Ångström is a unit converter with the most tap-efficient and smart UI

ilyabirman.net

9 points·ilyabirman··6 comments

Hello everyone. I am the developer of the app and will be happy to answer any tech question you have. That was a really challenging project.

What was challenging about it? I'd like to hear.

There are many non-standard things. Huge amount of animations, all of them are "user controllable". And they must be implemented not to interfere with user input.

Then the conversion itself. The goal is to type a number and one-two letters and get a relevant result. So there are many heuristics there. For example, 0.1 meter will be converted to 3.94 inches, 1 meter — to 3.28 ft and 10000 meters — to 6.21 miles. And there is much more of that.

At last we needed the app to work well on every device that is supported by iOS7. iPhone 4 is not a fast device by today standards. So optimization was a little bit challenging also.

Maybe you have any particular question in mind?

I first thought of the linux distribution[0], but I do think the name is appropriate since it is a unit we don't often touch (like Femto)

[0]: http://www.angstrom-distribution.org

Out of curiosity -- is there a reason you decided to do in-app purchases for popular units? I feel like I would have been more likely to just buy the whole package outright.

Looks great, though!

Thanks! We want everyone to be able to look at all the work we've done. And, by the way, all regular units are there even without in-app purchase. :)

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