We’re pleased to announce that AppStudio 4.0 has been released.
There’s a lot of new stuff in it, but the first thing you notice is the whole new look and feel.
The old design looked like something from the last century, when a design by programmers was good enough. It worked, wasn’t pretty and was cluttered.
Software design these days has been strongly influenced by mobile devices. Nothing is put on the screen unless it needs to be. Colors are flat and harmonious, fonts are sans-serif. We enlisted Tomo Arakawa, a software designer and professional architect, to come up with a new design.
The comments so far have overwhelmingly positive:
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“Excellent Job…”
“I think this is a great new look.”
“Very nice… Good, and Clean and Fresh, and very responsive.”
“George nicer look!”
“I like it. A lot. Nice, specially the listing of all the functions ({..}), really nice.”
“Sieht super aus.” (Looks super.)
“It’s look very good”
“Wow! New design is the bomb! Speechless…”
but also, inevitably, one comment of “Go back to the original it was far better.”
One of the controversies was whether there should be a Save button in the header. It seems most programmers use Ctl-S to save apps – it’s quicker than mousing over to a Save button. We did a survey of other current IDEs: nearly all have ditched that button.
We’ll continue to fine tune the new look – please let us know what ideas you have to make it better.
There’s a lot more to cover on this new release. We’ll post a series of blog items, including:
- Upgrades for existing users
- jQuery Mobile 1.4’s new look and feel
- Details on the new features