Network enabled apps such as news aggregators, blogging clients often load lots of small files, such as thumbnails, trough HTTP connection. One of them is my app – Kozaczek, that loads thumbnails for every UITableView item when it is about to be displayed. Usually we expect that such application is: (1) responsive (does not block scrolling while loading), (2) it does load thumbnails almost realtime.

I suppose the first thing everybody tries is calling [UIImage imageWithData:[NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:someURL]]. There is nothing wrong with it, except it make your UI stutter and load images painfully slow. After trying that one may think of using background threads, NSOperationQueue, or something like that, but still any modern web browser loads those images much faster when they are embedded into regular web page than your application. Wonder why?

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Update: Public Beta has been just released for download on LiveChat for Mac page.

I am proud to announce my company was hired to create Mac version of LiveChat operator software. The application just entered alpha-phase and today closed tests were started. I hope too that the new refreshing LiveChat icon (on the right) designed by me will be the cherry on the project’s pie.

LiveChat provides innovative web based customer support solutions including live web statistics and live customer chat. The company has great potential and impressive customer base, so you may be interested to follow their Twitter feed too here.

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