Mutility 1.2.1

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This minor update adds two more colors (orange and purple, in line with the iOS 7 color palette) to choose from in scroll view, a button to reset the app back to its defaults, and a number of UI updates to the settings and history screens. I've also updated the in-app purchase to be more clear - once paid for you get all the features and any future features. It truly unlocks everything, and I wanted that to be obvious.

I spent most of the development time working on installing a basement underneath the tables, so let's have a chat about it.

Installing a Basement

It's not very accurate to call iOS 7 flat; although it has removed the gloss and texture of previous versions, it is still very much three dimensional. The third dimension isn't one that is jumping out at you, instead it's the presence of layers. You'll notice this all over the OS - panels are sliding over each other all over the place, and in many cases perform a wonderfully saturated blur of the contents underneath to help keep the layering metaphor obvious.

The concept of having a 'basement' in a UI is not new, but it fits iOS 7 designs very well. You can think of the basement as the lowest layer of a screen made of up a pile of overlapping layers. For this layer I used a dark gray, similar to color of the linen in iOS 6 and below that was used system wide as sort of a basement texture. On top of this goes the table and on top of those table cells go the table section heading cells. I made the table section heading cells partially transparent to enhance the layering effect. Take a gander at this portion of the settings screen from 1.2.1 to see what I'm talking about.

You'll also notice that I ran out of room for colors, so now you scroll through the list.

You'll also notice that I ran out of room for colors, so now you scroll through the list.

The in-app purchase view lives in the basement now, and the table has been shifted down to expose it (when the purchase is made, the table shifts to cover it up). The basement also shows up when you scroll to the end of the table, exposed during the bounce. You can barely see through the section header cells to the table cells below, just enough to make the layering noticeable. The history table is set up in the same way.

I think that being true to this UI metaphor makes for a really nice, subtle, and useful effect and I'm very pleased with how this turned out.