WWYS 2.0 Update
Duncan James-Bell • Apr 23, 2020
Foreign Expenses in Beta
The work on WWYS foreign expenses has gone very well.
In the end I decided to add a setting to turn on foreign expenses and let you select a default currency. When the is switched on, WWYS does a daily attempt to get all the exchange rates against your home currency and caches them. A new page is added to Expense creation, which takes the amount entered assuming your default foreign currency and converts it to your home currency. If the is the intent then you can just swipe over to confirmation; but you could change to another currency or enter an explicit exchange rate from this screen.
This seems to give an easy workflow for the intended use case; a trip abroad, where you can turn the feature on for the duration of the trip and get immediate translations to your most likely foreign currency, but could still switch it if for example you were offered a currency choice when making a card transaction, or made a border crossing etc. The design aim is to minimise the interaction needed to create an Expense and keep a simple fast interaction.
Therefore I'm really pleased that this design has zero impact when foreign expenses is switched off; no change to the current Expense workflow, or data that has to be displayed on the limited screen real estate. The setting can be toggled or default foreign currency modified at any time.
I'm currently testing out builds of 2.0, with foreign Expense support and quite a number of major bug fixes for problems uncovered in the redesign - this may take longer than usual because it's been a big architectural change, and also because I don't have the same opportunities for live testing under lockdown as previously.
If anyone would like to volunteer as a beta tester please contact me at wwyssupport@james-bell.net.
Duncan's Blog
After the disappointment of any better messaging API this year, I've been experimenting with better ways to export the data from the watch. In the end I decided the best way forwards was to bite the bullet and sync data to iCloud and write a dedicated iPhone App. The move to iCloud data storage has taken quite a lot of work because changing the data schema in the future becomes harder, so I first of all had to bring forward other features such as multiple account support that impact the data schema. So I am going to do this in two stages. Firstly the next version will come with multiple account support and iCloud data sync, then at a later data an iPhone App to improve data export. I've just completed my first beta version for WatchOS, but its such a big change that I will need to road test it for a few weeks before getting ready to release. I also need to update all the instructions on this web site as its a big change to the overall structure and flow for quite a few use cases. If anyone wants to help out with beta testing please get in touch!
WWDC has been a mixed bag in relation to WWYS. I had really hoped for more message API support on the Apple Watch so I could improve export to use iMessage or email, but unfortunately I can't find anything that might assist. On the other hand SwiftUI has made some big improvements on what is possible. This leaves a dilemma; WWYS was always intended to be based on SwiftUI as being the best way to have a good WatchOS only app, the the reality of the current implementation is that quite a bit of the "Outer Shell" had to be built with WatckKit. In the new WatchOS 7 this would no longer be the case, but removing and porting to full SwiftUI would make it very hard to be backwards compatible with Watch OS 6. Having given it some thought I've decided that my approach will be to first update the current App so that it better aligns with WatchOS 7 during the beta period, using its current architecture in a WatchOS 6 backwards compatible way. This is to support anyone on the beta program and ensure WWYS keeps working. In parallel a WatchOS 7 only port will take place to release as shortly after the official WatchOS 7 release as possible. At this point I will drop WatchOS 6 compatibility and so users will need to upgrade to keep up to date with new versions. However, this will be preceded by a final WatchOS 6 release that is backwards compatible.
