revUp - Updates and news for the LiveCode community
Issue 154 | August 9th 2013 Contact the Editor | How to Contribute

The Making of Piggy
Why Apimac have added LiveCode to their toolbox

By Ivan Gobbo

PiggybankPiggy Bank Assistant was recently published in the iOS App Store. This adorable Piggy Bank app will help you save the LiveCode way. Made by Apimac, this charming little app rewards you when you save, and becomes sad when you spend. Sort of like a virtual pet but focused on your money. I think I need this piggy.

I asked Ivan Gobbo to tell me a little more about the making of Piggy Bank. Here's what he told me.

 

We are a software company that develop apps for OS X and iOS and sell all over the world. For creating our software, we mainly use Xcode and sometimes Xojo. A few months ago we heard of LiveCode, a development tool of which we read that it had a fascinating history and a bright future. So we decided to find out more before using it for our main applications.


The Piggy BankTeam, right to left: Antonio,Ivan,Gabriele

"we soon realized that it was not merely a tool for developing apps but a world in which one entered and remained fascinated, a world of projects, plans for the future, and a unique user community"

We wanted to try it out in the field with a new project. The idea was to create an app that combined utility with fun and interactivity too. Trying out various ideas among our employees, during a meeting, we discovered that one of our employees in human resources, Francesca, wanted to have an app to keep track of the amount of money put in her piggy bank. She also wanted this app to be able to help her to reach her shopping goals. Therefore we decided to create Piggy Bank Assistant. This led us to explore LiveCode, which was new for us. In fact, we soon realized that it was not merely a tool for developing apps but a world in which one entered and remained fascinated, a world of projects, plans for the future, and a unique user community. Everyone is ready to help you, to offer you pieces of code and to recommend solutions.

Francesca

Francesca and Piggy, the inspiration for the app

Strip HTML
Soon the app was ready, perhaps in about half the time that would normally be needed to make an app of this kind with other tools. From there came the desire to try to develop an app for OS X. So we looked carefully at the requests that came to us from our professional users and we created Strip HTML. Here too LiveCode has proven surprising, supplying us with plenty of tools for word processing ready to use. The app's code is incredible for its readability and ease of maintenance.

Strip HTML

Self Timer
The next phase occurred almost naturally: one of our most successful apps for iPhone and iPad is Self Timer, an app born in 2009 that in a very short time, has risen to the top of the App Store ratings in the Photo & Video category. The app was created in Xcode and at that very time we were planning to produce a specific version meant for video. Everything was ready for the start of the project but after the first two positive experiments with LiveCode we said to ourselves: "And suppose we create this new app with LiveCode"? Everybody here quickly agreed with the idea. We enthusiastically got down to work and a little over a month later the app was all ready for beta testing. Today we launched it on the market, and the users gave it a terrific reception.

Self Timer

What can I say? I think LiveCode will gradually increase its role in our projects because it allows you to go from idea to realization in a short time and thus to be on the market at the right time. But the part that most impressed us was the stability of the software created, combined with the readability of the code, which translates into reliable applications which are easy to maintain. This is an important issue not only for those of us who work with this tool every day, but for our users too who expect high levels of quality.

Ivan Gobbo

About the Author

Ivan Gobbo works for Apimac, an Italian software house dedicated to OS X and iOS only software. People at Apimac aim to put into users' hands applications which they can use in a way they do things every day.

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