Pixelube

• 13.02.2010 |
• 3 Comments |
• Filed Under: Design, iPad, Seattle Website Design

A few weeks ago a client of mine shot me email indicating that he might be interested in creating an iPad application. By the end of that week my client was oozing so much enthusiasm for creating something that I was only happy to oblige. He already had a huge web site with a substantial amount of users and he was working on the 3rd iteration of a related iPhone app so it only seemed natural that we dive right into something for the iPad.

Where to start? Everyone’s completely green. I’m fairly certain the only real experts at iPad design and development would be the folks out at Apple and even they are waiting on folks like us to help interpret and define what the iPad is fully capable of.

Once I got the official “green light” from my client. I kicked of the project by mining for as much information as I could find. As a result I’ve compiled a list of iPad resources that I hope will be of use.

iPad GUI Elements (Photoshop Templates)

If you’re at all like me, the designer in you will throw caution to the wind and dive right into at least some initial user interface design. Here are couple resources for GUI templates:

1. Taking from their iPhone GUI PSD, the theehan+lax team have created one for the iPad

2.If you’re interested in getting a bit more streamlined version (minus the extra buttons and controls), visit Kevin Anderson’s site.

Apple Resources

If you’re at all familiar with the iPhone you might notice that with the iPad there’s a slight shift or bridge leaning back toward apps that leverage a bit more web properties than the iPhone. However, there are a variety of paradigm shifts in the way a user would use an iPad vs. an iPhone. With that said I find it a bit odd that the Apple web site sends us to get the iPhone SDK rather than an iPad SDK to, in fact, develop for the iPad (wow, ithis, ithat, iwhaaaa?)

Either way, if you’re serious about iPad development you’ll want to pay the $99 bucks to get accesses to the latest SDK’s, Documentation and the Developer Forum. You’ll want to start by going to the apple site and visiting the following, among other, resources:

3. iPhone Developer Program
4. Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (Account Required)
5. iPad Programming Guide (Account Required)
6. Apple’s Developer Forum

Various iPad Screen Shots, Videos and Photos

There’s not much but, being a very visual person, I found the following videos and photos to be the most inspiring items in this list:

7. Lots of Apple fluff but it’s definitely worth a watch or two

8. Here’s another good video from the folks at Gizmodo

9. We can thank fraserspeirs flickr post for a variety of iPad screen shots.
10. Yet another marketing page from Apple – lots of nice screen shots here.

Additional iPad Articles and Tutorials

I found the first 10 items in this post the most interesting but we’re not finished. Here’s a quick list (in order of what I found most useful) of remaining resources that consist of iPad Photoshop and icon tutorials, various takes on design philosophies, design requirements and much more:

11. How iPad Affects the Way we Design Websites?
12. iPad UI Roundup
13. Usable and accessible web design for the iPad
14. Article: Apple iPad and iPhone 3.2 Preview
15. A Collection of Free iPad Icons, Tutorials and Photoshop Templates
16. How To Create a Detailed Apple iPad Icon in Photoshop

I think that does it. Hope you find this post useful!

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