A while ago now I created an iPhone app to complement the Ski Pad website. The website has just received an update and I have been hard at work tweaking the app to work with the new site as well as adding some extra features along the way…
In reality I suppose this is just a shameless plug for the app but I thought it would be a good idea to take this opportunity to explain the new features. Anyway surely there is nothing wrong with a bit of self promotion every now and again. 😉
So before you read on, if you have an iPhone, now might be a good time to get the Ski Pad App from the app store…
Go on you know you want to…
Changes
As well as handling the latest changes to the database structure there are some reasonable changes to the app. So let’s dig a little into what has changed:
Rotation
Firstly the whole app now rotates. From any screen you can rotate your phone and the screen will rotate to the new orientation. One exception is if the phone is upside down. Apple request this is the default behaviour to allow the phone to be the right way up in case a phone call comes in, which is the main purpose of the iPhone after all.
News Feed
The next big change is the news feed. There is a new icon on the tab bar across the bottom of the app that opens up a list of news articles from the Ski Pad blog. In fact at the time of writing their latest article is about the update to the Ski Pad app too!
Optional Resort Selection
Changes to the selection screen allow you to select a country but leave the resort. This will then show an extra screen with a list of all resorts and the number of properties that match the rest of your selection criteria.
You can then select one of the resorts and you will be displayed with a list of all the properties at that resort. This makes it a little easier to restrict your search to a country and then flick back and forwards between the different resorts.
Special Offers
Another small change is the addition of the special offers section. Obviously this only appears against properties that have entered offers on the Ski Pad site, but if there are special offers then they now appear on the app as well. This section can be found at the top of the details page for every property that has an offer set up.
Issues
Unfortunately one thing that is bugging me is that after the update the app seems to crash. I’m not sure why, the database seems to get updated correctly but for some reason I cannot stop the crash. There could be a little more to the problem though as I did get a couple more crashes during the first few times I ran the app up after the update. Now though it seems to run fine. Maybe there is an issue with updating the database structure without updating the data currently stored in it? Worse case scenario you simply have to remove the app from your phone and install it again and then everything should be fine…
The App In Action
In case you haven’t come across the app before you should check out the promotional video for the app for more details:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/BnXpRpjBIzE]
This video is based around the previous version of the app so it doesn’t show off the new features…
Anyway if you have an iPhone then please give the app a try and give me some feedback… Good or bad…
Image: Pete O’Shea
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