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Verizon will launch over-the-top service, Nomura Instin... - https://goo.gl/v1Udrr - #Finance, #Instin, #Launch, #Nomura, #Overthetop, #Service, #Verizon

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myHomework Student Planner - Instin

myHomework Student Planner – Instin

myHomework Student Planner Instin Genre: Education Release Date: July 9, 2015 What makes myHomework the best student planner? * Beauty, Simplicity, and Reliability – myHomework has a gorgeous appearance and simple interface making it easy for anyone to use. Our apps fill their role as a planner without network connectivity. * Amazing Anywhere – With highly rated cross-platform apps, and a…

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myHomework selected as an Entrepreneurial All Star

I was extremely fortunate today to be able to receive an award on behalf of the Instin & the myHomework team!

myHomework was selected as an Entrepreneurial All Star during 1 Week KC. The ceremony took place on the field of the Kansas City Royals stadium where one of the region mayors presented the award to each of the companies selected.

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Kansas senator mentions Instin and myHomework!

While addressing the senate floor about Global Entrepreneurship Week and Startup Act 2.0 last Tuesday, Kansas senator Jerry Moran mentioned our company and our myHomework app.

We are completely honored and privileged that out of so many startups in the KC area he selected us as an example of a new generation of Kansas startups. The video is about 10 minutes long, he mentions us around the 4:45 minute mark.

To check it out, click on the video above or visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irqGeciLayY&list=UU1oRxeUPam6-53wPBZ3N02A

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Kauffman Demo Day

As a part of the Kauffman Foundation's Global Entrepreneurship Week, we were invited back for a demonstration of our progress since we last presented in June.

As always, we had a great time and are very thankful to those at the Kauffman Foundation putting all of their time and effort into providing us entrepreneurs a place to grow and share our stories.

For those who didn't get to see, here is a direct link to our talk by Keith Entzeroth i where we are introduced around the one minute mark. 

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Google Analytics for a Windows 8 HTML5/JS App

As Ryan mentioned in one of our previous posts, From Zero to Windows 8 Store in Two Weeks, we found developing for Windows 8 to be a refreshing change from what we've experienced in the other two major mobile platforms, iOS and Android.

One of the few areas where things were a little difficult was integrating Google Analytics into our Windows 8 javascript app.  Since we've found this data invaluable in our other apps, one of the first things we decided to figure out is how to integrate ga.js into our app.

The only discussion in the MSFT Forums was disappointing.  On StackOverflow, the best thing I could find was this article which had an answer, but not for Html5/Js Metro app development.  

After some time consulting the documentation from google on web tracking, I downloaded both the main google analytics javascript file as well as the ga_debug.js file.

1.  In the default.js file, load the google analytics tracker javascript file but modify the src attribute.  So it will load the file locally instead of trying to pull it from google's server.  

ga.src = "/js/ga.js";

Changing this to ga_debug.js makes it easy to see if all of the tracking is in place while navigating around the app in the simulator.

2.  When tracking on a page, set the domain to "none" and google will be happy to log your events without anything hosted on your site.

_gaq.push(["_setDomainName", "none"]);

_gaq.push(["_trackPageview", path]);

3.  Before loading the tracker, override the ActiveXObject natively available to Metro Apps. This will make google analytics perform better and keep it from spewing out a bunch of errors when it attempts to use ActiveX for xhr.

window.ActiveXObject = undefined;

According to Microsoft, only three controls are available to Windows 8 Html 5 apps.  Hopefully you don't need any of them! 

And that's all there was to it.  After these couple of tweaks, everything else should be the same as tracking on any other website you've ever integrated google analytics into.

If there's a better way to go about this, please let us know in the comments.

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Designing for Windows 8 Metro

We've recently finished building our cross-platform student planner app, myHomework for Windows 8. It will be available for download when the Windows 8 Store launches October 26th. I recommend you reading the blog post my co-founder Ryan put together about us building the app: From Zero to Windows 8 Store in Two Weeks.

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Towards the end of the summer we got approached by Microsoft into building myHomework for Windows 8, we were really impressed by their demo so we agreed to do so. After playing around with the OS and some of the pre-built apps we've learned that designing a Windows 8 app is a lot different than designing an iPad app or a Website. In this post I want to outline some of the things we learned.

