Blog

Or search support forum

What's Global Moxie?

Global Moxie specializes in mobile design strategy and user experience for a multiscreen world. We offer consulting services, training, and product-invention workshops to help creative organizations build tapworthy mobile apps and effective websites. We're based in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more.

On Shelves

Books by Josh Clark

Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps

Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders

iWork ’09: The Mising Manual

Moxiemail

Enter your e-mail to receive occasional updates:

Big Medium 2 (Almost) Ready for Blast Off

Posted Aug 20, 2007

I had it on the launch pad. The countdown was ticking. Tourists were ready with their cameras. In the final moments, though, I decided to scrub the launch for today. Just a few too many glitches for comfort here at mission control. Expect to see some action in a couple of days.

I was hoping to set free the first release candidate for Big Medium 2 today. I've been aiming for August 20 for several weeks, and friends, I came mighty close. This weekend, I put the finishing touches on Big Medium's new built-in search, and it's been humming away, smart and fast, on my development server.

Turns out that building a decent search is a complicated affair, full of scoring algorithms, character-encoding conundrums, and the mathematics of language. Or more accurately: languages... lots of languages. I've managed to wrangle most of these details, but they've given rise to some subtle issues that need to be sorted out elsewhere in the app. All of this has made for an engaging stint of coding but, alas, also a slight delay.

The search engine polishes off the planned features for Big Medium 2.0; thus the release candidate, the first "I think it's done" beta version. I'll be looking for testers to give the new update a pounding for show-stopper bugs while I develop a few additional designs for the theme library. I expect that there will be a handful of release candidates to follow, each with a slate of bug fixes. If all goes well, I still expect the final release to be ready in October.

Stay tuned, true-believers, I expect that Big Medium will ease back onto the launch pad later this week.

Tags: ,

Want more? Recent blog entries...

Comments

2 comment(s) on this page. Add your own comment below.

Thomas
Aug 21, 2007 2:36am [ 1 ]

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I knew sticking around would pay off..

Btw.. will you be releasing the API docs as well for the release candidate?

Josh
Aug 21, 2007 2:55am [ 2 ]

I don't plan to finish the polished API documentation until the final 2.0 release or shortly afterward. In the meantime, though, most of the Big Medium modules do include quite a lot of POD documentation already. If you're eager to get started right away with your own plugins and custom code for Big Medium, check out the documentation at the bottom of the files in the moxiebin/Modules directory, or look at the files in a POD reader.

Each file's documentation describes the objects and methods available for each Big Medium class, but it won't give you the broad overview of how they all work together. And it lacks tutorials. All of that will come with the final API manual. But at least it's a start; you can dig in by checking out these major components:

  • BigMed.pm
  • BigMed/App.pm
  • BigMed/App/Web.pm
  • BigMed/Data.pm
  • BigMed/Format.pm
  • BigMed/Content.pm
  • BigMed/Plugin.pm

Add a Comment

Don't be shy.

(Use Markdown for formatting.)

This question helps prevent spam:

Download Big Medium
Try it free for 30 days, or buy to unlock.

Blown Away

“I’m blown away by Josh Clark’s deep understanding of the iPhone user experience.”
—Jürgen Schweizer, founder of Cultured Code, maker of Things iPhone app

“It’s rare to find a person like Josh Clark who speaks so intently to the topic of interface design and mobile devices.”
—John Maeda, president of Rhode Island School of Design

“If you have time to read only one book on what makes apps successful, it is Tapworthy by Josh Clark.”
—Andreas Sjostrom, manager of mobile solutions, Sogeti