Over two years ago I posted a write up on all the features I’d love to have on my iPhone. Since the release of iOS4 it seems time to revisit that list and see what has been scratched off my list and what hasn’t

Features I Asked For and Got

• Copy & Paste
• iChat – 3rd parties have filled this role and now with multitasking chat works. There is also Facetime. Though I’m still surprised there isn’t an actual iChat client.
• Video camera – had to buy a new iPhone  to get it but that’s alright as I also got video editing which completely surprised me.
• Horizontal keyboard anywhere
• Search Functionality
• vcard sending
• Save photo you get via email into your photos
• iCal event web sync
• Safari should have a larger cache – sorta solved as the new iPhone has more RAM.

Features that are still missing that I still want

• Airtunes support – I still wanna play my iphone tunes directly to my Airport Express
• wifi sync – at least for contacts and calendar
• Taking a photo for assigning to a contact should also place that picture in your photo roll.
• Email map routes to others. This should include the text list and a link to a google map.
• Network Printing – There are 3rd party apps for this but it should be built in to the OS.
• Clicking on the upper-left edge/wifi icon should bring you to the wifi settings screen – there are several times I’d like to easily turn off wifi so that it doesn’t ask me to join a network.
• One The Go favorites photoset – make this work just like a music on the go playlist (which by the way I love the iphone’s on the go playlist functionality!

Over the weekend I made my first movie using my new iPhone 4. All video and photos were shot during the load up of the Dismal art project with my iPhone 4 and then edited on the BART ride home from Oakland into the short video you see below.

My Review of iMovie for the iPhone

It’s obviously a 1.0 product but an amazing one at that. There are a few bugs and a few features that I’d like to see. On top of this the user interface could use a little work as I was left confused a number of times and much of the interface is hidden behind meaningless  icons or non-intuitive touch gestures. Luckily MacWorld has a good Hands on of iMovie for the iPhone.

Bugs

• Exporting crashes often, especially if you are exporting at HD. Others are also having this problem. Seems it many happens with videos longer than a minute or two that are composed of several photos or video clips. Annoyingly I was able to export the above video at medium size but not at HD.
• Importing photos from your photo library can be laggy.
• Changing the titles can also be laggy.

User Interface Issues

• Most of the interface icons are generic and meaningless. Even after several minutes of working with it I kept forgetting what each icon was. (See example: I mean what the hell is the difference between the down arrow in the box and the one in the folder? The one in the box on the left is import and the one in the folder on the right switches you to the video camera so you can shoot a new clip—shouldn’t that icon be a video camera?!?)
• I kept having issues with accidentally hitting the wrong button or control as there are a lot of too small interface elements and other too elements that are too big for their limited importance.  (See example: not how close the trim icon is to the down arrow folder icon. I accidentally hit that folder icon several times while editing.)
• Trimming the video clips is confusing as you are trimming blindly: trim then move head to where you trimmed; if wrong, try again; repeat. Ideally, to make this easier the head position should lock to where you are trimming so you can see what the hell you are doing.
• The controls for changing the Start/End of the “Ken Burns pan effect” is confusing. I finally figured out that grayed out was the active state but that was counter-intuitive.
• Took me forever to figure out how to delete a clip or photo. Dragging to the video area to delete is counter-intuitive. While you can double tap to delete video clips, when the iphone is horizontal the delete button is hidden—you can scroll to it but there is no indication that it is there.

Feature Lack

• While you can import photos from your photo library and music from your music library, you can annoyingly only import video from the camera roll.
  • This means that if you download the video and delete your camera roll, the video in your project is now missing. So make sure you finish your movie and export before deleting video off your camera roll!
• You can only add one music track even if your video is longer than your music
• There is no control to fade in/out music in added audio track
  • iMovie automatically lowers the music volume of your added audio track if you leave your video audio on so that you can hear the video, but I would like to control fade out when the video is ending.
• Titles only can be added to video clips not photos
• Titles last the entirety of a video clip
• Cannot create a text only titling slide
• Photos are forced to use the “Ken Burns pan effect” (though you do have control over the start/end points of the “Ken Burns” pan)
• Limited number of transitions: One global Cross Dissolve and each theme has it’s own special transition.
• There is no way within the app to split one clip into two or more clips.
  • This can be done in the Camera App before importing into iMovie, but it should be part of iMovie.
• No way to publish directly from the app—you must export to the camera roll and then you can publish from there or download it to your laptop
  • Worse publishing from the Camera Roll (to youtube/MMS/email) automatically compresses the movie into ugly-digital-artifact-landia! You have no option to publish an uncompressed full res video even if you are over wifi!

