iPhone Users

Optimizing WordPress for iPhone – Part 1

Costea Lestoc — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:12:02 +0000

Here you can find the part 1 of this tutorial.

To continue from where we stopped, we can keep active the ability to insert comments in the post and the use of Gravatars. WPtouch is enabled by default with some terminals that are listed on the page. If you want to extend to terminals that are not present in the list you can specify in their custom User Agent.

In style and color options, you can customize certain elements of the theme, including background, font and color of the title of the post, the color of the header, the header and the links below. We can see by clicking on the arrow that goes down on the right of the title also icons of this menu that can be selected in the list of default and custom icons (the default ones are those typical of the iPhone). We can introduce new icons, just click on the button “Upload icon”.

Finally, it is possible to place advertising from the mobile version through Google AdSense. In this case, just specify in the settings as the ID and the channel. You may also place the Analytics JavaScript code: in this way we can log accesses made via iPhones and have statistics, this can be very useful.

Onswipe:

Is a new plugin, to optimize the display of a WordPress blog with a tablet device like the iPad. In fact, we can navigate our site, through a tablet device, just flipping through the pages, just as if you were flipping through a newspaper. If the device is rotated the page will automatically be adapted and redesigned. In practice, the plugin automatically creates a thumbnail image of each of the first posts on the site by saving it in a separate directory. Once downloaded unzip the file and upload the same as the previous plugin, that is inside the folder /wp-content/plugins and then activate it from Plugins.

Once activated we will find it in the left column, under Appearance. Clicking this item will open the settings page, which we can see in the figure.

From this screen, we can customize at will the page that will be loaded on the iPad, the logo (which should be of 200 × 200 pixels, with the extension png), the image launch screen (size 768 × 1004px) and set the color and the font of the titles. Both the logo and the image of the page can be uploaded from your computer, while the font choice is very wide. Once you choose the font and color we can see the settings page written as a preview.

Using the tablet device you can choose which pages to display, add comments and share posts. Also in this case, to see the appearance of our website we must have an iPad or look for a plugin or a site that simulates the display on the tablet.

iPhone 5S and Cheaper iPhone Available In Several Colors

Costea Lestoc — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:24:43 +0000

Rumors on the release of an iPhone 5S and a cheaper iPhone with housings in various colors return today to our attention, a Japanese blog with reliable information in the past saying that both devices will be available in various colors. About the color of the cheap iPhone information came from two sources, the first of them saying that the device would be available in the colors: navy blue, gold, orange, white and gray, and the second gave the colors: white, pink, green, blue, yellow and orange. Although it seems strange, black is not among those that Apple would use them and this seems unlikely. Even so, the terminal is expected to go into production next month, following in the beginning of July to enter mass production.

iPhone 5S will have a dual-LED flash and a new hole for the microphone between the iSight camera and LED flash, but I have heard similar information in the past and they have not proven to be true. Regarding colors, carcasses may be available in classic black/white colors, but separate the device could be offered in colors: green and gold, the company finally would have between 3 and 5 color options for the device housing.

Unfortunately it is not known when iPhone 5S would go into production, but probably we are talking about the same period as in the cheaper iPhone case. Apple has already announced that on June 10 will hold the opening keynote of WWDC 2013, but none of the iPhones will be present, although we will see iOS 7.

Optimizing WordPress for iPhone – Part 1

Costea Lestoc — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:44:59 +0000

In recent months we have seen more and more people accessing the internet through mobile devices: for most cell phones, but also PDAs, Blackberry, tablet PCs etc. According to most analysts connections from mobile devices will increase strongly during this period. For this reason, the design of sites accessible from mobile devices is becoming increasingly important and is not a very easy solution: we are faced with a great variety of devices with display size, compatibility with markup languages, plugins (flash and java supported or not) and coupled operating systems/browsers.

With this article we will see two interesting plugins for WordPress: WPtouch and the new Onswipe that will solve each problem, in fact these extensions are created to be able to view a site even on non-PC devices.

WPtouch

WPtouch is a plugin able to modify the graphical user interface of our blog when viewed from a smartphone equipped with iOS or Android: Pages will be changed so the blog to look perfectly on an iPhone, complete with a custom menu, custom module research, home button in the header and a button to switch to Classic View. The plugin provides a simple and elegant administration panel. With this plugin you can see a preview of the version of WPtouch directly from your PC.

To see the results obtained by configuring the plugin we need to have a mobile device. To overcome this problem, however, we can simulate the display of a website on the iPhone with a Firefox extension called User Agent Switcher, which will fool the site that we opened it with the iPhone and then, if available, will show its mobile version. With this extension we will always see the site exactly as you would see it on mobile phones (eg on iPhone with the Safari browser), but in any case it allows us to do a check on the operation before you try it with the phone itself.

