Hi all, I've been tinkering around with a 'mobile' version of Simple Invoices since I picked up my iPhone last week. (yeah yeah, I know you've heard enough already!)
Anyway, I've got some mock up screen grabs here:
http://gallery.me.com/jlmandy/100074
the one's marked "old" were my original efforts at small modifications to the original theme with accordion front menu, etc.
The others are based on a framework mainly for iPhone/iPod touch...
The goal isn't to have full SI functionality, but certainly most of the 'common' stuff you use.
Create Invoices, Manage Invoices, some reports, options, etc. Perhaps even add new customers (considering you might be out on the job and need to add a new customer)
I'd love some feedback, there's a long way to go yet. I'm not the worlds best coder, I'm really just a hack.
The original modified theme would have worked fine, but it's just too slow, and this new style is almost identical to the iPhone's very own menu system.
I'm hoping for some help with it, especially integrating the SI (smarty) back end.
re common stuff - i agree -- i think of it as something similar to ipod Vs iTunes --- ipod is just a client for iTunes and can only do limited stuff with the library - ie. just play etc.. --- if you want to do more serious stuff to your music library you need to do it in iTunes
we can just provide the absolutely required features for a mobile Simple Invoices user - my thoughts are - create invoice - using walk through / wizard thing usign webapp.net -- ie step 1 - select billler, step 2 select customer etc.. - a mini manage invoices where you can view a cut down version of invoices -- process a payment, email invoice as PDF - mini reports -- basically only the ones you would need when your at a clients place -- list of outstanding invoices for x client -- their balance -- etc.. - and maybe add customer
i see the main selling point as 'email an invoice as PDF from your iphone'
re help - count me in!!
- I think the most important thing we need todo first is to create a mockup using webapp.net and work out the look and feel - ie how create an invoice will work etc.. - this will be the hardest bit - once we got how it will work and look then should be easy enough to code it up and properly integrate this into Simple Invoices
let me know your thoughts - also i'll add you into svn commit so we can work on this together
I don't have an iPhone, or even a phone that has the internet, and this functionality still excites me. (Mostly because i will upgrade eventually...) So, with that said, i think you should go for it! But i do wonder why you are aiming to chop down the functionality of SI when it is already quite straightforward with how it runs. Why not include all the functionality from the start? I would guess that when new features are added (which is pretty much inevitable, and will happen), is it going to be more challenging to adapt it to the iPhone/Mobile version using an already simpler version of SI?
re chop down functionality - this reason is that many of the pages with Simple Invoices don't work/ or are not immediately suitable to mobile/iphone user -- ie. i would assume that setup type stuff ie.. defaults/invoice preferences etc.. would be done by a user on their PC and only creating/view invoices, some reports, add customers etc would be used via mobile/iphone
that said - that will just be the immediate future of the iphone version - given enough time i will try and rework all of Simple Invoices to be iphone friendly
well actually the iPhone's web browser is fully functional, it's not a chop-down browser, apart from lacking 'flash' support. It's very good. It would just be nice to have SI setup with 'layer style' page changes, like the iPhone's general layers/screens.
I've done a little more work, and it seems that in order to load in module info (page jumps) as actual scrolling layers, it all needs to be done in XML, and loaded into the layer "asynchronously" *sigh*
re fully functional browser - yep - just theres a few pages that should be optimised for iphones -- ie creating an invoices - a wizard would be better -- manage pages --- need to be reworked -- quick view of invoice to be simplified -- and a few other pages to have wizard -- etc.. via the xml stuff you mentioned - i can sort those out where required
just was meaning that we can start small with the absolutely required features then optimise the remaining as we go
Hey Guys, I'm just curious to know how it's going with the iPhone revisions. I just learned about SI and am working on getting it to work on my webserver right now. Things are looking great as everything needed was up to date on my server already (THANK YOU MEDIACATCH.com) except for a strange pdf export issue (still sorting that). I am a freelance sound engineer and it would be AMAZING to be able to generate and email pdf invoices to my clients on the spot. I am often asked to do some form of audio work on the spot and need to invoice straight away. I'd love to do some testing if you needed it.
re iPhone - works going a little slow - im going to work on a version of Simple Invoices to work on phones smaller than iphone first - basically a text version of Simple invoices stripped of stuff not needed
this will run on iphone fine - but the iphone specific version will come after that - using the very handy webapp.net.free.fr
i'll upload a demo of the smaller version of Simple Invoices when its ready for general testing
wow, thats brilliant, it's much like WAn but no Java, and very very simple. It would be extremely easy to get SI running with that framework. WAn would probably be lower bandwidth as it uses pre-loaded layers for the most part, but this would be light enough I reckon!
only a few pages converted but you can see what im up to
once ive selected which pages to do in a mini version - should be easy enought to port to the iphone-universal webapp thing - note doing all for now as not all pages make sense to small phone users
