![]() On the home screen, you will find a simple but powerful multi-column layout that allows you to keep tabs on multiple conversations at once. It’s a whole new (and better) app from the ground up. A tough challenge to say the least.įortunately we had the opportunity to work with some experienced Microsoft folks who provided invaluable feedback to form the design you see today. But regardless, that code wasn’t designed for touch. ![]() We couldn’t simply copy and paste our desktop application’s source code WPF code doesn’t port to WinRT as well as you may have heard. We know it’s still a bit rough around the edges and not feature complete but we hope it offers a teaser of what we think will be a compelling Twitter app for Windows 8 users.ĭesigning MetroTwit for Windows 8 was no walk in the park. “That was amazing.The “preview” version of MetroTwit for Windows 8 is finally available in the Windows Store. The promotional features were removed, and “all our critics turned into advocates,” Khanna said. ![]() This was partly because the app pestered users with suggestions for other apps, causing it to be branded “adware.” The early versions of FlipToast, running on pre-release versions of Windows 8, drew criticism. If we emailed Microsoft at 10 p.m., we got a reply at five minutes past 10.”īeing first on the Windows 8 platform “has its pros and cons,” Khanna said. “There was no real documentation, but we had access to their senior software evangelist. “We had 24 development days to prove what we could do on the platform,” she recalled. The software giant was desperate for apps with which to populate its Windows App Store, and it gave the FlipToast team support and encouragement, Khanna said. The team was given nearly $1 million to perfect the product (including the flavors for desktop computers and iOS devices) and add more bodies.Īround that time, Microsoft came calling. Presented with somewhat crude but functional software in late 2011, Khanna’s superiors were impressed enough with the product to make it a new “social business unit” within the company, she recalled. The seven-person FlipToast team - including a community manager, a user-interface designer and several engineers - is a semi-autonomous part of W3i, a company that helps app authors increase the visibility and profitability of their products.įlipToast development kicked off about two years ago as a “skunkworks project,” said Khanna, who worked with one or two other people to create a prototype. The developers said they eventually will add other social networks, such as App.net and Google+. This means social-media apps such as TweetDeck don’t work on the Surface. On Windows 8, the app uses a touch-friendly side-scrolling format with big, easy-to-tap squares or rectangles corresponding to Twitter tweets, Facebook updates, Instagram photos, friend lists, birthday reminders and the like.įlipToast’s presence on the much-hyped Surface tablet is particularly significant because the tablet uses a Windows 8 variation called RT that is incapable of running traditional Windows apps, only the newer, touch-centric ones. The various versions of FlipToast look and behave differently because they are carefully tailored to their respective platforms. A version for the popular Android mobile operating system is imminent, and versions for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and new Windows Phone 8 mobile operating systems are in the works. And if her team pulls that off, she said, FlipToast buzz might spread onto the PC, Mac and iOS platforms, where variations of FlipToast are available.
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