Soon we’ll pass 3 million downloads of WPtouch, the most popular and easy-to-use mobile plugin for WordPress. We expect to cross the mark sometime in the next few weeks!

To celebrate we’re giving away a 32GB iPhone 4S in your choice of white or black!

We’ll draw a winner and make an announcement on Twitter and our blog. If you’re the selected winner, we’ll contact you on Twitter.

Good luck to all entrants!

The contest is now closed. We’ll draw the winner soon.

*Prize is available to North American and EU residents only.

Steve as posted on the Apple website

When we first developed WPtouch it was directly because of the iPhone. We’d owned Apple products for many years, and they’ve always been devices that helped us develop, create and explore new technologies. However when released in 2007, the original iPhone was different altogether.

The iPhone (and its amazing mobile Safari web browser) opened a doorway to ideas for presenting a WordPress website on a mobile device without some of the heavy, restrictive constraints that previously existed with things like WAP.

And as we worked on WPtouch with the iPhone, we were awed and fascinated with the iOS user interface. It became clear that what we really wanted was to have our sites look as if they belonged on the device.

We just knew this device was going to change mobile devices and the mobile landscape forever. And so we ran with WPtouch, and were inspired by the polish, passion for excellence & high standards that both Steve Jobs and Apple have always put at the forefront of their business.

The iPhone wasn’t just Steve’s idea; nor any of the other brilliant and game-changing technologies to come out of Cupertino. Though Steve had a way about him— and so too, do Apple products. It’s the way they do what they do that makes them so endearing to their users, so prolific and unique among their competitors.

Without the iPhone there would likely be no BraveNewCode. Without Apple products our day-to-day working life would be vastly different. In no small way has Steve Jobs touched our lives— and we owe a debt of gratitude and much of the sources for our success to his career.

Today we wanted to wish the Jobs’ family and friends, along with the entire team at Apple our condolences, and to offer a huge thank you to Mr. Jobs for a career that gave so much to the world of technology & liberal arts.

Everyone knows that Steve changed the world in many ways forever.
We just wanted to acknowledge and share that he’s changed ours, too.

~Dale Mugford,
President & Co-Founder,
BraveNewCode

WPtouch Pro on iPad - Landscape View

Another Giant Leap Forward for WordPress

WPtouch Pro^TM has gained worldwide attention providing unique, rich and beautiful mobile experiences for website visitors on touch-based smart phones.

With WPtouch Pro 2.1, that great experience has been redefined and brought to the iPad^TM, with a user-interface tailored for the iPad experience.

Nowhere else can you find the sophistication, tremendous usability and feature-set for working with iPad and WordPress websites.

Since WPtouch Pro on iPad is a part of WPtouch Pro 2.1 (starting at only $49), you get incredible value, great features, product support & future upgrades— all at an extremely competitive, affordable price.

WPtouch Pro on iPad - Portrait View

Native layout, effects & animations together with a familiar look and feel on iPad ensure visitors to your website instantly know how to navigate and access content and participate in discussions.

Tap, Touch & Slide

The first thing you’ll notice when using WPtouch on iPad is the incredible responsiveness, speed and native feel. It really does make your website feel like a native application on iPad. And because it does all this visitors feel instantly familiar, comfortable and pleased to browse and enjoy your website.

A Focus On What’s Important

We’ve looked at the things people want most out of an iPad browsing experience with a WordPress website, and worked for months to do our best and deliver them all:

• Fast webpage load times
• Browse and navigate things like blog content, pages, and menus quickly and easily
• Have access to Search, Contact and Message features in convenient ways
• Save and share content on popular social networking services
• Be able to comment and reply quickly and easily in website discussions

Website Owners

And we’ve also looked at what website owners & administrators want and need out of iPad support.

Because WPtouch Pro on iPad works with the WPtouch Pro you know and love, it saves considerable time and worry in setting up and administrating its presentation.

With WPtouch Pro 2.1, you can serve a rich, powerful smartphone mobile experience plus a fantastic iPad experience at the same time, quickly, easily and efficiently.