Layout

The first thing I noticed when playing with Windows 8 is the clean layout. Everything is composed by tiles that most of the time takes you to a detailed view of an item. These tiles are placed vertically but grouped horizontaly, so unlike an iPad app or a Website were most of the scrolling is vertical, on Windows 8 most of the scrolling is horizontal. For example here is a screenshot of the (all) Homework page of myHomework:

In iOS or Web these homework items would be placed one below the other where you would have to scroll down to see more. In Windows 8 once the tiles reach the bottom of the page the next tile is placed on the column to the right and whenever you need to see more you just scroll to the right.

But there are also some special occasions such as when you have some long text inside of a detailed view of an item or when you are in a snapped view (more about snapped views later) those usually scroll vertically.

Navigation

The second thing I noticed when playing with Windows 8 is the navigation. Instead of relying on a menu/tab bar, your most important items are somewhat already preloaded but grouped in different sections. For example here is the home screen of myHomework, or "hub" in Microsoft's verbiage.

Notice that we have 3 sections "Important", "Homework" and "Classes". In most cases these sections would be buttons in a menu/tab bar or links in a navigation bar. In Windows 8 we display that information already when the app is loaded.  However we cap the amount that is displayed so the user knows that there is more sections to see. For example when a student has a lot of homework we limit the homework section into 2 columns, but we add a load more tile that loads 2 more columns in that section.

Also notice that under "Homework >" and "Classes >"  there is a right arrow next to the word. This is a Windows 8 standard that indicates that there is a more detailed group view for that section, which you can see an example in the (all) Homework section picture under Layout up above.

Semantic Zoom

But what if there are multiple sections and a lot of tiles in one page? Scrolling all the way to the right to get to another section must be really annoying right?  Well, Microsoft's answer is Semantic Zoom. You can pinch out the main area and a grouping of all available sections appear. Once you touch on a tile you are automatically taken to that section. For example here is the (all) Homework page under semantic zoom.

Notice that we also add the count of how many items are under each section.  

Snapped View

Windows 8 allows you to "snap" an app to the side, which scales the app to somewhat of a mobile view. This allow users to have 2 apps side by side, in our case the user can have the list of homework due snapped to one side and be doing their homework or taking notes on the other. When in snapped view the layout changes to be vertical rather than horizontal, similar to an iPhone or Android app.

Since we built the app using HTML, CSS and JavaScript (WinJS) all we had to do to support snapped view was to use media queries. Similar to someone doing responsive UI on the web.

App Bar

Windows 8 also has an app bar, which is the place where you put most of your commands and actions relevant to the context of the current page or selection. The app bar is usually hidden, all the user has to do is swipe from the bottom and the app bar appears.

Data Entry

Data entry is pretty straight forward just like any platform, they provide some builtin controls that you can put it in a form. The question is where to put the form. Should we put it in it's own page? Should we put it in a light box that appears on the side or in the center? Should it be in a popover like some iPad apps? Microsoft's suggested approach is to put in it's own page, however I've seen some apps putting some small login forms in a centered light box.

We had some problems with optional date pickers. Right now they don't provide any date picker controls that are optional, you either have to write a custom one or change the UI to have an extra step to show the date picker, we chose the UI.

Search

Search is something that I find really neat in Windows 8. Instead of the app having its own search field that only works when the app is open, in Windows 8 search has it's own place and is available everywhere, even when the app is closed. All the user has to do is swipe from the right edge and a search button will appear which will allow the user to search any file, app or content within an app. Here is how search looks with myHomework.

Sharing

Sharing works similar to search, sharing is available everywhere. That way the developer doesn't have write its own sharing functionality to a social network, email or another app. All the user has to do is swipe from the right edge and a share button will appear which will allow the user to share using any installed app that supports sharing.

Conclusion

I personally believe that Windows 8 metro style is amazing! It's simple, clean, easy to understand and adapt. I'm really impressed by what Microsoft put together in this version of Windows. I especially love that we can easily build Windows 8 apps using web technologies. As a developer and designer for iOS and Web, developing and designing for Windows 8 was fast and fun! I hope other developers experience the same.

If you want more information about designing for Windows 8, they have a lot of documentation and examples available:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh779072.aspx

If you want more information about developing for Windows 8, their documentation and sample code is available at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/br229565.aspx