Scenario Software yesterday released version 2.7 of its popular Scenario Poker Texas Hold 'em Tournament simulation. Version 2.7 runs as a Mac OS X Dashboard widget or on Apple's iPhone as a Web 2.0 application. iPhone users can choose from an 8-player Portrait mode or a 10-player Landscape mode via the company's website.

"The iPhone is a phenomenal device," said Todd Ouzts, Scenario Software's president. "But with no development guidelines published until days after the iPhone's launch, our preview version was a bit of a gamble. It turns out that you can't really just run a Dashboard Widget on the iPhone verbatim as you might have expected. Not, for example, if it relies on the AppleClasses for those fancy glass buttons and scrollbars. That UI had to be scrapped for the iPhone in favor of native browser controls, which are far more responsive anyway."

But perhaps the most shocking discovery is that developers don't have access to the full 320x480 touch screen as you might have expected. Safari on iPhone's top and bottom toolbars can't be hidden and they hog a lot of real estate. So everything had to be crammed into a smaller space. And because the bottom toolbar has controls in it, you can't place your own app's buttons too close to them. They have to be spread out to be usable and avoid mis-taps.

Another tricky issue is how Safari on iPhone handles scaling and rotation. Web 2.0 apps apparently don't get notified of rotation events, so they can't adjust their layout on the fly to optimize for the two aspect ratios, as with Scenario Poker's 8-player and 10- player poker table sizes. "Apple needs to give developers more control over this and quickly," adds Todd.

Head over to the site below for more information.

Scenario Poker

Scenario Software

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