WordPress' sophomore iPhone debut impresses

Despite increasingly better software, blogging on phones is still a real pain compared with doing it on a regular computer. However, credit is due to WordPress, which has gone to great lengths to make the latest version of its iPhone app much better for users to both create and manage their blogs on a small screen (and without a keyboard).

Besides a new look, one of the biggest changes is that the app remembers exactly what you were doing between sessions, so that if you quit it, or get a phone call, it will take you right back to the page or menu you were looking at. This also keeps you from losing anything you hadn't saved if you're interrupted--even if you were in the middle of a writing a sentence when your phone rang. This should change the beginning of such a conversation from "I am so mad at you right now" to a simple "hello."

In addition to remembering what you were doing, the app does a much better job at letting you manage user comments. The approval screen itself looks almost identical, but the app now lets you quickly switch between the ones that have been approved and the ones that still need to be looked at. It also displays each users' Gravatar (user icon) next to their username and URL, which ends up taking up a little more space than it did in the previous iteration of the app but adds a sense of familiarity with its desktop sibling.

Other small changes include the app remembering which order you uploaded the photos in so that they display in that same order in your post. Although the app still hasn't been updated to include videos, which means 3GS owners will have to add whatever video they shot through WordPress' Web interface instead. The app also now stores passwords in a user's keychain, which means those credentials could be accessed by other applications you may want to give access to later on down the line--like, say an app that lets you post videos to a WordPress blog.

Oddly enough, the new WordPress app is completely different from the original, which still exists but will no longer be updated. The company attributes this to having switched between having an outside contractor make the first version, whereas this new one was built in-house.

The new look makes it simply to hop between comments, posts and pages. User Gravatars are now visible too.

(Credit: WordPress)

[Gold_Storm_Mac]

cnet is app crazy. iphone is accelerating and android isn't yet.

[jjoyceiv]

Of course, on any other platform, taking a phone call wouldn't affect other apps at all...

Multitasking? Hello?

[iertry]

There is a reason the iPhone does not crash and each app performs well: there is no multi-tasking. Seriously, who actually needs it on a phone? Push notifications now take care of the need for multi-tasking pretty well and they do not impact performance. Give Windows Mobile a try and see how long it takes before background apps start to annoy you and crash your device (I used to be a WinMo user so I have experienced this).

Twitter: @kmcgrady

[AndigoNewMedia]

I could agree more re: push and multi-tasking. There are definitely times I'm annoyed that I can't easily jumpm from one app to another, but overall I'm more happy to have a stable, reliable platform. If only the network was as reliable.

Andy

[dfresh411]

oh yeah, I do remember losing an entire post because my wife called me right before I saved. That was painful, but still a great app. Wouldn't leave home without it.

http://twitter.com/dfresh411