Discussion Is A Joy

Comment discussion in WPtouch Pro 2.1 on iPad is simply a joy. It’s incredibly easy for visitors to leave comments and replies to other comments with our fly-in comment form. And since comments are posted and added in real-time, discussion is immediate, fast and simple for visitors.

We Belong Together

WPtouch Pro on iPad works seamlessly with your WPtouch Pro mobile theme. When you configure options for your mobile theme which make sense to share with your iPad theme, WPtouch Pro intelligently serves those same options on iPad.

Settings like: menus, pages, icons, backgrounds, font faces, thumbnails, advertising, Web-App Mode & more are all handled automatically on iPad effortlessly.

What a Good Child Theme!

WPtouch Pro 2.1 also supports child themes out-of-the-box.

It’s easy to customize your WPtouch Pro mobile and iPad experiences even further at the theme level, non-destructively. Whether you’re tweaking things on your site or producing a great experience for clients, WPtouch Pro 2.1 has you covered.

Copying as a child theme is just a click away in the admin panel, and you’re ready to starty customizing the look and feel of WPtouch Pro’s mobile and iPad themes easily.

The “One More Thing”:
Also with Web-App Mode Support

Use the new iPad support in our themes to offer a rich, friendly web experience for your iPad visitors, including harnessing our unique Web-App Mode feature which allows visitors to save your site to their iPad home screen and launch it in full-screen application mode, without mobile Safari.

And just like WPtouch Pro’s Web-App Mode on iPhone and iPod touch, you can choose a custom loading image in full 1024×768, set the status bar color and enable things like multitasking persistence (WPtouch Pro remembers what the visitor last viewed on your site).

Available Now

WPtouch Pro 2.1 is available now, and is acfree update for all existing customers.

Interview

Dale Mugford, co-founder of BraveNewCode recently sat down with Wayne MacPhail, Canadian journalist and professor to discuss the 2.1 update.

Coffee & Code

After several months, thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands of minutes, we’re close enough to WPtouch 2.0 Pro to announce pricing.

Premium Community

Truth be told it’s actually been difficult for us to make the decision to throw weight behind a premium version of WPtouch. We have always loved the spirit of the open-source community, and agree with the software freedoms associated with works attributed under a GPL license. And we’ve also been behind freely available plugins for our favourite publishing platform. Yet for those with successful and popular WordPress plugins, the support, update, maintenance and upkeep for such a plugin become hefty. Without financial support, they are impossible to sustain effectively, and enjoyably.

There’s a growing community of premium solutions available for platforms like WordPress, and with WPtouch Pro we’re throwing our hat into the ring.

Unlike many other paid plugins, WPtouch Pro is neither small or limited in its functionality, nor is it a premium plugin that’s come out of nowhere— people who purchase WPtouch 2.0 Pro know the quality, time, dedication and style of the work we do, based on the freely available WPtouch 1.x that’s been out for almost 3 years, and our other popular WordPress plugin, WordTwit.

Without Further Ado: Pricing

All figures in Canadian dollars (CAD).

• The price for a single license of WPtouch 2.0 Pro is only $49
• The price for a 5-pack of licenses is only $99
• The price for an unlimited, developer license is only $199

Licenses, among other things offer:
- Free automatic upgrades through a major version (all 2.x releases)
- Pro Support on bravenewcode.com/support
- Access to Docs, Knowledge Base articles
- Receive the new themes that ship with 2.x as a part of automatic updates

Note: Free direct support for WPtouch 1.9 is being discontinued. Free support will end 30 days after the release of 2.0. The Support forums will still include the community forums for 1.9 so users can share tips, and find existing answers to commonly asked questions.

Compare

Compare WPtouch Pro pricing with most other premium plugins and we think you’ll find it quite reasonable (it’s probably one of the cheapest premium plugins, really).

And for all of what WPtouch 2.0 Pro brings to the table we think it’s an incredible offer as far as premium plugins go.

