Hmm, spent today working out what may be the ebst way to develop my iPhone app. I want to do this just right as I think there is something particularly fun about being able to access the footage on the slope immediately after the run or session.

I’ve pretty much ruled out creating a fully functioning app. I don’t think I could learn how to do it in the time limits I’ve got. So Is et about looking for other options:

I can create what is called a WebApp; a webpage which behaves in the way a native iPhone app does. The device however must be online in order for this approach to work, obviously. This isn’t really an issue for the experience prototype but a consideration nonetheless.

There are various Javascript frameworks available which allow you to mimic typical iPhone features such as sliding animations or pageflips. I’ve been looking at JQTouch as it seems to be the most ‘native-like’ and it is so, nearly, almost perfect….

As you can see my original mockup depended on a ‘tab bar’ navigation system at the bottom of the screen to switch between the different ‘views’ of the application. It seems, annoyingly, very difficult (if not impossible) to recreate this system while using one of the iPhone javascript frameworks. A slight setback with the only plausible answer being that I change the design of the interface - not something I particularly want to do.

I have, however, managed to put together a native iPhone app which incorporates functioning tabs but each tab’s ‘view’ is simply a frame which shows a different part of the website. This may be the winning option but already I can see compromises appearing; I can’t (without paying mucho £££) run this app on a real iPhone and I’m really not sure if I can run fullscreen video from a link within the Website view…

Still, on a positive note, I have the basis for my app and I can hope that it will be easier than I think to pull this experience prototype off.