Andrew Yates

Andrew Yates

A collection of posts by Andrew Yates

A collection of 10 posts

OverflowApr 30, 2018
Building a GIF Booth for the Buffer Retreat

Last week the Buffer team descended on Singapore for our 9th Buffer Retreat. Ever since the first retreat back in San Francisco, I’ve tried to figure out ways to capture the special moments we share together as a team. Since we’re fully remote, these yearly get-togethers can be the only moments we share with others for another year. At our previous retreat in Madrid last year, I added a GIF Booth to the ever growing arsenal of ways to capture

OverflowFeb 27, 2018
Using Estimote Monitoring for Improved Presence Detection

Ever since iBeacons were introduced by Apple in 2013, I’ve been interested in using them in an app. So much so, I ordered some of the very first beacons in the form of an Estimote developer kit . I got them in hand and unfortunately didn’t come up with a project to use them on. However, recently I’ve been working on a side project that would benefit from the enter/exit features of beacons and geofences. Playpal and Beacons PlayPal

OverflowSep 29, 2017
From tiny side project to official festival app with 10k users

Two weeks ago I was fortunate to make my 3rd Above & Beyond Group Therapy milestone show at the magnificent Gorge Amphitheater in Washington State. Set over two days the celebration bought people from all over the world to the Gorge to celebrate the 250th Group Therapy Radio Show. Having attended both 100 in New York and 200 in Amsterdam I was blown away with how friendly the crowds were and wondered how I could get people even more connected. Inspired by the numerous apps for WWDC to show atte

OverflowMay 10, 2017
Improving our iOS Share Extension Installation Guide

Since iOS 8, we’ve been able to ship our Composer as an extension which allows users to share from their favorite apps that make use of UIActivityViewController. We were super excited to be able to ship the share extension to replace the old Bookmarklet code we had in prior versions of the app for a similar effect. Installing extensions on an iOS device isn’t so easy for the end user. We’ve been through a couple of iterations of guides to walk users through the process of adding the Buffer butt

OverflowApr 10, 2017
Keeping data fresh in Buffer for iOS with AsyncDisplayKit, IGListKit & Pusher

Ever since Pull Down to Refresh was introduced on iOS we’ve had it implemented as the main way to keep data fresh in our iOS app. With updates going out from your queue throughout the day, the update collection view within Buffer can change pretty often. These update collection views are used for our Pending, Sent, Contributions and Content Inbox, which makes up quite a portion of the app. Since v6.0 we’ve been using AsyncDisplayKit to do all of our

OverflowOct 4, 2016
Smooth Scrolling in Buffer for iOS: How (and Why) We Implemented AsyncDisplayKit

Each year after Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference we switch most of our focus onto a bigger update to our Buffer iOS app to build out support for the newest iOS features and changes. This year was no different, but this time we also focused a bunch of time on performance and future proofing. New version of iOS = new changes to Buffer iOS app During the time after WWDC, we typically will run through the app and adjust our minimum target to the previous iOS release. In this case, it

OpenOct 22, 2014
An Inside Look at the New Buffer for iPhone And iPad

Since the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June, I have been working hard on our iOS 8 update. And now, the new Buffer for iPhone and iPad is live to all our customers! Not only have we added support for the amazing new features available to us in iOS 8, but we’ve added universal support for iPad for the first time. Download the free app for iPad and iPhone! [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/buffer-for-

OverflowJun 16, 2014
How We Built Daily by Buffer in Two Weeks

Daily by Buffer is Buffer’s new content suggestion app available for iPhone, allowing you to add content suggestions to your Buffer each day through a simple interface. This is how it was built. While updating Buffer for iPhone for iOS 7 we launched content suggestions within our web app, which give users a variety of posts each day that can be added to their Buffer queue to help it stay topped up. Towards the end of developing the iOS 7 update a few of us developed the idea of building a simil

OverflowJun 10, 2014
What You Might Find in Buffer for iOS 8

Recently Apple announced iOS 8 and along with it many features that will be hugely useful for Buffer for iOS. Here are my initial thoughts on what you might find in our iOS 8 update this fall. Buffer sharing via App Extension We’ve sometimes struggled to get Buffer integrated in other applications, with requests coming in almost hourly for us to integrate in X & Y. With App Extensions we’ll be able to provide a composer that is available in all applications that use the Action Sheet. Sneaky pee

OpenApr 9, 2014
Behind the Scenes: How Buffer for iOS 7 Was Built

Today, we are thrilled to announce the newest version of Buffer’s iOS app , which represents a major upgrade in design, code, and features. We’ve gone through many iterations, and we’re hoping you like what we’ve come up with. The end product was more than five months in the making, and we thought it might be neat to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the development process. Design The first thing you’ll notice with most iOS