Today we issued an update for WPtouch 1.9, and also posted another beta release of WPtouch Pro 2.1 (RC1) for WPtouch Pro customers.

1.9.21

WPtouch 1.9.21 (free) includes a few performance and maintenance improvements which improve interface responsiveness on iOS devices, and fix a number of reported bugs over the past few weeks.

WPtouch Pro 2.1 RC1

We’re finally here! It’s been awhile since we posted a new beta update. We’ve had lots of things going on over the past number of weeks, and have been able to get back on track and move towards completing 2.1.

Lots of fixes, changes, improvements and additions have been made, and this release is now at Release Candidate status, as its viewed by us as feature complete.

Changes for this release include both the iPad theme and the mobile versions of the Classic theme.

Here’s some highlights from the changelog for the release:

* Added: Web-App Mode supported on iPad
* Added: Deep Blue UI theme on iPad
* Added: Compatibility setting to remove short-code content in WPtouch Pro
* Added: Ability to select between mobile and iPad devices for developer mode
* Added: New icon set of Android Icons courtesy of androidicons.com

* Changed: Significant speed and load-time improvements in Classic theme
* Changed: Comment fly-in form on iPad: better handling of 3rd-party comment plugins
* Changed: Improved Web-App Mode persistence setting load time dramatically

* Fixed: Issues related to login, forms & search in themes
* Fixed: An issue which could cause the switch link to fail
* Fixed: Incorrect detection of BlackBerry Torch
* Fixed: An issue which could cause a blank space in the header area of themes
* FIxed: Issues related to the use of transparent light/white icons on iPad
* Fixed: An issue which caused scrolling to top after posts have loaded in mobile theme
* Fixed: Issue with missing pages in menu setup when two or more pages have the same name
* Fixed: An issue with the thumbnail mask appearance on mobile WebOS devices

We’re putting the finishing touches on WordTwit 2.5.2, and wanted to do a limited beta cycle on it due to some of the changes. Here’s a short list of what has been changed:

• A character count has been added to the post area to show when a Tweet is greater than 140 characters
• Error messages have been added to the post area to show why a Tweet hasn’t gone out
• A bug with apostrophes in category names has been resolved
• OAuth (which the Twitter API uses) requires the server time to be accurate. On many web servers the time is wrong. We’ve added the ability to automatically detect the proper time offset to use for OAuth requests

I wouldn’t recommend everyone upgrading to this version yet, as there still may be a few small issues. But if you’re WordPress savvy and want to help us put 2.5.2 through its paces, then please download a copy and let us know how it works for you.

Download WordTwit 2.5.2 Beta »

Today we’re happy to announce the availability of a beta release for the next major update to WPtouch Pro, version 2.1.

What’s New

Along with bug fixes and admin enhancements, 2.1 brings 3 major additions: Child Theme Support, Custom Menus, and the long awaited addition of iPad support.

Video Overview

Purpose Of The Beta

This beta release is only for evaluation and interest in improving WPtouch Pro by helping us resolve issues.

We know that many of you want to try out iPad support, so we’re pleased to make this beta available for testing.

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 happy to browse and enjoy the website content you present to them.

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 delivered
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.

Installation & Details

Existing customers of WPtouch Pro should download and install the beta separately from their existing installations.

Because of the nature of beta software, aspects of the code are subject to change. As a result theme development is not recommended nor supported.

A new beta support forum & thread have been added in which you can post questions and let us know about any issues you might have.

We hope you enjoy the beta!
~ The BraveNewCode Team

Today we’ve tagged WPtouch Pro Beta 2 for release. Below you’ll find the release notes accompanying it.

Known Deficiencies

These are things which we know either don’t work or haven’t been added yet:

• Disqus and Intense Debate issues (these plugins will be supported later)
• Current themes are feature/styling incomplete
• Page/Menu area in admin has some inconsistencies across different browsers

Focus Areas for Testing:

• Admin functionality, performance, usability
• Automatic upgrade process
• WordPress 3.0
• Web-app mode in Classic and Skeleton

Changelog:

