Version 1.3 is now live. This version addresses a few OS 3.0 compatibility issues that popped up. You can grab it now from the iTunes store.

Please note: Due to a strange glitch when submitting the app, the About page of the “1.3″ version will say version “1.21.1″. If you see that, you are running the correct version. We are working with Apple to understand why it would not accept “1.3″ as a valid version, yet displays that version in the iTunes store just fine.

From the “no news” category of news, we have no update unfortunately since last week when the new OS 3.0 compatible version was uploaded. It’s currently listed as “In Review” on the iTunes Connect screen.

Our outstanding is that Apple is fairly backed up with the avalanche of updates and hopefully will be caught up soon.

In the meantime you may want to fire-up your iPhone simulator and check out some of the new UI treatments that are showing up in SVN trunk which will be part of the next release.

As always, we’ll post here as soon as it’s live.

Excited for iPhone OS 3.0 ? We certainly are !

Yesterday we submitted version 1.3 of the WordPress for iPhone app which includes a number of tweaks to make the app OS 3.0 compatible.

As soon as it’s live in the iTunes App store we’ll post an update.

The bigger UI changes we discussed earlier are well underway and will begin appearing soon in a future release.

Hi all!

John Bickerstaff here.  Among other things, one of the iPhone developers for WordPress.

We’re pleased to announce that the WordPress iPhone App (OS 3.0) beta is available for testing.  At this point, an XCode dev environment is necessary to compile and run the beta.

We’d love your feedback and (of course) appreciate hearing about any issues you find.

Please use SVN version 330 from Trunk as the version for testing.

Of course, for all things iPhone Dev, see http://iphone.wordpress.org/development/

Hi! I’m new here. I work for Clear Interactive. I live in Melbourne, Australia. I love great user experiences. I’m here to listen. I’ve brought some friends with me as well.

We’ve been talking with Automattic for some time now about the WordPress for iPhone application. About the project, the community and the passion behind it. We want the WordPress for iPhone application to be the best mobile blogging tool on the iPhone.

I’d like to invite you into the thought process currently going on inside our collective heads.

Thinking Out Loud

First impressions count, it’s what I’d like to focus on right now. When you open WordPress for the first time you’re greeted with this screen:

You have two options:

1. “Set up your blog”
2. “About WordPress for iPhone”

The second option is interesting, but I’m not sure why it gets equal billing on the home screen when all anyone wants to do the first time they open the application is to set up their blog.

The “Add Blog” screen should be shown by default if you haven’t already added one:

Speaking of which, the cursor should already be placed in the “Blog URL” field and the keyboard should be displayed. There shouldn’t be an option to cancel as the application is unusable without at least one blog present.

The “Save” button should be disabled until the “Blog URL”, “User Name” and “Password” fields have been filled in. They keyboards return key should say “Next” instead of “Done”, it should jump into the next field I need to fill in.

It should change to “Done” only when I’ve entered all the required fields. At the same time the “Save” button should become enabled. In fact the “Save” button should probably read “Done” as well. Something like this:

When I’m done, I want useful feedback. Currently there is a spinning icon in the top right hand corner where the “Save” button used to be. But the keyboard is still present unless I hid it while entering my details. For all intents and purposes this screen still looks like it’s in an editable state. Except the application doesn’t respond at all!  As a user, I require a clear indication of what is happening, otherwise confusion ensues, so we’ll fix that too.

After I click “Done” I’m back on the home screen. Why is that? Rather than adding another blog, it seems much more likely to us that you’ll want to start using the app to manage the blog you just added, so we’ll show the “Posts/Pages/Comments” screen instead.  You can add the rest of your blogs later.

Moving Forward

As you can see we’ve been doing a lot of thinking, scrutinising and playing with ideas. We’ve already started adding these changes to the Subversion repository in the user-interface-rewrite branch.

They say you need to walk before you can run, let alone fly. Right now we’re still crawling, but here’s a sneak peak into the changes that we’ve got planned for the future:

User Interface Overhaul

1. Home Screen
2. Adding a Blog
3. Editing a Blog
4. Removing a Blog
5. Change blog screen to use tab-bar navigation
6. Changing the way local drafts work and are represented

Comment Moderation

1. Activity Dashboard – Stream of consciousness for activity on a given blog
2. Ability to quickly approve/delete/mark as spam

Statefulness

1. Remember which blog I was working in. Go back to that blog when I restart the application

We’re Listening

While we’ve singled out these changes for the future, there’s every likelihood that you have other ideas. So while we’re thinking out loud, we would love for you to do the same. Add a comment, or post to the forums. We’re listening!

We’ve launched the WordPress for iPhone community forums.

Powered by bbPress and integrated with the WordPress.org registration system, these forums are where we discuss future development efforts and ideas, as well as help anyone who is having issues with the app or has questions about how to use it.

Please help spread the word to anyone who wants to get involved, and especially to anyone who is running into difficulties. Thankfully, most of the problems we’ve seen are easily corrected after reviewing the FAQ and known issues.

See you on the forums !

[ Visit iphone.forums.wordpress.org ]

This version fixes the image rotation issue and replaces the application icon with the right one. Please upgrade now.

We’ve fixed the photo bug in version 1.2, and also took care of a visual bug that some of you may have noticed – a squished application icon that made our beloved WordPress “W” look rather odd.  This version 1.21 is now “in review” in the app store.

I’ll post an update as soon as this version is live.

A bug that we identified during testing and believed to be one that wouldn’t present itself in the actual final build, has proven to be a real bug – you can read the ticket details here.

What essentially happens is that on Posts when you add a photo, if you are in portrait mode, the photo gets rotated in the published version of the post.  When in Landscape mode adding or taking photos get handled properly.  Photos that are added to Pages work just fine as well.

We are very sorry that this happened and are working on a fix that we will push out ASAP.

Go grab it !