Under The Bridge

So, we’ve finally got around to formally incorporating ourselves as “TROLLWERKS INC.” for iPhone development initiatives, and we’re celebrating this by evolving the First Ascent trollsheep into a New Exciting 2K8 Brand™ logo. And we want YOUR help with this! Below the cut, we have seven possible design directions: We’d like you to comment which ones you find the most appropriately troll — that is, which of these designs reach out, GRAB you by the throat, and HEADBUTT you? Ch-ch-check ‘em out:

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Here’s a new resource for web developers of all flavours: Google DocType:

Google Doctype is an open encyclopedia and reference library. Written by web developers, for web developers. It includes articles on web security, JavaScript DOM manipulation, CSS tips and tricks, and more. The reference section includes a growing library of test cases for checking cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.

h/t: Google Code Blog!

OK, whilst we intend to generally refrain from commenting on the non-iPhone-development related doings of our much-beloved neighbours to the south, we figure this is tangentially related enough to deserve mention: Apparently this “Obama” fellow, whom we gather is running for some political position or other down there, is an iPhone user! Check out just after 1:10 in this clip and see him pull what is clearly an iPhone out of his pocket.

Not that we would presume to push our opinions upon anybody, of course, but if you’re an American voter and don’t have any strong feelings yet on whom you want for whatever job this “Obama” chap wants to do, we think that clearly the candidates’ choice of Apple product should be a consideration of the utmost gravitas, don’t you? Certainly, there’s nothing we’ll give more weight to next time there’s a Canadian election!

h/t: FSJ!

If you’re someone who likes to scribble on paper like I do, and you’re going to WWDC, you’re going to want to head over to Johannes Fahrenkrug’s blog and grab this Ruby script he wrote to grab the session listings and format them as a PDF:

216:wwdcpdf alex$ ./wwdcpdf.rb 

WWDC 2008 Session PDF Generator by Johannes Fahrenkrug

Getting sessions.xml file…OK

Parsing XML…OK

Generating PDF…OK

Done! See you in June!

h/t: cocoa-dev!

The folks over at fontblog.de have applied their stereotypically Teutonic thoroughgoing industriousness –

…our designer Magnus at studio adhoc (Berlin, Germany) gets frustrated. After some trials he wrote me “Now I like to know exactly what is happening within that damned iPhone” and generated some test cards: 57 x 57 (ouch), 58 x 58 (argh), 59 x 59 (no, no), 60 x 60 (not bad, but not perfect). After some hours of experimentation he mailed me the perfect dimensions:

– to settling once and for all how to make pixel-exact iPhone icons with no blurs, crops or scaling of your crisp, clean creations.

They even provide a .psd template, which we’ll mirror for you here in case it goes away; full instructions and details can be found in their post. 

h/t: BraveNewCode!

Starting to get crowded in the iPhone Web space, folks; today we have Yet Another IPhone UI Libary for your attention, CNET iPhone UI aka “CiUI” which is being used on CNET’s iPhone page. The release notes tell us that

It’s been greatly inspired by iUI with a few key differences:

1. AJAX calls are performed after a page slides
2. DOM doesn’t get overloaded with “pages” as they load. Instead, two DIVs are constantly being reused
3. Page titles are set on the source page, not on the destination page
4. Only specified “a” tags are assumed a part of the UI

The project is on Google Code; share and enjoy!

h/t: iPhoneWebDev!

It was way back in February that we found out the precise location of the upcoming Vancouver Apple Store — just five blocks down the road from Troll World Headquarters™, which is pretty much as convenient as we could ask for with a straight face, no less —  and a bit later on we had some in-mall bulkhead shots to confirm it indisputably. But today, from the wonderfully named VistaSucks.WordPress.com, we have an alleged spy shot of the inside, and to go along with that, a report that

I personally spoke to 4 different on-site workers each of which confirmed the store should be completed “Next month.”

Oooh, it’s like having Christmas in June!

h/t: macsupport.ca!

Freshly released today for all you iPhone-friendly web designers out there: Webapp.net, a micro-framework to let you quickly make iPhone-styled pages. Check out the demo here, or its first professional deployment at the iPhone version of Boursier.com the French investment website. Here’s the announced feature list:

Automatically handled navigation and header title

Compatibility with browser navigation buttons

Easy to use and fully integrated AJAX technology usable also with forms

Easy quicktime media integration

Custom form elements (toggle button, …)

Custom events to catch slide effect, rotation, AJAX errors, etc…

Ready to use advanced CSS for common iPhone/iPod Touch elements

Per layer bookmarks (see advanced features)

Search engine compliance (see advanced features)

Desktop version of Safari and Firefox compatibility for easy debugging

h/t: safari-iphone-web-dev!

Well, today seems to be a particularly big day in iPhone SDK land; my renowned Impeccable Sources™ tell me that no less than four (and counting!) independent developers in Vancouver all got their program acceptances today.

Are the floodgates open across the entire world for the rest of you Dear Readers as well, or is today specifically “be kind to Vancouver” day at Apple HQ?

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