Conclusion

I still think it was worth the $5 as it’s great for what it is—though I seriously hope they fix the export bug soon. Also, I really dislike the lack of the ability to upload at full res. The fact that I can shot and edit 720p video all on the iPhone but still need a computer to publish online at full resolution is annoying. Secondly, the fact that it only works with video in the Camera Roll seems like an artificial limitation and I hope they fix that soon.

I’m also happy that Apple is charging for this app as it encourages 3rd parties to create their own video editing apps. I’d gladly pay money for a more functional and easier to use app.

One last thought that is a comment on the iOS in general: The fact that this app exports to the camera roll seems kludgey and really underscores the need for some sort of simplified universal file repository.

All you slackers who didn’t make it to Dismal’s Heathen Stomp surely missed out on a rip roaring wooting and hollering good time! One Man Banjo put on an amazing show as did The Mighty Lynch-Pins, and  Creamed Corn Thumb Wrestling has to be the best worst invention in the history of sports! Though that’s not to knock the skills of those who played Jackalope Ringtoss or Pin the Finger on Danger Ranger. For those with patience to sit for a spell there was some high quality portrait art happening—or should I say poor-traits.

All in all it was a fine group of folks who showed up and spend their hard-earned money to support the creative works of The First Church of The Buzzard’s Holy Whiskey Missionary! If you know Dismal than you know the hard work they put into their creative missionary work.

If you would like to show your support for Dismal’s upcoming creative mission, you can donate to Dismal via PayPal.

More photos of Heathen Stomp can be found at JackTrade’s Heathen Stomp Flickr set and Dismal’s Heathen Stomp Flickr set

I’ve darn got myself involved with Dismal. This Saturday, June 5thm, Y’all should come support Dismal’s Heathen Stomp ongoing creative missionary work by drink’n whiskey and having a good old time!

Also this Friday head over to the Syzygryd Gala Benefit at Cell Space to show your support for the artists of Ardent Heavy Industries, False Profit Labs, and Illutron who are making life more awesome with fire, lights, and 2.5 tons of steel!

Tired ..Fed up? Friends, What You Need is a Good old Fashioned …

HEATHEN STOMP!

Help support the ongoing creative efforts of
1st Church of the Buzzard’s
Holy Whiskey Missionary!!!

Saturday June 5th 8pm

Dismal is proud to present the world premiere of “The Last Round Up!” a film showcasing Dismal’s 2008 fiery extravaganza!

Boot stomping music: Hobo Gobbelins, One Man Banjo, and The Mighty Lynch-Pins! Dj Cactus and momo on the needle.

Midway thrills: Jack-a-lope ring toss, Face painting, Whiskey sip’n contest, poor-traits, pin the finger on Danger Ranger, Creamed corn Wrassling with the Dismal Ladies, and more!

$5 gets you in the door and 1 free Midway ticket! Additional Midway tickets and Raffle tickets available at the door.

Raffle Prizes await :: get your very own Tombstone in the Dismal Graveyard, dismal t-shirts, Dvds, & some Fancy Art!

Saturday June 5th 8pm …till we get sick of ya Varmints!

The First Church of the Buzzard
2601 Adeline @ 26th st. Oakland

now go’on an tell al yer friends!

• Heathen Stomp Flyer (shorturl: http://bit.ly/HeathenStomp)
• Facebook Event Page
• Twitter Shout Out

The web has been alive with discussion on web fonts after yesterday’s announcement of the Google Font API. I wrote about it myself yesterday and here is just a quick sample of some of the more interesting articles and discussions:

• Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room – Jeffery Zeldman, 24 Ways
• Google getting into the Web Fonts game? – Typophile Discussion
• Details on the new Google Webfont API – Paul Irish
• @font-face rendering flow chart – Typophile Discussion

Yesterday I commented on the legibility of the fonts in Google’s Font Directory on Windows with ClearType turned on. After seeing Miha’s awesome  font rendering chart, I can see that my run down of Windows font rendering is only partially correct: Windows XP on default renders in “standard” mode which allows for a limited anti-aliasing smoothing but only at large font sizes or for fonts with proper Windows hinting—unless you are using IE6 and then no anti-aliasing occurs and it’s pixels, pixels, pixels.

