Dashcode
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iBooks Author Challenge: Adding spelling quizzes to iBooks
Dave Caolo and I were chatting this morning about iBooks and spelling. "It's not my daughter's favorite subject," he said, "and I'm looking for a way to make it more appealing to her." He asked if there could there be any way to incorporate spelling quizzes into iBooks via Author. The answer is, unfortunately, not clearly yes. That's because iBooks Author assumes that all interaction will be by multiple choice. That means you can create interactions to choose from common misspellings and from homonyms, but can't solicit freeform text entry. That gives rise to the kind of interaction you see below. The shortcomings are apparent. For example, you cannot define any item that isn't tied to a specific location (so you can't create a pool of misspellings without destinations). If the reader switches the order of the two misspelled words (here Tale and Flour) those are marked wrong as well. So I hopped into Dashcode and built a widget that would solicit a correctly spelled word and embedded it into an Author project as follows. This turned out to be a failure. Although the embedded audio prompt worked fine (albeit in a separate interactive element), widgets do not run in-line and iBook's interpretation of the widget hid my embedded checker button. This might be due to my subpar Widget construction, or I may simply be running into iBooks 2 limitations. So how can you expand iBooks for spelling? This post tells you where I am to date. If you have a better solution, drop a note into the comments. And if you are an expert Dashboard widget engineer, please ping me offline. I'd really love to test out the possibilities and limitations of this tech.
Dashcode beta expired on schedule
Niclet sends a note that yes, Dashcode's December 2006 v0.9 beta did in fact expire as expected last night. That sound you heard around 12:01 am was actually widget developers everywhere crying out in pain.Well, not exactly everywhere, as apparently there is still a working version of Dashcode in the Leopard developer beta given out at WWDC. And of course all of us will be able to get our hands on the official release of Dashcode when Leopard comes out in October. So cry not, developers-- the real thing is only months away.
Xray your code with new dev tool
A few tipsters have dropped us notes (thanks!) that on Apple's Developer Tools page, there's a new tool. Along with Xcode and Dashcode, there's a new, very pretty app called Xray. The flavor text itself says the app takes "interface cues from timeline editors such as GarageBand," so what we're looking at here seems to be a realtime application tester and analyzer.The three windows in the screenshot show stats on "Network Traffic," "CPU Load," and "Reads/Writes," and Apple also says devs will be able to track user events and even the OpenGL video driver. Looks like it will bring all the new tracking tools and analysis junk (technical term) together in a browsable, graphical interface, which means an easier time for devs, which means better apps for all of us. Groovy!
Nice Dashcode tutorial video
Dashcode is the software by Apple that makes it super easy to create widgets. It's going to be bundled with Leopard, but members of the ADC can download the beta right now. Michael at Apple Gazette created a video tutorial on making an RSS widget with Dashcode (above). It's a clear walkthrough of a very simple process.I've played with the beat a bit and it's fun. I'm looking forward to the 1.0 release with Leopard.
Create your own widgets with Dashcode
Our Download Squad buddies have a wonderful how-to on creating your own Dashboard RSS widgets with the Dashcode Developer beta. If you've ever wanted to know how those clever widgets make their way to your Dashboard, now you can be your very own auteur de desktop.If you're looking for a first project, we can make a humble suggestion -- of course, you could just download everyone's favorite RSS widget and save the aggravation.
Dashcode Developer Beta Released
Apple has released to developers (and all ADC members) a beta of the upcoming Dashcode widget development environment which will be included in Leopard. Dashcode will allow developers and lay-users to create custom widgets from a set of pre-defined templates such as Photocast, Countdown, and RSS. The Dashcode beta is available as a free download from the Developer Connection website, and will expire on July 15th.[via UneasySilence]
Dashcode and the art of icons
I'm a sucker for a good icon story (what can I say, I'm a geek). Here's a little story that uses Apple's icon for DashCode and its similarity to an unreleased widget IDE as a starting point to talk about how one makes a great icon. Fascinating read (and yes, the author's first language isn't English so forgive him, however, feel free to continue mocking my grammar and spelling).
Flickr Find: Screenshots of Dashcode?
TUAW reader Glenn has sent us a link to these pictures that purport to be Apple's Dashcode. What's Dashcode? The rumored Widget development application that many say Apple is working on. If these screenshots are legit it would seem that Dashcode is almost ready for prime time.
