Ashes Blog

The day after my last post I found out that I am going to be a father. My wife and I cannot be happier! So I took a bit of time off from development of side projects. In February I made a comeback and in about two and a half weeks built a new app. So today I have two large announcements.

Let's Play with Fire

In two and a half weeks, I built a new triage app called Fire. I don't like that I spend as much time on my phone as I do. I prefer to do my reading at night. But there is new stuff all day. If I check the news on my phone, I get sucked in and 15 minutes later I realize that it wasn't just a quick check.

So Fire is different. Fire isn't a table-based app. You see one article at a time. It is gesture driven. Swipe through your articles. Toss an article if you won't read it. Tap and hold if you want to read it later. Of course, Fire also has a great reading view if you want to read the article in the moment.

This is not a replacement for Ashes. It's more of a different take on RSS. Ashes has the power, while Fire is all about reducing the amount of time you spend on your phone.

Ashes 1.5

I've started the next major update to Ashes. A few frequently requested features are coming, but the biggest part is a rewrite of the sync system. When Ashes was first built, I had just learned Objective-C. Many people asked how I sped up Ashes so much with each build. Simple, I got better.

In July I started a new job and with it started doing iOS development part of the time on the job. Needless to say, I've been learning a few things. Things that will bring performance galore to Ashes. Use Fire and you'll see what I mean.

So two features I'll announce today are full database sync and search. Since the start of Ashes, the app has only synced unread items. That is changing. And search will be a great way to find the things that are most important to you.

This is going to be a great year. I've got 5 months until I meet one of the most important persons in my life. Until then, I've got some apps to build.

That didn't go as planned. Sorry, Team Phoenix. I've been pounding away on Ashes, Prayrbox, and a couple other side projects that I'm not ready to announce yet, but largely I've been taking it easy at home.

But, working the last couple weeks I have brought Ashes 1.3 to completion and submitted it. I'm super excited to get this one in your hands. Performance is better than ever, the interface has been completely updated for iOS 7, and a couple of great new features have been added.

As I blogged a few months ago, Ashes 1.3 is iOS 7 only. I wanted to bring everything I could to it, so this was the only option.

So what's new? Three primary features: Keyboard Shortcuts, Favorites, and Background Fetching.

Keyboard Shortcuts

An iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard feels wonderfully natural. Only thing that separates it from a desktop experience is shortcuts. iOS 7 has made this much easier to support that ever before. A list will be coming shortly, but toggling an item's read status, saved status, and going between next and previous items are all supported along with some global shortcuts.

Favorites

Fever makes it easy to subscribe to an endless list of feeds without having another inbox. But sometimes we want to read everything from a specific feed. For me, I have a few news blogs and a few comics that fit this category.

Ashes 1.3 allows you to mark these feeds as Favorites. Favorites are synchronized between your devices. And...

Background Fetching

... use notifications. Ashes 1.3 keeps in sync without even being opened. Every time it syncs, it checks for new articles in your Favorites. When it finds one, you receive a notification. Never miss an important article again!

Available Shortly

Okay, so running towards submitting Ashes 1.2, as with any app, features need to be cut that weren't up to par with what I was aiming for. One was top secret and is being rebuilt with something special for iOS 7 and Ashes 1.3.

The other is Themes. I really hate dropping that one, but I've chosen to because Ashes 1.3 is getting a brand new interface and I'd like to use that to put the final polish on these beautiful themes.

But the great news is that Ashes 1.2 includes the ability to change the font to Helvetica and between small, medium, and large sizes. Oh, and the off-white that I loved so much? Gone. I don't like it anymore, so it is gone. That'll make a few people more than happy.

Hey Team Phoenix! The last two months have more or less involved a lack of personal projects for me. Most of that was on purpose. I got a new job that was 20 minutes from home, as opposed to an hour and a half, and picked up archery. Yeah, you read that right. After two months of shooting around 5-10 hours a week, I'm grouping nice at 30 yards.

But, now I'm back. I've had my hands back in the code over the last week and am finalizing Ashes 1.2. The plan is to submit this weekend. This will include many big fixes, speed boosts, Share Anywhere editor, and themes. It'll also play nice with iOS 7.

Following that, my focus will move over to Ashes 1.3 which will be iOS 7-only and feature a slick, updated interface. It'll also bring a couple new features. My goal is to submit 1.3 within two weeks of 1.2.

Hey team! I've had to keep my mouth shut due to other obligations over the last month. I took a job offer 3 weeks ago, and will be starting at eTecc Interactive on Monday. As such, I've had to put side-projects on temporary hold as I transition out of my current position at Higi. That included Ashes.

Ashes 1.2 still has a few days of dev time left, and I fully intend to finish it up in the coming weeks and submit it. I feel bad getting to play with all these new features every day and not sharing them with you. So please hold on and the update will hit very soon.

