In an unexpected turn of events, we’ve decided to build and deploy a different downloadable app from Relight before we launch Relight as a downloadable app. Here’s a link to a Pre-Launch page we made (with a pretty cool preview of what’s to come):
There are a number of reasons for doing this, but the first thing you need to know is that we’ve made the decision to remove audio support from Relight itself (putting it in its own app called Relight Audio).
Audio adds a complexity to Relight’s interface that causes the following problems:
- It adds a lot of UI to an already complicated interface.
- Relight’s already complex interface makes it a less-than-ideal app for listening to audio resources.
- It adds significant complexity to the process of making a downloadable app for Relight.
Don’t worry, though, Relight will not lose audio support before Relight Audio launches. That’s part of why we’re launching Relight Audio before Relight.
Oh, and this is getting complicated in terms of keeping the names straight. That’s why we’re pretty sure we’re going to be renaming Relight to Relight Study. So the two apps will be called Relight Study and Relight Audio.
I know some of you might look at this audio project with a hint of annoyance (or something approaching annoyance), thinking that it’s a distraction from making Relight into an app, but it’s not exactly a distraction. This decision will help speed up Relight Study’s downloadable app development in the following two ways:
- It will reduce the amount of work needed to launch Relight Study as an app.
- It is a good place for me to practice making a downloadable app without the weight of an existing complex code-base.
We’re really excited about Relight Audio, and I’m hoping to have a beta for you all to try within the next three months or so (hopefully even sooner)!