TapLynx

You can download the latest version of TapLynx for iPhone here.

TapLynx 1.4.3 works with iOS SDK 4.2 — it requires the iOS 4.2 SDK, in fact, though it still builds apps that run on older OSes.

It’s otherwise the same as version 1.4.2. (We’ve been working on TapLynx for iPad, which is now in beta.)

Download here

The biggest new feature is the fact that you can now build against iOS 4 in Xcode 3.2.3.

Also,

* Added support for high resolution thumbnails, tab images, and other image assets that have @2x as part of the naming convention (per the new high resolution image support in iOS 4).
* Fixed the push notification bug where user’s notification choices weren’t taking.
* Dropped support for Quattro ads: we’re looking forward to adding support for iAds!
* Made the RSS parser more lenient.

And as always, if you have any questions or problems, please post to our Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/taplynx

This build fixes a bug where the post-to-Twitter screen could appear blank for some people. Download it here.

TapLynx 1.3.3 has been released! This version fixes one important bug: when running an app on iOS 4.0, the back button might not appear in article views.

Download it here.

We recommend updating your apps right away so that they work fine when iOS 4 is released (coming soon).

Important note about SDKs

You should still build your TapLynx app using the 3.1 or 3.2 SDK. Don’t build using the iOS 4 SDK yet. Because TapLynx uses third-party libraries for ads and push notifications, we have to get updated versions of those libraries for you before you can build using the iOS 4 SDK. We’re on the case.

For device builds, target iOS 3.0, so your app runs on 3.0 and up (including 4.0).

For simulator builds, target 3.1.2 or 3.1.3 (because of a bug in the simulator when targetting 3.0).

If you have questions, or run into trouble doing the build, please ask on the TapLynx Google Group.

TapLynx 1.3.2 is, as ever, free to download and try out.

Changes in 1.3.2 (since 1.3.1):

- Increased per-feed items limit from 40 to 150. (It was already 150 for photo galleries: now it’s 150 for all views.)

- NewsItemList_RightArrowImageName sets the image name for right arrow — only appears for folders, at least for now.

- Don’t put video icon in lower right of cell — center it vertically — when NewsItemList_ShowArticleEvenIfEnclosure is true. The old behavior was confusing.

- Set background color for photo gallery grid view of thumbnails via PhotoGallery_GridViewBackgroundColor.

(The only change in 1.3.1 was a crashing bug fix. Version 1.3 had a bunch of changes.)

PS Remember that you can go to TapLynx on UserVoice to post bug reports and feature requests and vote on them.

TapLynx 1.3 has been released! It’s free to download and try out.

Changes in 1.3:

Localizability

It only includes English strings, but it’s possible now to create other languages too.

Localization works the same as for any other Xcode project. English strings live in English.lproj.

To add a localization:

1. Ctrl-click or right-click on Localizable.strings.

2. In the window that appears, make sure the General tab is selected.

3. Add the bottom of the window, click Add Localization.

4. Select a language or type a language name.

5. Then find the LanguageName.lproj folder and edit the strings file.

Push notifications

TapLynx works with push.io to provide push notifications. To get push notifications for your TapLynx app, you sign up with push.io, then configure your app. Once you’re ready, you provide them your NGConfig.plist, so they can monitor your feeds.

See this page on the wiki for more details.

Also: If you’d like a page that allows users to turn on/off different notification types, add a tab of type push_notification_config with whatever title and TabImageName that you’d like. This will present each notification type you have setup with pushio along with a switch that the user can use to turn them off and on.

Image-flow

It’s a horizontal scrolling browser (instead of a vertical list view) that works for both articles and videos. Set the type of a tab to horizontal_browser.

It works best for a feed with large images or large thumbnails.

See the “Brad” tab in the sample app. (Brad’s the designer of NetNewsWire/iPad. I figured he wouldn’t mind my borrowing his feed for this.)