Beta 2

We’ve been making good progress with beta 1 of WPtouch Pro, and plan on pushing out beta 2 early next week, likely Monday. For those in the beta program, expect a 1.4 update tomorrow which should shore up the existing issues in beta 1, and we’ll be working aggressively over the weekend to add a few more things for beta 2.

Beta 2 is an important milestone because it will mark the finished Skeleton template, complete with web-app mode, enabling those of you most interested in custom theming to get to work with what will essentially be the shipping version of the Skeleton.

More Info

You can get more information on WPtouch Pro, what’s included, feature set overviews and sign-up to be notified when its available by visiting bravenewcode.com/wptouch-pro.

Steve Jobs reveals the iPad

Apple announced the iPad today, and at first I have to say I was underwhelmed, though just hearing the chatter regarding the launch on Gizmodo, Twitter, Ars Technica and other tech news sites at the time.

This evening I took some time to watch the keynote video posted by Apple, reviewing the whole 1+ hour love-in of Apple’s ‘Latest Creation’. Afterwards I had a few new takeways and a few more positive thoughts about the device, its potential, and where BraveNewCode might fit in with its impact.

Though I still remain a little skeptical about the net worth of a device like this in my own life, I think for a good many others this might be something that really helps push computing to a new level in their lives, and brings great web content to that many more people.

Capabilities

It sure seemed to me that the full breadth of the device’s power and ‘Magic’ won’t be understood or known until it’s held in the hands, much like the iPhone for many people. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve handed my iPhone over to who, in just a few minutes start grasping what all the chatter is about. I think the same will hold true for this device, and over time as more 3rd party apps are built that harness its potential its wow factor will increase in multitudes.

mobile(BIG)Safari

Safari is touted as ‘the world’s best browser’ by Apple, and in testing for things like the Acid 3 test, it does indeed stack up as such. So what would the best browser in the world feel like on a large, crisp touch display? I’d have to think it’d be pretty nice, and the demos given by Jobs surely do give the impression that that’s the case.

So while it dwarfs the power of mobileSafari on the iPhone and really does put the power of the internet in your hands (minus, of course, Flash) I was left thinking about whether something like WPtouch would be at all desirable on a device like this.

WPtouch Possibilities

There are no doubt many who will think that the attention given to mobile website customizations and solutions (of which WPtouch belongs) do not or need not apply on a device such as this. I think they’re wrong, or at least, not thinking about it as creatively as they could.

Just as there’ll be revolutions for iPad apps created by iPhone app developers that are already making great apps for the iPhone and iPod touch (cough, Loren Brichter) I strongly think there’s a whole new breed of touch browsing customizations that can be brought to websites which not only enhance the the experience of browsing a website, but also improve upon it, taking advantage of the intuitive input method that is touch. A great example of this occurred during Phil Shiller’s demonstration during the keynote of the touch-specific gestures and capabilities built into Apple’s new iWork suite on the iPad. The way that a user is able to perform certain tasks on the iPad are far more intuitive, simple, powerful and fast when compared to the mouse/keyboard input paradigm.

There are of course things that are more difficult on a device like the iPad, or iPhone. In these cases thoughtful consideration about how to reduce or eliminate these barriers will enhance and improve a user’s experience of a website or web application, and minimize the barriers to e-commerce, great content, and so forth.

So with these ruminations in mind I think that BraveNewCode is ideally positioned to look at what these kinds of improvements and advantages might look and feel like. Because we love WordPress so much (just like you probably do, too) we think that adding unique and powerful support for this new breed of web browsing and publishing devices is a must for the active community of WordPress users who will likely be iPadding in the near future.

The Waiting Game

But for now, we’ll all just have to wait a few months before we can get our hands on one, or settle for dabbling with the latest SDK.

WPtouch 1.9.3 was also released, and brings with it a new feature and several bug fixes as well.

In 1.9.3 you can now choose to disable Ajax comments as the default method for commenting. We think Ajax comments are great (especially on a mobile device), but they bring with them some issues, and don’t always work right on every install or with every other plugin, so we’ve added this feature as a failsafe for those who’ve been reporting issues.

Other bugs were fixed pertaining to stability and javascript, the admin, and more.

