Work is steadily being made on Guidance 1.1. As you can see from the screen shots below, one of the features in Guidance 1.1 is a unified location field. This will help alleviate a lot of the problems I think international users are having and becoming confused what to enter for state and so forth. You will also be able to see the new feature of being able to select your own adhan file.
 
So far all the features I mentioned in my earlier post (see “The Status of Guidance“)are slated for this release except for an Arabic version. My Arabic, while fluent, is not good enough for translation. If anyone would like to volunteer to translate Guidance into Arabic please contact me. Also, automatic update installation (using Sparkle) is on the fence as to whether or not it will make it into this release or the next one.

I’ve made two iPhone wallpapers featuring the Guidance logo for anyone who wants them.
 
 
To put the wallpapers on your phone, just follow the steps below

1. Create a folder on your computer to store your iPhone wallpapers.
2. Download the wallpaper.
3. Save the wallpaper to the previously created folder.
4. Open iTunes and plug in your iPhone.
5. Go to the “Photos” tab and select your newly created folder.
6. Once the photos are synced up with your iPhone, open the photo gallery and select your image.
7. Tap the icon in the bottom left of your photo and select “Use As Wallpaper”.

First off, I would like to apologize to everyone who has been waiting for an update to Guidance. I’ve been busy in the last month or so writing the Prayer Times web app for the iPhone and playing around with the newly released iPhone SDK in preparation for developing Guidance Mobile.

However things are now back on track for releasing Guidance 1.1 which brings me to the topic of this post. Getting the prayer times just right. No matter how many cool features you put into a prayer times application, the one feature that has to be perfect is calculating the prayer times correctly (this of course being the point of the application in the first place).

Read the rest of this entry »

I am pleased to announce the release of the Prayer Times iPhone Web App. Prayer Times allows you to view the prayer times for your current location in an iPhone friendly format. Simply go to m.guidanceapp.com in your iPhone to make use of this web app. Rest Assured that this is not the iPhone version of Guidance, for that I am still waiting for the iPhone SDK. The iPhone version of Guidance will be a fully featured prayer times program with lots of features. I don’t want to say anything just yet, I want to see what exactly the SDK allows before making that announcement. Anyway, please use the Prayer Times web app in the meantime.

The iPhone web app I have been working on is now in beta, you can view it here http://m.guidanceapp.com/ I hope to finalize it over the weekend and then get back to working on version 1.1 of Guidance. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch please test it out and let me know if you have any issues with it or suggestions. I’m particularly interested in having people from various time zones try it out. If you do manage to try it out please post your thoughts in the comments. Thanks.

Well, I went ahead and ordered an iPhone. It came in on Friday and I’ve already begun writing a web app to allow you to view the prayer times for any location. The web application will not have any reminders or play the adhan, I’m waiting for the developer kit to come out before that will be possible. I expect to have the web app finished up in a few days. Stay tunedfor more news on that front.

After careful thought, I’ve decided that accepting donations for the iPhone in order to write the iPhone version of Guidance is not the way I want to go. Instead I am going to go ahead and write the iPhone version and then offer it for sale.  Rest assured that if you have donated any amount, at any time in the past then you will receive a free copy of the iPhone version. I have not yet decided on a price for the iPhone app. I will keep you updated on the status of the iPhone app.

Inshallah when Apple releases the developer kit for the iPhone (currently scheduled for some time in February) which will allow developers to actually write applications for the iPhone (without it having to be hacked) I plan on writing a version of Guidance for the iPhone. The only problem is that development will be slow since I do not actually have an iPhone myself (funds are a bit low at the moment). So here is my proposal, all donations I receive from now, I will add to the iPhone fund posted on the front page, and inshallah when it reaches $399, I will get an iPhone and will make sure that the iPhone version of Guidance is continually developed and updated as much as possible.

Well, to be honest, the amount of attention Guidance has received is both very surprising and very pleasing. To date, Guidance has received over 6,000 downloads. Since the initial release of version 1.0 (which was hurriedly followed by version 1.0.1 the next day to fix an embarrassing time zone bug that affected everyone east of Greenwich), a lot has happened. I got married and Matt graduated from college, so the project had to be put on hold until everything settled down again. Now that things have settled down, I’m eager to get back to working on Guidance and release version 1.1, which should include some cool features and a more organized code base to make updating Guidance easier. Some of the features currently projected for version 1.1:

• The ability to select an audio file from your computer to use as the Adhan (mp3, m4a, wav, etc.)
• Tahajud (night prayer) option, similar to the shuruq option, that lets you set Guidance to play the adhan a set number of minutes before fajr to wake you up for Tahajud. This feature should be quite useful in Ramadhan so you can wake up for Suhur.
• The ability to set the prayer time calculation method for Fajr and Isha separately
• Updater will now automatically download the new version and install it for you
• Arabic version!

For the long term, I hope to eventually implement the following features:

• Ability to wake the computer up from sleep to play the adhan
• Ability to set adhan volume separately from the system volume (actually more complicated than it sounds, trust me)
• Continued localizations for different languages (if anyone would like to volunteer their services as a translator please let me know)

Thank you everyone for all the donations and emails, I love hearing from people who enjoy using Guidance, it really makes my day. A big thank you to abdullafx for the awesome thread he posted on macarabia.net (http://macarabia.net/showthread.php?t=5592).