Creating applications involves talking with end-users,
discovering their needs and then delivering an application that
fulfils them (in an ideal world!). Creating controls, components
and tools for developers is a little more challenging. For
user-interface controls you have to create something generic that
can be used in a wide range of applications, some of which you
might have envisaged when designing the controls, but many of which
you certainly will not have.
At ShinobiControls we love seeing the applications that our
customers have created using our components and are constantly
surprised at the broad range of applications that have benefitted
from them. In this article, the first of our 'ShinobiSpotlight'
series, we'll look at an application one of our customers has built
using ShinobiControls. If you have built an app that you'd like to
see highlighted here, please get in touch (@ShinobiControls).
Azimuth, by Appsterisk, is an application that tracks the
movement of the sun in order to display sunrise and sunset times.
Sounds simple doesn't it? Give Azimuth a go and you'll find there
is much more to it than a just a pair of times. This application
shows the current location of the sun, moving in real time across
the globe, and the shadow that it casts. Azimuth sports a huge
range of features that allow you to view the change in sunrise /
sunset times with the seasons and compare various different
geographic locations. The numerous features are all well documented
with pop-up hints to assist the first-time user. It is usability
features like this which have secured the application a very high
user rating (4+).
Azimuth makes great use of ShinobiControls - you can
drill-down on your current location to access detailed information
and charts, each of which are fully interactive, allowing pinch
zoom and tap-and-hold to access the cursor. One of the charts even
has an embedded micro-chart as part of the cursor-information!
Azimuth is a great little application and the ShinobiControls
team are very pleased to see the charts that they developed being
used so effectively. Referring back to my introduction, when we
were designing the ShinobiCharts we looked at a broad range of
application areas, however, charting the path of the sun certainly
wasn't one of them! The band-series was initially introduced with
contexts such as financial charting in mind. It's great to see them
being put to another use entirely. And as for charts within charts?
No … I don't believe we considered that either. But again, it is
great to see that the versatility we built into these components
being used to great effect.
On behalf of ShinobiControls, I'd like to wish Appsterisk and
their Azimuth application continued success. Now I'm off to give
this app the 5-star rating it deserves …
Regards, Colin E.