That brings me to my latest, and most exciting project. I wrote the software that our company sales reps use for tracking their customers. I wrote the software for the standard version of Windows running on laptops. Now I get to adapt that software to run on tablets. I need to allow for fingers, rather than a mouse and a keyboard, so the skills I have to learn are different. And I'm having a real fun time doing it.
This is what I've done so far. It's still in the experimental stage at this point. I'm still learning how to deal with various screen and font sizes. I have to make everything fit on the screen no matter what the tablet's owner has set their screen size to be.
This colour scheme was inspired by a computer I owned almost 30 years ago, the fantastic Sinclair QL. You only got 4 colours with a QL: black, white, red and green (in high res mode. In low res you got 8 colours). Of course I get to use a few more colours these days, but the simplicity is what I like. Basically, black and white, with the few colours for the highlights. That also works well on a tablet, where you have to keep in mind the battery life (black doesn't use any power).
There are some things I don't think I'll use, such as finger swipes. This is still Windows 8 after all, and this software may still be used on laptop and desktop computers, which probably won't have touch screens. I need to come up with a way for the software to be used with fingers, but at the same time, with a mouse. So I think I'll be using plenty of colourful buttons, which can be touched and clicked on.
My programming language of choice is Delphi, which gives me the freedom to do almost anything that Windows is able to do. Delphi is the reason that, for me, Windows application development is so much fun. Java and Android was fun too, the little I did of it, but iPad and iPhone development leaves me cold. I'm not a fan of Objective C at all. I'm happy to leave that to other people.
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