The iPad has the possibility to radically change how people use and think of computers over the years to come and I’m not just talking about touch-screen technology. Sure, touch-screen technology in this large of a form-factor is going to allow for some really new interfaces, but I think there is a greater shift working behind the scenes.
One of the changes we’re seeing, first with the iPhone and now with the iPad, is the removal of the file system (at least to the end-user). With any traditional PC when you boot up the first thing you’re presented with is your file system. All your apps are (sometimes) neatly stored in one folder, your documents, photos, downloads in others. You use Finder or Explorer to navigate to the document or application you want to launch and go from there. Of course there are things in place to simplify getting to what we want, like the start menu or dock, but you still need to be aware of the file system.
But as it’s been said elsewhere, to most people the concept of a file system just makes no sense. Sure to people like me, and probably you, using a file system is a very natural thing. But we aren’t the norm. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone over to my parents to do a little tech support and been shocked by just how messy their desktop, download, or document folder was; three copies of installers for apps in the downloads folder, a mess of documents on their desktop that really should be under ~/Documents instead. The mess of course wasn’t their fault, they just don’t get the concept of keeping a file system organized. That kind of stuff just doesn’t matter to them—they want to log on, install app X, edit document Y, do their work and be done with it.
This changes on the iPhone OS. Every app runs within a sandbox: it has it’s own set of documents, settings, etc, but it can’t access the documents in another app. There is a wall between every app. Part of this was implemented for security reasons, now apps can’t hurt each other or delete other stuff they shouldn’t have access too. But it also simplifies some tasks. When you want to install an app you just do—no installer, no .DMG file. When you want to delete an app and all it’s stuff just tap-and-hold then click the little X. So much easier to manage.
It shifts the iPhone/iPad to be more app-centric rather than document centric. You don’t go into your documents and find that Numbers file you were working on. You launch numbers and you see a list of your Numbers documents. No more “oh where did I save that file to…” problems.
I for one welcome the death of the file system on mainstream computers. Especially ones my parents use.
This has a setback though, one I can only assume the brains at Apple are aware of, and hopefully working on (maybe with the iPhone OS 4.0 release?). This wall between the apps makes it harder to move documents between them. Each app has to be able to email or export its own files. Email seems to be the popular method to move things around at the moment. It worked great on the iPhone because no one really used the iPhone as their main computer—exporting was always to get it back to their desktop. But the iPad can (or will over time) replace said desktop for many people and now you have to be able to move documents between apps.
Apple started to address this with their media browser. All the apps they have save images into the Photos app. And any app can use the media browser to get to that store of photos. So right now it’s really easy to move an image from the internet into Pages on the iPad. Try to move anything else around and you’ll soon hit a dead-end. What happens if I get a bunch of documents into an app that I later want to switch away from (media-format combadability aside)? If it doesn’t have an export feature I’m screwed. Even if it does I can email them to myself, but it isn’t like Mail supports an “open with” option to tell it to open in the new app.
It’s a tricky problem that they’ll have to solve at some point I think. But in the mean time I think the direction they’re taking things is a net win for the majority of computer users.
After tracking down quite a few closures and fixing those up, I was still left with 10 meg leaks here and there. After a bit I tracked it down to every time we used a dialog from jQuery UI's library.
Our helper function was pretty simple -- allow the code to specify the title and the text, and optionally provide a callback function that'll be called with what they clicked to close the dialog. The dialog would pop up on the screen and gray out the background forcing the user to interact with the alert box. I was concerned because we rely on modals quite a bit, especially in the edit pages. A 10meg leak per dialog shown would quickly add up to 100,200,300+megs leaked over the course of a normal session.
I removed a lot of the surrounding code, making sure I wasn't leaking memory in my own code. I was left with a pretty simple use of the dialog use:
function AlertDialog(dialogTitle, dialogText, callbackFunction) {
// dynamically generate and add a div so we can create the pop-up
$('body').append("");
// define/configure the modal pop-up
$("#alertDialog").dialog({
draggable: false,
resizable: false,
modal: true,
buttons: { 'OK': function() {
if (callbackFunction != undefined) {
callbackFunction('OK');
}
//remove the default beforeclose event and trigger the close
$("#alertDialog").unbind('dialogbeforeclose').dialog('close');
}
}
}).bind('dialogbeforeclose', function(event, ui) {
// Close (X) button was clicked; NOT the OK button
if (callbackFunction != undefined) {
callbackFunction('cancel');
}
}).bind('dialogclose', function() {
$('#alertDialog').dialog("destroy").remove();
}).dialog("open");
}
Despite all my efforts I couldn't get the leak to stop. Simply opening the alert would cause it, so I figured it wasn't my callback function. Frustrated I changed the modal option to false. Bam, no more memory leak in IE! How could this be? So I tried playing around with the appearance of the modal in their CSS file. I tried setting the background property to a GIF instead of a PNG, since IE is terrible with PNGs, with no luck. I tried removing the opacity filter in the CSS with no luck too. Turns out it's just how jQuery UI generates the gray background behind the dialog that causes the leak.
The solution was to never use the modal: true setting in our use of the dialog boxes. I instead wrote two helper methods that would be used to gray out the UI and block interaction with anything but the alert.
