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The Wee Red Book is the definitive football annual in Scotland. First published in 1928, the book contains hundreds of pages of football facts and trivia dating back as far as the 1870s.
Last year I put forward the idea of turning the book into a mobile app. It seemed like a logical move – in addition to a simple menu structure that could make navigating the book’s contents easy, an app brought with it the opportunity for live updates so the book would never go out of date as the season progressed.
This season proved to be the perfect time to launch the app. With Rangers kicked out of the SPL and their fate still undecided at the time the Wee Red Book went to print, the app is now the only way to get accurate fixtures for the season ahead.
I developed the app for Apple iOS (iTunes link) and Android (Google Play link) devices using a combination of PhoneGap, the Sencha Touch 2 framework and HTML5. The app sports a responsive design which automatically adapts itself for different phone sizes and even tablets.
It’s been a busy week – in addition to launching the Wee Red App I received training on the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite with Adobe certified expert Scott Russell. I have to say the Adobe DPS system looks great – for newspapers, magazines and art books it’s probably the nicest, most efficient way to develop periodical, content-led apps.
I’m also pretty pleased to have gone from zero app development skills to learning two different – and complementary – native app development solutions so far this year.
The app revolution? Bring it on!
Update: Listed in the Guardian’s app round-up
Grant Gibson 
Love the Wee Red App, but why no Cup fixtures and results? The section is there in the App for the Cups. The App would be perfect with this included. Kenneth.
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