Subtitles of the Movie

I've talked about the things you do right at the beginning when you're thinking about a Web App, when you're thinking about how to promote it, what it should do how to let people know that it exists and there's one other thing that you should plan for right at the beginning before you sit down with Dashcode and that's how you're going to test it. If you read reports, studies, about Apps and what the biggest complaints are about Apps you might be surprised to find the biggest complaint people have with various Apps and that complaint is very simple. The App doesn't work. It's amazing how many Apps get out there without being tested, with misspellings. Look at it. You're providing information, whether it's a game, whether it's information about the tax law, whether it's locations of the nearest pizza place - whatever you are providing should be as accurate as possible. Some sometimes when you're providing information about locations you really don't control this. You may be picking up information from another source and then mapping it. Try to get that source to be as accurate as possible. If you have a choice of several lists of businesses in an area, pick the one that is the best. And as your App grows and develops you can start to push back and say, no this information is not right. The things that are most often wrong are, in the case of location, some slight misspelling or large misspelling, in the address. That can make the information that is being mapped totally wrong. Also look, if you have any text in your App, look at that text and make certain that there are no misspellings. You can use abbreviations because remember, on the iPhone, we're looking at a very small amount of space on the screen. Use abbreviations but use them consistently and just make certain that the App works. And one of the ways of making certain that the App works is to test it and in all of the world there is one person who is really not good at testing your App and that's you. You know how it works. You know what you expect the user to do next so when you test it that's what you're going to do. Test it yourself but also gather people around who will test it themselves. Now the nice thing about an iPhone Web App is because people with an iPhone can access it over the Web you can get people who are far from your location to test it. In the case of Apps that do mapping this is really important because you want to make certain that the mapping works from far away. Apps that need to be localized, that have different languages involved, get people who speak those languages, but test it yourself and get people who will try it out and let them tell you what doesn't work. Sometimes people, particularly if they're friends of yours, will say, well the app works fine, I just didn't know how to use it. That's a red flag for you. If the user says, well I must have made a mistake. No. You, as the developer, often have made the mistake. You should not allow people to get into a situation where they can make mistakes. For example, one of the things on iPhone Web Apps is these lists that you often see where someone can just touch and item and mov on. You don't have to type in text. Letting people touch an item, or select a menu item on a Desktop or a laptop is a great interface because there's no way it can be misspelled. So, plan your testing. Gather people around who will test it and then because it's so simple to write iPhone Web Apps they might be inspired to write their own Web Apps and then it's only fair they'll let you test their Web App and the quality gradually increases.