2 months ago I had only some basic HTML/CSS experience and was tired of only dreaming of shipping some product. I put myself through many long hours of courses with Treehouse and a lot of help from the community over at Stackoverflow and released my first app. I'm very proud of just that, shipping something.
Really neat. This kind of simple approach to behavior improvement really resonates with me.
I'm working on a (web) app that takes a similar approach to improving spending habits. It's the same idea that you track progress not merely in terms of bare numbers, but that you can also record some context and notes about improvement.
Have you thought about adding support for sharing progress with other users? For example, I could think of a friendly reading competition with a friend where we try to build the longest streak and daily note what we've been reading.
Yes I have actually. The whole idea from the beginning was to build an app my 'mastermind' group and I could use to keep each other on check on making our dreams reality. That feature is definitely in the works. I just needed to release this to get validation and some initial traction.
Please post your web app when released, I'd love to give feedback and share ideas.
I was searching for habit tracking apps on Firefox OS just the other day. None so far.
If the app is already written in HTML/CSS/JS, getting it to run on Firefox OS should be super easy. Basically just a matter of writing a manifest file. I think Phonegap even has an export feature that will do that for you.
How do I get this from the UK? I've been looking for an app just like it and this looks really nice. Is it only on the US app store at the moment? (is that a thing?)
Edit: found it but doesn't seem to be on the iPad app store even though it says its compatible. Any plans for an iPad release?
Yup most of the initial learning was done through Treehouse. So much so that I did not know what language was to be used to build ios. They took me from beggining to complete projects. Then when building my own app, it was a lot of Google/Stackoverflow/trial and error.
This is very inspirational, congratulations. I suppose I am where you were at 2 months ago. Have basic HTML/CSS and starting to learn fundamentals of JS and want to start actually completing projects. Would you recommend Treehouse?
I definitely recommend Treehouse. All it is putting in the time and more importantly, at least for me, was having a purpose. Knowing what you are going to build to have in mind while you learn is key to staying motivated. It is also very rewarding to implement little by little what you know towards your project.
But...why is it paid? If you're trying to develop a reputation for yourself, as well as get that early user feedback, I think you're making your job harder.
Yes it's only 99 cents, but there's a tremendous amount of hesitancy to buy an app when there's such a strong expectation of getting for free.
Being a first time app developer, developing an app in a crowded market place, only compounds that.
I get that. But he's asking a community for feedback. It's like asking someone to coffee to pick their brain, and then asking them to pay for your coffee because you didn't have time to run to the bank.
You can give us a free download link or a web version.
Plus you gotta pay to play in the App Store. If he sells 100ish of these, he's covered his developer fee for the year. To me, that's a successful ship.
>Yes it's only 99 cents, but there's a tremendous amount of hesitancy to buy an app when there's such a strong expectation of getting for free.
99 cents may make some hesitate but it's also low enough that I'll sometimes buy an app just to support a developer even if I don't intend to use the app.
Anything we can do to help uncondition the public that everything should be ad supported the better.
You're completely right. I made 99 cents though to validate first if people would actually buy based on icon/keywords/screenshots. I submitted an update yesterday to make it free though, seeing how little reviews I am getting.
Congratulations on shipping. I've bought it as an expression of sympathy — I'm building apps in my freetime too, but they were too complex even for a two man show… so I've never shipped anything. :)
What I would like to see in your app are high res icons. They look pixelated on my 5s.
Thank you for that. About the pixelated icons: I did not know how to do icons for retina until yesterday, I fixed them and submitted an update last night to fix that and a bug I found :)
Hey big congratulations on getting your app released!
Looks really clean & minimalistic which user's love! I'm working on a similar app for achieving your goals, setting rewards & basically motivating you to success. I'm even using the app myself.. I would love to share ideas with you, maybe even a partnership of some sort.
Please contact me at joeytawadrous@gmail.com if you would like that.
Pretty much the exact same idea I had about three weeks ago. Even wrote it in my 'idea pad' with some other detail.
This has convinced me to get my ideas out sooner. Well played and good job! - (I am also very new to programming and the amount of ideas I have are unreal, so chances of me ever doing this were slim) - But it's nice to confirm my ideas were on the right track :)
Congrats! Quick nitpick - fix your icon in the app store itself. Looks like you have the corner radius from iOS6 on your icon so you get some black edging in the corner. I usually just export a square version for the iTunes image, they'll add corners as needed.
I'm working on similar app, tracking and building/breaking good/bad habits. It's very close to an alpha release. Please get in touch if you'd like to compare notes (contact info on http://drewgoodwin.com).
Congrats on shipping. I haven't downloaded it yet but the App Store screenshots look low quality/compressed. Probably not noticeable on an iPhone but I see it on my desktop.
It looks like a great idea, and a well designed app. Even as much as I want it, I'm afraid I can't justify spending $0.99 for a productivity app. Just my opinion, I would much rather have an occasional ad, with an in-app purchase to get rid of ads. Thereby, if I really loved and used the app, I would pay the price. Otherwise, I'm afraid not. Still a good looking app though!
I've recently got a new phone (was on Android 2.3) so I'm going to try and release a new version soon to take advantage of the better UI available in the newer versions of Android, like the action bar. Going to drop the timer as well as it doesn't work properly, clutters the screen up and I never use it.
Any feedback would be very appreciated!