I have rolled out an update to the Recipes App backend that allows the recipes to be in multiple categories. This makes sense with recipes as many of them seem like they should be in more than one category. You wont be able to take advantage of this until you install the new version of Recipes App. It is in the App Store review stage now. I havent gone through and put all the recipes into multiple categories though, only a few.

I have also added support to keep track of where recipes come from. So if people have free recipes that they want to share with this app, I can keep track of which recipes came from which people/companies.

I have also knocked off the Help tab from the app as it was a bit redundant. Hopefully the new version will be available very soon. The new version makes a big difference.

Recipes App

Last night I submitted the next version of the Recipes App to the App Store.  Hopefully in a few days it will be available to download.  There are a number of improvements in this version including the ability to browse through ALL recipes (finally!), and a new option called My Recipes.  You can save any recipe and it will be available in My Recipes. In the current version of the app, some of the recipes dont display correctly and are cut off.  This has also been fixed in the new version.

You dont need to create an account or anything like that to make use of My Recipes.  It uses your iPhone’s device ID to remember which recipes you have saved, so the whole process is seamless to you.  If you have use the ‘I Like’ button in the current version of the App, then those recipes will be in your My Recipes list.

So, I have finally had some time to update the Recipes App.  One of the main things that will be fixed in the 1.1 release will be to allow you to browse through all recipes without having to use the search.

The solution I came up with was splitting the categories into letters as well.  So, when you click on Crockpot for example, you will be taken to a screen that lists the alphabet A-Z (plus a 0-9 for recipes that begin with something other than a letter), and it will tell you how many recipes begin with each letter.  From there, you can drill down to the actual recipes that begin with that letter.  This allows a much shorter list of recipes to be scrolled through in each letter.  The iPhone doesnt play nice with hundreds (or in some categories, thousands) of recipes to be browsed.

I should have the update ready for App Store approval soon.

The Recipes App was only displaying the first 25 recipes per category up until just now.

The reason behind the limit was to make sure the app remains snappy.  I have upped the limit to 50 and it still seems pretty snappy.  This change is done at the server end and doesnt require an update to the app on your iPhone.

I understand the confusion and frustration when a category says it has 700 recipes but you can only see 25!  Its silly I know.  I am working on version 1.1 of the Recipes App which will allow you to browse through EVERY recipe in each category.

In the meantime, make use of the Search tab to find recipes that you cant find by browsing through the categories.

Note: I wont be releasing version 1.1 until after iPhone OS v2.2 has been released (assuming it is released in the next few weeks as expected).  This is just to make sure everything plays nicely with the next version of the OS.