Email templates

Templates for emailing link and HTML: EmailLink_BodyTemplate and EmailHTML_BodyTemplate. They are just strings in NGConfig.plist (not separate files). Any literal n will be turned into a real line feed. The body is replaced by a [[body]] tag. You should put HTML in EmailHTML_BodyTemplate. (You might use these, for instance, to add a link to your app on the App Store.)

Misc. new features

You can now specify the section header title for folders in a news items list with NewsItemList_FolderGroupName.

Links in HTML of the form taplynx-opentab:tabIdentifier can now open a tab. The tab to open must have an identifier that you set in NGConfig.plist. The key is TabIdentifier.

Can hide dates in news list rows. NewsItemList_HideDates. Note, though, that turning off grouping by date is controlled separately, by NewsItemList_Group.

New key to hide captions in photo galleries: PhotoGallery_HideCaptions.

Now parses dc:creator in feeds. Treats it the same as author.

Bug fixes

Fixed bug with folders and navbar header images. They should appear/disappear properly now.

When the contents of a folder are displayed, the navigation bar now gets the Title as set in NGConfig.plist.

Fixed bug where EmailLink_TitleTemplate didn’t work to customize the email subject line.

P.S.

We’ve started using UserVoice — you can go here to report bugs, make feature requests, and vote up bugs and feature requests.

TapLynx 1.2 has been released. It is, as always, free to download and try out.

Changes in 1.2:

Performance — it’s faster and uses less memory. This is probably the last release for a while to focus heavily on performance. It’s important to get that foundation done: now we can build on it. One of the performance changes makes things faster for feeds that don’t support conditional GET. (But please please please use conditional GET.)

You can now use Flurry analytics. Documentation is here.

You can use Medialets analytics. Documentation is here.

You can set up system-authenticated feeds (but not per-used authenticated feeds, which I know some people still want). Documentation is here.

You no longer need to include Feeds.sqlite3 in your apps. TapLynx creates it automatically. (No harm if you forget and do include it: it’ll just be ignored.)

Fixed a bug where an updated feed would sometimes not show the updates until the next launch.

Fixed a couple very small memory leaks.

Fixed a crashing bug with BCResourceWebViewController (or other custom view controller) when a navbar background image was specified.

The thumbnail finder handles the weird case where a return or linefeed appears after an opening <img tag (instead of the space character you’d normally expect).

TapLynx 1.1.2 includes a few changes:

- A couple crashing bugs were fixed. One could happen with iPhone apps that use sub-folders; the other could happen if a news item is updated at the same time it’s being drawn in a list view.

- Several more performance enhancements were added, though they’re likely to be noticed only with apps with lots of feeds.

- Feeds are now downloaded from left to right, which makes sense as the leftmost-tab is usually the most important.

As always, TapLynx is free to download and try out.

We’ve been so pleased at the response to TapLynx — lots of people are using it to build iPhone apps. Today we’re happy to announce a new version and a new price.

First, the price: a TapLynx license is now $599, down from $3,499. We made this change in part because we’d had lots of people asking about pricing for non-profits and indie developers and in part because our recent developer survey taught us more about how contractors charge for building iPhone apps.

But the main thing was that we just want even more people to be able to use it. We think TapLynx is cool.

It remains free, as always, to download the SDK and try it out. You can run apps in the simulator and on an iPhone or iPod Touch — you don’t have to pay until you want to upload to the App Store.

About this new release

TapLynx 1.1 is all about performance. It’s faster and more efficient. The parts of the app that do the most work — downloading, parsing, storing news in the database, making thumbnails, caching images — have been rewritten and optimized.

It’s a smarter TapLynx under the hood.

Though there are plenty of other feature requests, lots of things we want to add, performance is something everybody could use, so we did that first.

We also made a small change to the watermark to make it easier to demo apps to potential clients: the watermark now appears a maximum of four times per app run. (The watermark appears only for non-licensed apps, apps running in demo mode.) We made this change to make it easier for TapLynx users to succeed.

That’s the scoop. You can download it for free and check it out. If you have any questions or feedback, let us know. And don’t forget you can follow TapLynx on Twitter.