Turn Your Blog Into An iPad App!

by Thomas MORADPOUR on March 25, 2011 · 10 comments

Turning your blog into an amazing iPad friendly app is is what a new WordPress plugin promises, and it only takes a few clicks.

Or rather, let me rephrase.

What the new Onswipe plug-in does, is turn you blog into an iPad app-like experience, complete with swipe gestures, Flipboard-like layouts, and your own springboard icon.

IT’S VERY COOL – TRY IT.

There’s nothing wrong with viewing a blog on the browser of an iPad today, the screen is big enough and most sites translate well; but with close to 20 million iPads already in circulation, a dedicated and adapted experience is a great plus to offer your readers!

HERE’S A FEW SCREEN-GRABS TO ILLUSTRATE WHAT IT ACTUALLY DOES.

Home page without the plug-in:

Home page with the plug-in:

Your own app icon on the iPad Springboard (#5 in the bottom bar):

What posts themselves look like:

    THIS FIRST VERSION IS STILL A BIT ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES, BUT OFFERS A VERY COOL EXPERIENCE.

    Comments and FB/Twitter/email sharing are integrated, and work great. You can easily customize your icon, fonts, color scheme. I’d love to see more customization options, but that’s a pretty good start, and gives me hope for more future apps and services to help individuals (or small businesses) publish touch-friendly content! I hear a built-in equivalent service is now available for wordpress.com hosted blogs – but as I walked away from that a few months ago, I have not been able to check.

    On the “please improve in version 1.1″, I’d list a few bugs and issues.
    No show-stopper there, but the experience will be better when the following is fixed or added:

    • embedded videos don’t play,
    • the ‘loading screen’ function does not seem to be working,
    • post titles are a bit too transparent, and hard to read against some busier images,
    • incompatibilities with a few java-heavy plug-in; it takes a little experimentation to activate (I had to de-activate a couple),
    • some key blog functions are missing, in particular the ability to subscribe by email or RSS, to browse by date or tags, to search etc…
    • in ‘standalone app-mode’, the layout loses some space at the bottom of the screen (as the safari top bar disappears), and navigation switches back to Safari when you click on a link to another part of the site, which is a bit annoying,

     

    Do you have an iPad?
    Please check it out and tell me what you think!

    Related Posts:

    Tagged as: Blog, iPad, Onswipe, Touch

    • http://www.dogwalkblog.com/ Rufus Dogg

      That app is VERY rough around the edges. I’ve seen several users’ blogs with this installed and it is confusing.

      It works when you have images and do all the things that your are “supposed” to do on your blog, but looks like crap when it gets to a typical user who doesn’t really know any of the design “rules” and doesn’t care. Like most of these re-formaters or aggregators, the designers/developers assume way too much creator skill and craftsmanship from their users.

    • http://twitter.com/smartel Sylvain Martel

      It may be rough around the edged but it is a very promising solution.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000066507658 Denis Florent

      Tom, you have 25 late tasks on your Omnifocus :-) ))))

      • Anonymous

        I know ;-)

    • Pingback: Weekly Roundup: Who Are You? | Waxing UnLyrical

    • Gaby O’Rourke

      Hi Tom
      Any idea how you change it back after you try the preview? It’s pretty neat but at the same time I don’t like the fact that it opts to provide a cover image (creating a potential barrier to entry) and doesn’t show pages except via a drop down menu. It also scrubbed all my branding which I wasn’t too thrilled at. I’Il try again next gen but for now I’d rather have it back to the browser form. Help getting it back?

    • http://twitter.com/kamalupatel Kamal Patel

      its gret solution …i just tried to my blog..it look cool in that….and thanks for that…im doing some changes to make more compatible my blog for all.

    • Pingback: 5 WordPress Plugins to Rock Your Blog | Waxing UnLyrical

    • designuir

      Very very interesting post.thanks.I’ll tr it once.

    • designuir

      its really very interesting.I’ll definitely try this out.

    Previous post:

    Next post: