I had a good day at the Android Developer Lab. It was pretty freeform with a short presentation, lunch and then diving right into device testing. We got our hands on:
I concentrated on the Tattoo and Droid because of their non-standard screen resolutions. The Reader Widgets worked with only minor alignment issues on the large widget on the Tattoo. A fix is on its way.
I applied to go to the first Android Developer Lab in London but that filled up too quickly. They’re putting on a second one on Thursday this week which I am going to. If anyone also attending wants to say hello, I’ll be carrying a blue backpack and answering to the code word ‘Ubik’. Or the name Mark. Looking forward to getting my hands on some shiny new Android 2.0 hardware and meeting some fellow devs.
I have just uploaded new versions of the Reader Widgets to the market. There are only minor updates:
Reader Widget Small V1.8:
Reader Widget Pro V1.81:
I have just uploaded updates to both Reader Widget Small and Reader Widget Pro. Both have a tweaked layout which is tidier and supports large screens like the one in the new Motorola Droid. Here are the full change logs:
Reader Widget Small V1.7:
Reader Widget Pro V1.8:
I moved house last week which of course left me with no broadband for a few days. It just got connected today but luckily I could use my HTC Hero’s built in USB tethering to keep me going. I know there’s Android Wi-fi tethering available too but that eats the battery for fun and only works if you have root. It might sound like I sing the Hero’s praises a lot but little things like this and being able to switch off the mobile data connection lift it above standard Android phones (if there is such a thing anymore).
I have just uploaded Reader Widget Pro V1.7 to the market. Changes include:
I also experimented with showing the unread count in the notification bar but found it to be not that useful. The text doesn’t stay in the notification bar (like when an SMS is received it just flashes up the message for a few seconds) and so the bar has to be dragged open to see the unread count. Ideally I want the unread count to persist in the notification bar so it can be seen even if the phone is locked. I haven’t found a way to do this yet.
I was just playing around with my newly updated G1 and realised that animated GIFs still do not animate on it. This has been an Android bug since day 1 in both the browser and ImageView. If you visit a web page containing an animated GIF all you will see is the first frame and nothing else. This annoyed me a bit when it was in 1.5 (cupcake) but the fact that its still in 1.6 (donut) is amazing. Android users may have noticed that ads in apps downloaded from the market are just static images and/or text. The Adfonic ads in my Reader Widget Small app are text only because of this bug. I can’t believe that Google, a company built by ad money, has let this one slide for so long. Animated GIF ads can be annoying but to leave developers without the option to use them is very restrictive. Rant over.
I have installed the official Android 1.6 (aka Donut) ADP build on my G1. I’ve done some initial testing and found that both Reader Widget Small and Reader Widget Pro work on it. I have also uploaded screen shots for both to the market (only visible in the 1.6 version of the market). PubCrawler still works too. Now where is my Android 1.6 build for my Hero, HTC? 🙂
I’ve been away on holiday for the last two weeks, hence the lack of posts here. My girlfriend and I went to California and had a great time. Naturally I took my Hero with me. It has a really useful option in the “hold the power button down menu” to switch off the mobile data connection. I found it incredibly useful as it prevented extortionate data charges whilst still receiving calls and letting me connect to any Wifi hotspots I came across. This allowed me to stay in the loop with all the goings on in the mobile world and a lot has happened, especially with Android.
The first thing on my to do list is installing an Android 1.6 ROM on my G1 and testing the Reader widgets on it.
I have received a few suggestions for features in addition to my own ideas so watch this space.
Also Reader Widget Small passed the 5000 download mark last week. Thanks to everyone who has downloaded, rated and provided feedback on it.
An official Hero ROM update has been leaked but I haven’t applied it. The reason is I went with MoDaCo’s 2.2 custom ROM (core) instead. I know I said I wasn’t going to use custom ROMs on my Hero but I couldn’t resist. If something can be modded to get extra functionality I’ll usually go right ahead and mod. The official firmware update removes root functionality and the ability to boot/flash an unsigned image which means:
The MoDaCo ROM retains these abilities which I didn’t want to lose. It’s based on the official 2.73 update anyway so it contains all the fixes therein. The lag has definitely been reduced especially using Spare Parts to set the transitions to “Fast”. However, flash in the browser is still clunky and slow. Hopefully when flash 10 officially comes to android this will get sorted out.
ubikapps 