First Look: Neon Wallpaper for iPad
Newly "Beta 5 approved" according to AppVision Product Director Mark Chamberlain, Neon Wallpaper for iPad lets you create backdrops for your new device. As this video shows, you can combine elements of pictures and text to build your own personalized wallpaper. This, like so many App Store offerings, is going to be a "matter of taste" application. Either it does exactly what you want, namely to create strongly styled images, or it does not and you'll give it a pass.
The reason this video jumped out at me is how the AppVision developers took advantage of the iPad's large screen space to lay out a complex tool space. There's nothing really novel in terms of their choice of interactive elements (also called "controls") -- they are quite standard SDK offerings -- but the app showcases how many of them you can put onscreen at once while keeping the interface relatively uncluttered.
Is this an app that I'm dying to start using? Honestly, no. I did, however, appreciate the peek into how this workmanlike application made the jump into the iPad design space, and I thought that you might too. There are 9 million custom wallpapers in the wild, according to their marketing material (no word on actual install customer base) due to Neon Wallpaper, so who am I to pass a call on taste?
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Source: http://appvision.co.uk/
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Newly "Beta 5 approved" according to AppVision Product Director Mark Chamberlain, Neon Wallpaper for iPad lets you create backdrops for...
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beautiful 1024×1024 iPad wallpapers: http://www.coolipadwallpapers.com. enjoy them!
June 22 2010 at 1:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWe have a wealth of experience in creating high quality prints for the home and retail market.
thanks
http://www.createwallart.com/
@RDM - that was our initial thoughts. See the crop guideline toggles we created and square image in a very early version: http://bit.ly/9CWSOp (crop guidelines themselves not shown).
For some reason it didn't seem to work properly back then during our sim tests; the results were not as expected. I've just retried with our old code on the latest GM and it now works just fine (shakes head/wry smile; test code from 6 versions ago on latest beta - who knew?!). So you are indeed correct. However, the images produced by our servers and downloaded to the device are 1365x1024, so no loss in portrait (just crop); in 1.1 we *may* re-introduce the (now) working toggle and 'square' (the code is commented, not ripped out, so could update next week). It depends on how you look at it - is it better to only have a maximum of one orientation being cropped (and potentially none, if the device is predominantly used in landscape), or a maximum of two orientations being cropped (and definitely one, regardless of how it's used)?
We've got a web-based help popup in there, so we'll code that for user feedback on the subject.
MarkC
Why landscape for iPad wallpaper? Portrait mode seems the more likely aspect for most users. Curios choice...
March 30 2010 at 6:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe wallpaper itself rotates around fine when the device is rotated, it's just the app (at version 1.0) that doesn't support portrait (as mentioned earlier, that's coming in the next release). When the saved image is used as a backdrop, it rotates as expected. However, when the app does support portrait, it will still display the creation in landscape, and here's why:
The fact is, ANY wallpaper used on the iPad starts life (or should at least) in landscape mode and then, upon rotation to portrait, what is displayed as 768px high in landscape gets stretched to 1024px in portrait, with the sides being cropped accordingly. There is a portrait 'guide' toggle in the app so you can see what it'll look like in portrait mode (i.e. what will get cropped out).
Some people guessed it'd be 1024x1024 and crop accordingly for both rotations, but it doesn't work like that - the iPad upscales for portrait upon rotation from landscape.
@MarkC. iPad wallpapers are 1024x1024 as proven on the iPad simulator.
March 31 2010 at 1:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyiPadDevCamp NYC
April 16th-18th at AOL
www.ipad.eventbrite.com
GEEK OUT!
This is Mac. It's NOT just the end result that counts, but HOW you get there as well... The most successful apps for Mac are the ones that are intuitive and pleasing to use. The screenshot above shows an app that may be functional, but it's a mess...
I understand it's tough to fit the wallpaper preview on the same screen, because then you have some empty space at the top and to the left. Why not then make the app portrait only - preview at the bottom of the screen, and all the controls neatly grouped at the top...
In all fairness Benjamin, the iPhone version is a doddle to use, as is this, but the iPhone 'original' was refined over a number of versions. We have already got the code 85% ready for full rotation and will obviously be enhancing the application over time. We weren't quite happy with certain aspects of the portrait layout, so have deferred it until v1.1.
Feedback is crucial, so we appreciate yours. It has helped us out immenselt in the past, we've included many features requested by users of the iPhone/iPod touch versions (even so much as having a specific colour that someone once requested!), and we will continue to do so for this one.
Thanks, Mark
The makers of this app are trapped in 1995.
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