We wanted to get some of the lingering issues resolved before completing and releasing the Skins features, as well as languages support, both of which we feel we’re in the clear to add so look for those to come over the next little while.

As always you can leave feedback about any of our free, open-source WordPress plugins in our Support Forums.

The way WordPress upgrades plugins is out of our control- so when you upgrade through the admin each time a plugin is moved out of the plugin folder, and the new one unzipped into it while the old is deleted.

What we can control is the creation of a folder for WPtouch in the WordPress uploads folder, which won’t be touched by WordPress, even when you upgrade WordPress itself.

With WPtouch 1.8 you’ll be able to upload your custom icons (securely) and select & activate them- and even delete them! And each time we release a new update you’ll never have to worry about your custom icons disappearing again.

We’ve also worked on hardening WPtouch a little and fixing some more bugs, so we think it’s a great update for everyone.

Look for it soon.

If you’ve downloaded 1.7-1.7.4, please update to 1.7.5 to fix the issues identified post-release.

First of all, a big thanks to everyone who posted in the comments, left us tweets and mailed in to report on the state of WPtouch 1.6 and the kinds of bugs they experienced & features they’d like to see— your feedback is invaluable to us.

We’re driving hard toward the big 2.0 release, which will see some remarkable changes, including (finally) localization for international users and themes. WPtouch 2.0 will ship with 3 default themes to choose from, to further customize your site’s appearance on the iPhone, iPod touch, Android and soon, Blackberry Storm.

We’ll also be adding a small documentation guide for aspiring designers and developers to work on their own WPtouch themes, which we’ll index and provide for download for free on the website. To stimulate some growth here, we’ll be having a contest with some good prizes for those who create some stellar themes. It’ll be a great time for WPtouch users the world over.

WPtouch 1.7.5

We considered issuing a small maintenance release to fix a couple of missed bugs with 1.6, but instead decided to hold off as they weren’t widespread and turn our focus to continuing to add features alongside solving pesky issues.

Below is the complete changelog for 1.7.5:

• Added option to do GZIP compression
• Added ability to choose if WPtouch or regular version of your site is shown first
• Fixed WP login/out button bugs
• Added login/out auto-detect for WP 2.7 or pre-WP 2.7 sites
• Fixed loading path issue that caused drop-down menu button to fail
• Added choice between alphabetical or page order sorting of the drop down menu
• Added clock icon
• Minor admin fixes & changes (+ better Mozilla browser support)
• Fixes for categories drop-down menu (now shows post #’s)
• Automatic detection & support for Peter’s anti-spam plugin
• Built-in support for Adsense in posts
• Moved Stats tracking box beside Advertising Options
• Better WordPress version support detection
• More refined image auto-sizing with WP added images & galleries in posts / pages
• Fix for WordPress shortcodes appearing in excerpts
• Changed how WPtouch shows switch links
• Auto-adjusting width/height for MobileSafari plugin objects (YouTube, Quicktime)
• 1.7.1: Fixed re-direct bug when viewing default theme from mobile device
• 1.7.2: Fixed missing Android support
• 1.7.3: Fixed broken login link on some installations
• 1.7.4: Fixed a warning that occurred when multiple gzip handlers were enabled

Download

Feel free to head on over to the WPtouch page to download the new version, or use the auto-update mechanism in your WordPress admin to install it. As always, we love to hear feedback from our users, and will continue to add new features and functionality going forward.

What’s Next?

We’re working on better Android support, built-in tie-in with WordTwit & twitter, localization, themes & more. Stay tuned.

After four weeks with the world’s most advanced computer, I can safely say I’m impressed, and have not, in several years, had such a delightful courting period with a computer. That’s not to say this review won’t uncover some of the machine’s flaws and just give it a 10/10 that wouldn’t be just. But it will undoubtedly be mostly positive, and I’d prefer to highlight the surprise features and standout benefits the machine has shown of itself more than just reviewing specs & comparisons with other machines (those are best left to Macworld and Ars Technica).

