Full Screen mode web-apps, a beautiful butterfly waiting to fly out

 

One of the best things in iPad and tablets are the magazine kind of apps. The pictures and other updates rendered so really well in the full screen and there’s no eating out of spaces by scrollbars, titlebars and menubars. It’s a kind of visual presentation for the user apart from the conventional stream based updates.

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Image Courtesy – http://flipboard.com/

Apple has learned this and introduced the full screen mode in Mac OS X Lion for most of their native applications. The developers can also leverage full screen mode to make their applications beautiful. But I am not so sure how this can impact the experience except few applications like iPhoto etc. 

Image Courtesy – http://apple.com

What I am talking is slightly different. It’s a browser’s perspective. Most of the browsers are already has full screen mode. But the web programmers are unable to make use of this change to present things in pretty good way. I’d really love to see my facebook updates in a full scape landscape without the help of any third  party applications. The photos, updates etc can be presented so well without the annoying left and right sidebars plus, the vacant area left on both sides meet the standard resolution requirements.

Even it’s not in full screen mode,  the best example would be NYTimes Google Chrome App. It’s simply brilliant and make use of the space available in any resolution. And they’ve a great amount of content to spread across the screens. When I am working with 1920×1280 resolution monitor, I really can’t appreciate the too much vacant space on maximize or turn in to full screen mode.

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Another example could be the Skype updates on Facebook. Though they’re limited their updates to a 3 column, but still it’s nice treat for the eyes and can get things so easily. This is practically impossible with the current rendering view of facebook.

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The browsers must provide and option for the web developers to leverage the full screen mode for their applications. Even this would be quite helpful for future touch based screen and the websites with Rich content to present it well to the user.

 

Tweetie acquired by Twitter – Twitter for iPhone

 

If you would ask me, which is my favorite twitter app in iPhone/iPod Touch. There’s only one answer “Tweetie”. There are thousands of Twitter apps in this webworld. Most of them has new features than Tweetie, but Tweetie Remained as Tweetie and the favorite app for iPhone. Once if you use, you will never leave it. You will feel $2.99 is not really too much for it’s experience.

Now twitter becomes more serious about mobile experrience and the smartphones are on boom. They’ve simply acquired Tweetie instead of creating a new one. Now it’s known as “Twitter for iPhone”. See the announcement from Twitter.

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren’s work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.


You can see full scoop here.