CSS:
#BlockUI
{
position: fixed;
display: none;
top: 0;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
z-index: 600;
background: url(/Resources/grayout.gif);
}
JavaScript:
var blockCount = 0;
function BlockUI() {
blockCount++;
$('#BlockUI').show();
}
function UnBlockUI() {
blockCount--;
if (blockCount <= 0) {
blockCount = 0;
$('#BlockUI').hide();
}
}
With this I had a common method for triggering a grayed-out background effect. The GIF I used was a checker-board pattern one, alternating between a light gray color and a transparent pixel. One could use a solid PNG with it's alpha set to something around 50%, but I wanted IE6 compatibility. The difference between the two is minimal.
With that in place I just needed to update the dialog to trigger the block and unblock calls. JQuery UI's dialog lets you specify a function for the "open" option which will be called when the dialog opens.
function AlertDialog(dialogTitle, dialogText, callbackFunction) {
// dynamically generate and add a div so we can create the pop-up
$('body').append("");
// define/configure the modal pop-up
$("#alertDialog").dialog({
draggable: false,
resizable: false,
modal: false,
open: function() {
BlockUI();
},
buttons: { 'OK': function() {
if (callbackFunction != undefined) {
callbackFunction('OK');
}
//remove the default beforeclose event and trigger the close
$("#alertDialog").unbind('dialogbeforeclose').dialog('close');
}
}
}).bind('dialogbeforeclose', function(event, ui) {
// Close (X) button was clicked; NOT the OK button
if (callbackFunction != undefined) {
callbackFunction('cancel');
}
}).bind('dialogclose', function() {
$('#alertDialog').dialog("destroy").remove();
UnBlockUI();
}).dialog("open");
}
And with that the memory leak was fixed. It's not ideal to have to rely on custom-code to get around the leak, but until jQuery UI is fixed to avoid this it's the best work around to make sure IE doesn't bloat like crazy when you use modals.
The first Assassin's Creed was a major disappointment, I think few will argue that fact. The original largely boiled down to a game engine with lots of promise but nothing to draw you into the game beyond that. The repetition was mind-numbing, the plot was a joke. I never actually finished the game, I got about 2/3 of the way through it.
After the bad taste the first left in my mouth you can imagine by reservation when Assassin's Creed 2 came out. But this time I was not disappointed; instead I was finding myself unable to put the controller down. Assassin's Creed 2 is the perfect sequel: it took everything that was weak about the first and improved it.
What a difference a plot can make. The first one had a plot but it wasn't a personal plot. You were just a tool of a larger war between two factions being told to go kill boss X and Y. In between bosses they didn't even try to hide that you were doing the same thing over and over again. You always had ~9 smaller missions before the boss, which were always of the same type. In Assassin's Creed 2 it is actually personal and diverse. You start out not knowing a thing about Assassins or Templars (heck you spend most of the game not caring about that), you're just a guy whose family is attacked and you go after the killers in revenge (sweet stabby revenge). You're going around killing people because you want to, not because you're told to. And everything in between killing bosses doesn't feel like repetitive kill X, pickpocket Y, loot treasure Z. Sure it boils down to that in the end, but it doesn't feel like that at all. The game flows so well.
The asides from the plot are vastly improved too. If you find yourself wanting a distraction from the revenge-plot there is plenty to do this time around beyond just climbing around. You can help out in the cities with various assassination and beat-the-cheating-husband up style missions that reward you with money. Partway through you get your own villa which you can chose to sink money into. Doing so gets you the warm fuzzy feeling (also helps the place stop looking so run-down) but also makes upgrades cheaper as you spend money to upgrade your blacksmith. Plus as you upgrade your villa more and more it will start generating money for you every 20 minutes.
This money comes in handy as there is a full weapon and armor system in the game, finally. There are quite a few classes of weapons you can choose to carry around, from daggers to swords to maces, all of which cause you to fight a little differently. Along with weapons and armor there are plenty of little upgrades too, like additional medicine pouches and knife-slots that really help out later in the game. There are six Prince-of-Persia style jump-puzzles (Assassin's Tombs) you can do if you want the best armor in the game.
For the obsessive-collectors they kept plenty to do in the game that requires running around everywhere trying to find things. Most importantly you have hidden glyphs you can seek out (with small hints as to where in the cities they are) that help unlock something within the game. There are hundreds of treasure chests around the city, and a side-quest where you need to find 100 feathers in memory of someone in your family. You can try to buy all the paintings available as part of the side-quest to restore your villa to its former glory.
They added in a notoriety system for the second game. It tracks your notoriety per-city and really helps you gage how cautious you need to be around guards. And now there is finally a way to lower your notoriety if you care: running around ripping down wanted posters, bribing town criers, or killing city officials. And when you are running from guards they're a lot more intelligent with their chase, they'll actually look for you in hiding spots sometimes. This makes it feel much more realistic instead of just having them give up once you jump in some hay.
One can tell that they really learned from the shortcomings of the first game and made sure they didn't exist in the second. A complaint I had was the rebounding-off-walls controls. There were a few times it would have me jump off in a different direction then I was going for, but this really only showed itself during the more difficult jump-puzzles (the most inopportune time for it to happen). The combat wasn't vastly changed in the sequel, it was still a bit of well-timed button-mashing, but it didn't really detract from the fun of the game.
Without a doubt Assassin's Creed 2 was a wonderful game and well-worth the time I sank into it. It's what the first game should have been. I'm glad to see Ubisoft pull a 180 with this game and really produce something with such high quality. And fortunately it ends with a pretty cool twist leaving it open for a third (which they've already said will happen).