Ashes 1.2 is about a week away from submission, currently in the bug fix and clean-up phase. I'm super excited to get this version released, as it brings a lot of power and cool features that I'm sure that you'll all love.

iOS 7

So today's dev time was all on performance and tuning. The app is speedy in most areas, but the sync still has a few hiccups. This evening I focused on a couple areas that took the longest and sped it up between 5x and 10x. There are two other areas that need improvement in the sync that I'll likely tackle tomorrow.

Also, I found the slow down that made launching the app take a bit more time than I'm comfortable with. The sidebar can take 5-20 seconds to build if you have unread item counts displaying or read items hidden. If you have neither, the app would launch in .3-.5 seconds. Yeah. So I'm working to offload this to a thread and currently have a working build that launches in .5 seconds.

So I already announced a Night Mode was coming. Well, I thought I'd share a quick look at that and a third theme.

Hey guys! Ashes 1.1.1 just hit the Store, which is mostly bug fixes, but I thought I'd let you guys know that I'm hard at work on 1.2, which will be a large update. Actually, it'll be bigger than 1.1 was. It is about 30% done so far, with most of the little things knocked off the list already. I'm very excited to get this one out.

Have I mentioned that I love you guys? The feedback you provide and the passion you guys have for this app— and the Fever° community as a whole— is just amazing. I have gotten a number of Request Lists from you guys, so I thought I'd be transparent on what is coming to Ashes 1.2 because of you guys requesting it.

Font-Size Changing

This had been requested after the 1.0 came out and at first I said no. I pick the right size and you enjoy it. But then a guy responded in a different light: it's an accessibility thing. If you didn't know, I worked hard to make Ashes 1.0 accessible to blind users with the help of Maccessibility and care extremely for this cause. So I changed my mind. But I'm doing it my way.

Night Mode

I've got something special planned for this. It too was an early request after 1.0 came out. Let's just say that this will be awesome.

Changing Sort Order and Show Read Setting from List

I said before the 1.0 came out that this was a "set once and forget it" feature. Well, I guess for many people it isn't. So I changed my mind and am building something I think you'll love.

Pull-to-Refresh

The beta had pull-to-refresh until the very end. Then I pulled it because it stopped making sense to me. Well, it's coming back and it's gonna be great.

Miscellaneous

Log out, Helvetica, Toggle Automatic Reload, Version Info and Support button.

If you have requests, post a blog article and think here. Then post a link to your article with the tag #ashesrequestlist.

PS

I've got a short list of key features I am going to building for Ashes 1.2. Obviously, performance and speed will continue to get better too. The only feature that I'm ready to speak on today is a full, in-app Share Anywhere Manager. This was planned before the release of 1.1 to be a feature in 1.2, for those that didn't figure that was coming. The reason for it not being in 1.1 was because I wanted to test the water first. The water's good, so it's coming.

So here's what I want from you: repost this on Tumblr or on your own blog with your wish list. Keep it short and simple. Sharing services are allowed on the list, but I'd like to see bigger things and ideas. Then post the link on Twitter or ADN with the tag #ashesrequestlist.

I've seen quite a few Share Anywhere links come across ADN and Twitter, and while I am working on a directory, I thought I'd share a few.

Dart by @halfadeckshort

Kippster

Fever Subscribe by @janniswiese

Gmail by @endonend

OmniFocus by @pittman

Pinner by @rolyreyes

Poster by @JeffBenjam

As you can see, adding the new menu item is a relatively simple affair once you have the necessary URLs to add. After the item has been added, all it takes is a simple tap on the sharing menu while viewing a feed to make it go to work. So there you have it, inter-app communication that’s completely dynamic and customizable.

Let’s talk sharing. The first thing today that any RSS app needs is sharing. The second thing is sharing. So is the third. It’s hard to focus on new features when you are just adding sharing services. ADN, Pinboard, Delicious, etc. The list is endless and someone out there considers each and every service to be a necessity. They cannot live without _______.

Unfortunately, Apple isn’t much help. Outside of Twitter and Facebook, it is up to us to build it. But Apple does have something called openURL. A developer can create a URL to access their app, communicate with their app, and much more. So Ashes 1.0 did this with Tweetbot, Buffer, Twitterrific, Instapaper, and Readability. Ashes 1.1 brings Pinbook, Netbot, Felix, and Riposte.

So instead of adding APIs— and login interfaces— for services, adding apps takes mere minutes. It’s great. What about Pushpin? How about Evernote? I love ________! I want to share anywhere!

I hear ya. But I say no. A lot. 5% of users want this? No. 7% this? No. 67% that? Okay.

So today I am saying yes. Yes to everyone. Today you can use any app you want with Ashes. I call it Share Anywhere, and I think you are gonna love it.