Want to browse all of your favorite XKCD comics? Well this app won't help you. But it will let you easily browse more recent and random comics! And if you have enough patients to click through all ~1500 comics, you can view any that you want!
Project Features:
- Starts with today's XKCD comic shown with the name at the top.
- Scroll left, right, up, or down if the comic is too big for the screen.
- Comic too big? Double tap or tap and hold the comic to zoom in!
- Hit the left or right button to go to the next or previous comic. These will stop if you read the bounds (the first comic or the last comic).
- Get an random comic by kitting the xkcd button!
- Want to view the first flickr image that shows up when you search for the comic title in flickr? No? Me either, but if you ever do you can tap the title to switch from the comic to the flickr image. Tap it again to go back.
- "But what about the alt?! I can't miss the daily message hidden in the comic!" No problem! Just simply tap and hold the title block. Didn't want to see that flickr image? Too bad, this will also toggle the view between flickr and XKCD.
Major Design Decisions:
- One choice I had to make was whether to use a horizontal scroll only for the comic, or to include horizontal, vertical, and zoom features. The horizontal approach would have been cleaner and simpler to use, and I actually really liked this. However, I ultimately decided to go with the later choice, since this allows more comics to be viewed reasonably well on the phone. Instead of only small one panel and horizontal comics working correctly, vertical and large comics that need to be zoomed in to see will work. The only down side is large panoramic comics might not be view correctly since you can't zoom out, at least in the simulator.
- The flickr image was the second question, originally I had both images displayed at the same time. This cluttered the screen and made the app look ugly and hard to use. I decided to switch between two. They both are loaded when the comic is switched, but depending on whatever mode you in, only one will show. This means if you are in flickr mode and hit the arrow buttons, a new comic is also being loaded as well as a new search for and flickr photo.
- I really wanted to include the alt text. Since I was not using a button but simple up and down events on the container to switch between flickr and the comic, I decided to display the alt text in between these events. I thought this was a good way to show it, without ruining the flow or making it harder to find than the flickr photo. A second option would have been to have three screen to flip between, but this would have disrupted the flow.
- Buttons vs. swiping. I was forced to use buttons since I had the scrolling in both directions. Theoretically, I could have the bounds of the swiping switch comics, but I foresaw that this would cause a lot of frustration between making it hard to switch, and switching by accident when you are viewing a big image.
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