As Zeldman points out there are more issues between browsers as well, with each browser handling font hinting a little differently, but that’s a mess I’m not about to get into. What I will do is expand my review of Windows font rendering to cover what it looks link with standard mode and no anti-aliasing. Also for your convince, I’ve added screenshots showing what it looks like with each mode (each font name links to it’s corresponding screenshot):

Windows ClearType

Vista, Windows 7, Windows XP with IE7/8, XP with ClearType turned on

Windows Standard Mode

Windows XP default with Firefox or Chrome

Windows No Anti-Aliasing

Windows XP default with IE6

Again I didn’t bother creating a list for Mac. If you are working on Windows you can use Safari to see what the rendering will look like on a Mac. Macs render type in a more consistent manner: as it decreases in size at worst it becomes a little more anemic and fuzzy. In the main, if your type is legible on Windows it is legible on a Mac.

Conclusion

Now looking at all these Windows rendering styles you can see how varying typeface legibility is:  some fonts behave well across all rendering like Droid and others preform only good with one type of rendering like Inconsolata, which looks good in standard mode but terrible in ClearType and with font smoothing off.

The Droid Family is the only font in this set that I would use for body text. All others are only suitable for headers or display text. And I would avoid using Inconsolata, Tangerine, Josefin, and Cardo except at really large display sizes (36px or larger).

Oh what a happy day to be a Web Developer! Google has released their Google Font API and the Google Font Directory with a number of Open Source Fonts. Also released in cooperation with TypeKit is the WebFont Loader which helps the FOUT (Flash of Unstyled Content) which is an issue with how Firefox handles downloaded fonts ( for more on FOUT and why WebLoader is a good thing see Paul Irish’s Details on the New Google WebFont API).

All this is great as it make it a snap to use open source fonts, either the one’s Google hosts (fast download! easy!) or you use WebFont Loader to make it simple to add other Open Source Fonts such as some of the great ones offered by The League of Movable Type. If there are licensed fonts you want to use, I recommend looking into TypeKit‘s services.

CrossPlatform Rendering Issues in a NutShell

So now that the issue of web fonts is more or less solved, the next big issue is cross-platform font rendering. The best way to sum up the difference :

Mac: the goal of font rendering is to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.

Windows ClearType (Vista,Windows 7, anyone using IE7/8, and XP users smart enough to turn on ClearType): the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface. It is up to the font designers to build ClearType hinting into the font—without it the font may become illegible at small sizes.

Windows no anti-aliasing (XP default): pixels, pixels, pixels.

much of the above was paraphrased from a great post by Paul Irish: Font Rendering: Respecting The Pixel Grid

In practice this means that Windows users tend to think type on a Mac looks blurry and Mac users think that type on Windows looks jagged and crappy. Also, and more important is that a font needs to be hinted for Windows ClearType renderer or else at sizes under 20px it becomes ugly and often illegible at smaller sizes.

For a more detailed breakdown of how fonts are rendered check out this awesome font rendering chart by Miha.

What does this mean for the typefaces in the Google Font Directory?

So if you are a Mac user without a Windows box around you’ll mostly want to know which fonts are ugly/illegible at small sizes. I’ve taken a brief look at the fonts Google offers on my Windows PC here at work and came up with the following list. Note that some of these typefaces are meant as display only so they shouldn’t be used small anyway:

UPDATE: for a more complete chart with screenshots including Windows Standard Mode and no anti-aliasing check out Comparing Open Source Fonts – Part 2

Open Source Fonts Appearance With Windows ClearType

Open Source Fonts Appearance With a Mac

You’ll notice that I haven’t compiled a table like I did for Windows. That’s because Mac font rendering stays true to the font; thus, you can assume that display type fonts look bad at small sizes and fonts made for body text are good down to at least 12px. Also if you are on a Windows box you can easily see what it looks like on a Mac:  Download Safari and turn on it’s font smoothing (Preferences > Appearance > Font Smoothing > Light or Medium) which makes the font rendering behave (mostly) like a Mac.

*Inconsolata is a good example of a font not hinted for ClearType which looks ugly on Windows below 24px and becomes illegible at 14px; however, on a Mac it looks good even at 11px.