Now we need to configure WPtouch. We need to enter in the admin section of our website: in the left column select Plugins->Add New->Upload media->Choose the file you downloaded and click “Install now”. Enter the credentials to access, via a remote FTP client, to upload files to the site.

Alternatively, we can do it by hand: unzip the package and upload the plugin folder with a FTP client in /wp-content/plugins. Once installed, the plugin need to be activated: to do so click Activate next to the WPtouch in the plugin list. You may find the link of the plugin in the left column under “Settings”. All the settings for the plugin can be seen in the next screen:

General settings;
Advanced options;
Options for push notifications (you need a key to activate Prowl API);
Options style and colors;
List of default icons and custom;
Elements menu pages and icons;
Adsense, statistics and custom code;

List of compatible WPtouch plugins.

Among the general settings we can choose the default language for the WPtouch plugin (or you can leave the automatic detection), the page to be displayed by default when you log on with a mobile device, the list of categories to exclude (by inserting the corresponding IDs separated by commas) tags to exclude or text alignment.

In addition we can choose how to set up a list of posts: with the calendar icon, or an image with no icons or preview, but only the post. In the next three figures we can see the list of posts with the calendar icon with an image taken randomly from the /wp-content/plugins/wptouch/images folder.

We can choose to display, for each post, the title, author name, category, tags, and any piece of article as a preview (below there will be a link to continue reading the post). Finally we can put a message in the footer of pages. By default we have “All Content Copyright” followed by the name of the site.

Under the advanced settings we can choose what to display in the header when you click on the button at the top right. You can add categories, tags and other elements.

Stay tuned for the second part!

iPhones can send notifications to Google Glass thanks to a hack

Costea Lestoc — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:43:45 +0000

Google Glass is a device manufactured from Google released as a prototype at the moment and the company has promised that at some point you can read the notices displayed on your iPhone. By the time that Google will have trained software, a developer made himself a whole system, and in the video above you will have a look at a demonstration of its functionality. Basically Google Glass is capable of displaying on its little screen some notifications directly from your iPhone or iPad, but all of this with the help of a hack implemented in iOS.

Any notifications from applications can be displayed in Google Glass, users can switch from one to another, but cannot perform other actions on them because of the way iOS is built. This hack will be released in the near future in Cydia and can be used by all Google Glass owners of these prototypes to send notifications to iOS devices. Stay tuned about more information related to iPhone and Google Glasses.

DimInCall Brings New Options To Control The Screen During A Call

Costea Lestoc — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:48:24 +0000

Any smartphone made by a smart manufacturer automatically closes the screen when we are talking on the phone and have our ear close to the device, but iPhones have often had problems with this system. To solve the problem there is now a tweak called DimInCall, it closes the screen automatically when a call is initiated/accepted. The screen can be re-opened by pressing the Home/Lock button, but if we want we can set the closing/opening to be made by means of physical buttons and not automatically.

Compatible with iOS 5 and 6. One great feature in iOS is that when you put iPhone near your ear during a call, the screen blacks out automatically, in case your face touches the buttons by mistake. But what doesn’t make it perfect is that if you’re not holding the phone like the proximity sensor expects, the screen stays visible, thus making it easy to mess the call. In my humble opinion, the screen should be turned off as soon as a call is connected, rather than let the proximity sensor decide. So here comes “DimInCall”.

DimInCall comes of course with a settings menu where we can customize its functionality, so you can choose exactly how you want to use it, as needed. This tweak is available at a price of $2 in the BigBoss repo of Cydia and only works with iPhones.

Incoming search terms: dimincall

iPhone 6 Concept – What Fans Want For The Next iPhone

Costea Lestoc — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:18:46 +0000

Fans waiting for the new smartphone from Apple have made a clip showing a potential version of the iPhone in June. Inspired more from the Transformers comics, the concept it’s not quite possible to be made nowadays. It integrates two projectors, one for the keyboard that appears on the desktop, and the second to display the main screen. Unfortunately, the producers chose to use a clip of Mac OS X desktop for this presentation, suggesting that the iPhone should be able to run a remote desktop application.

Interestingly is that the smartphone from the presentation is very similar to the iPhone 5 and at first glance could be considered an iPhone 5S. It lacks many of the elements of futuristic building that we saw on other concepts like transparent screen, curved display, etc. Given that ergonomics is a very important factor for Apple, we will not see anytime soon or ever a keyboard displayed on a hard surface that doesn’t provide a feedback on display. The integrated projector is a reality today in Samsung Galaxy Beam, but requires a generous battery and the quality and brightness of the image is poor. We are pleased however for this interesting clip about a concept that will not become a reality in the near future.

The video can be seen on the upper right side of this page.

