. Now, even when you can’t connect to Twitter, you’ll have the tweet from the previous fetch.
• Photo zooming and positioning. Similar to Keynote, you can zoom pictures in and position them on the face of the person you’d like.
• Pulling the photo and birthdate from the contact if they already have one set.
• Done button on Notes occasionally gets hidden. That’s been fixed now.
• Displaying information from the contact right in their dossier.

We’ve also got a few things planned for the next update as well, including:

• Multiple photos
• Making the photo block movable
• Adding additional blocks (gifts for sure, others perhaps!)
• Viewing contact groups
• … and a few surprises.

We’re listening to what you’ve got to say, and would love to hear from you if you’ve got any suggestions, comments or just want to say hi. What’s your pet feature request?

Next time, on The Dossier…

Well, it’s been a few days since the iPad launch, and we’ve been playing with The Dossier extensively now that we have an actual iPad to run it on. We’ve found a number of things we’re hoping to improve, and will be pushing out an update later this week.

Boring updates are boring, so let me tell you a little bit about our exciting updates! The biggest addition will be the new Gifts block, joining the Note, Twitter and Clothing Size blocks.

The Swede[1] is gift-giving-crazy. By the end of August we have most of our Christmas shopping done. Seriously, it’s a sickness. She keeps a book with everyone’s name in it, and notes on what gifts she’s given them in the past, as well as what gifts we’ve already purchased for them. This does away with the problem of buying a Christmas gift for someone in July and forgetting about it by December. So clever! Obsessive, but clever! :-)

So, the Gifts block will let you enter the gifts you’ve given, when and why, as well as gifts you’ve set aside for the future. You can add a photo, make a note, and show only the last item given if you’d like.

Overall, our vision is to provide templates for the information you need to know. Sure, you can use notes for everything, but that’s neither convenient nor fun, two things we really want The Dossier to be.

—
[1] The Swede is my girlfriend, if you’ve not been following along. 

The calm before the storm

Well, The Dossier is approved, all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted, and it’s available for purchase on the iTunes Store today for just $4.99. James and I are kind of taking a little breather before what is sure to be a very exciting weekend. Tomorrow morning at 9AM, I’ll be heading to the Buffalo Apple Store to pick up my 32gb iPad and rush it back to Niagara-on-the-lake for some hardcore play time.

I’m eager to see if we got the feel of the app right for the actual device. Using a finger is different from using a mouse, touching is different from clicking. We thought a lot about how long you need to hold something before it triggers a move, for example, but we were kind of guessing because we don’t have an iPad to fine tune it.

The next two weeks we’ll be working on an update that will fix any fine tuning issues, as well as start adding the features we’d wanted to get in for the release but didn’t have time. Starting on Monday, I’ll be talking a little bit about what those features are and how we intend on getting them in.

Tomorrow I’ll write up a little about the iPad itself, once I’ve had some time to play with it. I’m as excited as you all are, I’m sure! :-)