Better Late Than Never

All was not perfect initially, there were some hang-ups thanks to UPS’s less than stellar delivery service. In short, the package was missing my full address in their system (how), was put on wrong delivery vehicles, and ended up getting to my door late.

Consequently I wanted to relay the epic and stressful story to an Apple rep, and ended up speaking to a very kind woman by the name of Glenda who understood the frustration I went through, and offered me a very reasonable credit to help ease my pain (and financial loss due to downtime), which was above and beyond what I thought I might end up as an outcome in this situation.

Hot Diggity No More

One of the most surprising ‘features’ of the new MacBook Pros are the cool demeanorthey procure- I haven’t been able to drive surface or CPU temperature sanywhere nearwhat they once were on previous Intel-based Apple laptops. Even while multitasking (including encoding a 1.5GB video file), I barely and I mean barely managed to hear the fan running. Not only does the machine feel confidently solid in the hands, but it gives off “a sense of confident computing” by laughing at the idea of breaking a sweat to perform some pretty intensive tasks. Of course the 4GB ram upgrade I gave it probably helps with that.

Glassy Glossy Display

A lot has been made made of the new glass-covered, glossy displays on the MacBook Pro or rather, thelackof a matte alternative. For photo and web professionals who rely on color-accurate display work, the new glassy/glossy displays cause difficulties. That said, there are ways to use color palettes to offset the difficulties glossy displays present, and for someone like me, I simply have another computer which has a matte display that I do the color work on instead. Other than the possible color issues, the new displays are gorgeous. Coupled with the bright LED backlight, the display delivers rich colors clearly, while the glass does not suffer from tremendous glare problems as speculated.

Speedy Gonzales!

With a very respectable Intel Core 2Duo 2.4GHz processor, 1.07GHz front side bus & 4GB of RAM running at the same speed, it’s safe to say this baby flies. I’ve been happily running Safari, Mail, iCal, Photoshop CS3, Coda, CSSEdit, Transmit, iTunes, NetNewsWire, iChat, Twitterific, Address Book, Camino, & Yojimbo without pause or even a sense of difficulty…. oh! I almost forgot and I’m running VMWare Fusion with Windows XP (768MB of system ran, two processors for the VM), too!

WiFi Heaven

Though much of the computing world has yet to catch up, this machine now lets my household run our Airport Extreme in 802.11n-only mode, affording a good chunk of extra speed and bandwidth for the files flying around here. Previously Sara’s 1st-gen MacBook could only harness at best the power of an 802.11a connection, which crippled the Extreme’s true power. Now, all of our computers are n-capable and the noticable difference, (especially in the arena of Time Machine backups) is appreciable. Apple’s well ahead of the game in its wireless solutions, and we take full advantage of it.

Looks Aren’t Everything, But

…this laptop is hot! From the soft rounded curves to strikingly crisp edges, Apple took a page from their work with the MacBook Air and went even further in crafting these machines. I won’t lie- I didn’t have a MacBook Pro before because i thought they looked a lot cheaper than they cost. Definitely not so with these machines. Sturdy and pretty, a great industrial design combo for a computing device.

A Trackpad That Apparently Likes To Be Heard

Most that has been made of the new trackpad have to do with its lack of any buttons (or, to be more precise its one built-in ‘hidden’ button); its silky smooth glass surface; its multi-touch gestures; and its larger size.

These have been tallied as benefits to some, but for others, not so much. I’m overall very satisfied with the new ‘pad, save for one very annoying ‘feature’: it’s loud as hell.

Seriously, for the Rolls Royce of computing, this laptop’s “ker-plunk” sounding trackpad seems quite in-elegant. The tactile feeling of the click is sufficient for me. The soft, light clicking sound on the MacBook Air was far more desirable than this.

The Verdict

Some working professionals have griped about losing the matte display option, but they’re picking through gnat shit, if you ask me. Anyone getting one of these machines will be supremely satisfied, in my humble opinion. Take it from someone who uses computers day in and day out for a living it’s the best mistress you can buy.

For anyone who doesn’t run WordPress and can’t use something like our WPtouch plugin, we highly recommend taking a look at Christopher’s offering.