Learn To Share PDFs Right From The iBooks App

Costea Lestoc — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:22:32 +0000

If you have found a book that you think would appeal to one of your friends, iBooks offers a simple way to send them a link to the book that they can use to buy it. Also, if you use iBooks to save PDFs, you can print them or send them to a friend by email in just a few steps:

How to distribute a book to a friend from the iBooks app:

- Open the iBooks app from the home screen of your iOS device;

- In the Library section, click on the book cover you want to distribute;

- Now click the Contents icon represented by three parallel lines at the top of the page (right next to the library);

- In the page that displays the contents of the book, click on the Share button from the top right of the screen;

- Choose how you want to distribute the book by clicking on the application icon. The options are E-mail, SMS/iMessage, Twitter, Facebook and copy link to attach it to another place;

- If you chose one of the first four options, then there will be a preview of your message. For your email and SMS/iMessage you will need to enter your address, or email/phone number. Tap the Send/Post button to send it.

How to print or send via email a PDF from the iBooks app:

- Open the iBooks app from the home screen of your iOS device;

- From the PDF collection click on the PDF cover that you want to send or print;

- At the top of the page, click on the Share button;

- Select E-mail or Print, depending on your preference;

- If you select E-mail, the PDF will be inserted directly into an email. Enter your email address and click Send to send the PDF.

Apple Web OS – An iPhone Theme Inspired By Apple’s Website

Costea Lestoc — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:59:05 +0000

I do not know how many of you would have wanted when using your iPhone to have in your face a similar interface with the Apple website, but a theme called Web OS Apple aims to give you that experience. The theme is built on implemented tiles in Windows Phone, faithfully mimics Apple’s website and the most interesting part is that it can be customized by us. There are 54 tiles around the topic, many automatically generated for various applications, the native applications interface is modified and the LockScreen has a different “face”.

Inspired by Apple.com, Apple Web OS is the cleanest light theme around. Everything is fully customizable so you can have the theme set up exactly how you want it. There are 54 pre-made tiles that you can select from for each page, along with auto-generated tiles from your own apps, to ensure everything is themed 100%. A WinterBoard lockscreen is also included; install Lockscreen Clock Hide from Cydia for the full effect.

The theme is of course dedicated to only those who really admire Apple’s online store interface and would not mind to see it constantly in their main display, so do not test if you are thinking differently. Apple Web OS is available in the ModMyi repo of Cydia.

How to Change the Keyboard Color, Form of the Letters and Make the Keyboard Vibrate

Costea Lestoc — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:40:45 +0000

Sometimes, the size of the letters bothers us as well as its color, if you want to change them, make sure you have:

- An idevice (preferably iPhone).

- WLAN.

- Jailbreak done, doesn’t matter on what Firmware.

Step I:

Connect to a WLAN and start the Cydia app.

Step II:

After you start the application go to “Manage-> Sources-> Edit-> Add”.

Step III:

Add Source: “http://repo.insanelyi.com” and wait for it to load.

Step IV:

Go to the search section and type: “COLOR KEYBOARD” after you find the tweek for changing the color and shapes, install it and respring your iPhone.

Step V:

After the respring, start the Cydia app again and go to search section where you will write “Haptic” and is the first package from the top, install it and give a respring (vibration hack).

Step VI:

Go to the Settings app and look for where it says “HapticPro”, open it and make sure all are on, you can adjust the vibration intensity from the “Duration” bar (I prefer a quite small one).

Step VII:

Log in to Color Keyboard application also from the settings menu, make sure it is opened, from the “color” select the one you want, now on the “shape” you can pull that bar and can therefore round the letters as much as you want.

0-Hour – An Amazing “Metallic” Theme For Your iPhone

Costea Lestoc — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:56:54 +0000

0-Hour is a newly launched theme during last night in Cydia, and it is suitable for those who want to implement a “metallic” look in their iOS’s interface. The theme implements a new design for a slider with particular LockScreen and has special icons for native apps, but for a multitude of third-party applications from the App Store, has one dedicated interface for each native application and special menus for popular tweak from Cydia, so you will have a completely changed experience after installation.

Times up to bring something new and Innovative. 0-HOUR brings a new idea to the normal UI with its Unique SLIDE EFFECT. For my 10th theme and 1 yr anniversary theming I wanted to go all out. 0-HOUR includes – custom details icons made from scratch, SB Widgets, Color Keyboard, SBSettings, Screen loaders (can be turned off in WB), All Native apps themed to match. The new SLIDE EFFECT for the UI is integrated through out the theme from the Dialer to the Calculator.

0-Hour is available on the ZodTTD & MacCiti repo of Cydia and is compatible with iPhones/iPod Touch. Keep close for more of these interesting thems.

Incoming search terms: cydia 0 hour theme