• Fixed: Garbled tooltips on translated multibyte characters such as Kanji
• Fixed: Plugin information overlay would die on other plugins
• Fixed: Tooltips with double quotations in them
• Fixed: Warning for htmlspecialchars on PHP4
• Fixed: Incorrect icons on custom templates such as Archives and Links
• Changed: Settings architecture for admin
• Changed: Tooltips appearance in admin
• Changed: Style fixes for Skeleton
• Changed: Header menu, icon style changes for Skeleton for better cross-browser compat
• Changed: Some admin form buttons switched to divs for Ajax purposes
• Changed: Switch link appearance on desktop theme is now bigger, bolder
• Added: Full translations for Japanese, Spanish, French, and Italian. German translation is still partial
• Added: Ability to render a custom WPtouch setting
• Added: Ajax submit for admin panel
• Added: Web-app mode in Skeleton, Classic (including loading image)
• Added: Theme settings tab for web-app mode, status-bar color option
• Added: New functions for iPhone meta tags in theme header.php, now handled by a theme function
• Added: Custom “dark” class for the body for custom page templates
• Removed: Unused beta code, functions from core files

WPtouch 2.0 Pro beta1 is now officially in the wild. The number of beta testers for beta1 is relatively small, so if you applied and didn’t get accepted, don’t worry too much as we’ll be adding more people for beta2.

WPtouch 2.0 Pro represents nearly five months of work between the two of us. The original features were hashed out over a few beers down in Punta Cana of November of last year. It became evident based on our initial discussions that in order to have the features we wanted we would need to do a 100% rewrite of the existing code, which is ultimately what we did.

Baby’s Got a Brand New Bag

2.0 is a complete mobile theming framework that was built upon a comprehensive plugin framework, both of which were created from scratch explicitly for this project. Under the hood WPtouch 2.0 constructs the entire administration panel programmatically, which means adding new features going forward will in most cases not require more than a few lines of code. It also means that mobile theme developers can easily add setting options to the WPtouch administration panel and have the majority of hard work taken care of for them.

Easily Extensible

One of the complaints developers had about WPtouch 1.x is that it wasn’t very easy to build upon. First, we didn’t have many plugin hooks that other plugin developers could tap into. Second, the default theme in WPtouch was fairly inflexible for people trying to add new theme features. We’ve addressed both of these limitations in 2.0.

All WPtouch 2.0 themes are based upon a theming example called Skeleton. It is our goal to continue to update Skeleton for each release, including support for nearly all of the WPtouch 2.x features. Skeleton can easily be cloned in the WPtouch 2.0 administration panel and used as a starting point for a completely custom theme, one that won’t be overwritten when WPtouch is upgraded.

WPtouch 2.0 also includes nearly 100 different hooks and actions that other plugin developers can tap into. In fact, many of the recent features added to WPtouch 2.0 utilized these same hooks.

The World’s Not So Big After All

All the text strings in WPtouch 2.0 have been properly internationalized. That will allow us to slowly translate WPtouch 2.0 into other languages. The first release of WPtouch 2.0 will have support for Italian, Japanese, Spanish, German and French. We’ll hopefully add a new language or two for each subsequent release.

The Beta Cycle

As WPtouch 2.0 is a 100% rewrite, we’re looking to our beta users to help us flesh out any of the issues that crop up in the wild. Beta1 will focus mainly on the administrational panel, the upgrade process, support forum integration, and general WPtouch 2.0 usage. We expect beta1 to last roughly a week or so, depending on any issues that turn up. We’ll be releasing periodic updates to beta1 to fix bugs.

Beta2 will be the second and last beta cycle, and will include the full suite of mobile themes and final functionality. Once we’re confident that beta2 is stable, we’ll release WPtouch 2.0 officially for everyone. So if you do the math, we’re only a few weeks from releasing WPtouch 2.0 for the general public.

Feature Set

There are over 100 new features not present in WPtouch 1.9. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Deep integration between WPtouch and the BraveNewCode support forums – users can post support questions directly from the WPtouch 2.0 administration panel
• Re-designed administrational panel featuring intuitive tab interface
• Admob and adsense advertising support in themes
• Support for multiple Prowl accounts
• New plugin compatibility disabler (prevent problematic plugins from hooking into WPtouch)
• New page/menu management panel that includes drag and drop functionality for icons
• All new theme designs and effects
• Inclusion of Skeleton theming example for developers looking to create custom mobile themes
• Ability to customize a welcome message for 1st-time visitors
• Inclusion of several new icons sets
• New nested menu system available to themes
• Inline comment replies and threading
• Support for web-application mode
• Ships with 5 professionally translated languages

And So It Begins

We want to thank everyone who applied to be a part of our beta program, and also everyone who was officially chosen to help with beta1. We’re very close to releasing WPtouch 2.0 Pro to everyone, something that we are quite looking forward to.

If you’re late to the party, you can sign up to be notified when WPtouch 2.0 Pro is released over at wptouch.com, or follow our updates on Twitter. We’ll post again when the second beta cycle opens up, at which point we can hopefully relay information about the final release date and price points for WPtouch 2.0 Pro.