Update, update, update...

If you've download Desk Clock Plus, you've probably noticed the steady stream of updates.  I've gotten into the habit of checking the error reports on a daily basis to see what's going on and really try to resolve the problems as they've come in.  Most of which have been pretty minor after my major programmer fail when I first launched the program about two weeks ago. However, some of them were kind of odd...

One was a crash report that was extremely cryptic and after some googleing, I found a line to Daniel Lew's Coding Thoughts regarding the problem that I was having.  There seems to be a bug with the view flipper (a control that I'm using in the slide show and to flip back grounds) and when the phone gets rotated.  The fix was pretty minor and I think it's working... If you are using the slide show and it stops advancing the images shoot me an email cause that's the bug I want to see if I can recreate it locally...

The other bug that I'm happy to have fixed is with loading the images for the slide show.  Since we are dealing with a phone and some memory limitation large images would crash on load.  Previously, I would just skip the image, but I found a really awesome android dev blog called Android-er.  In this post, he explains how to use the BitmapFactory options object to load large images.

Lastly, I finally got the PayPal donation system working... so, if you feel generous, you can toss a buck or two into the development tip jar! 

And of course

Announcing Desk Clock Plus

I put the Launch Bar widget aside for a while (OK, last post was over two months ago) and I started to address another issue that I having with the OS.  I have the Motorola Droid, I also have the Multimedia Dock which I use at work.  I find it very convent to have the time and weather right in front of me.  The stock Clock program has this very annoying (in my opinion) of going to a screen saver mode after 3 minutes or so.  The back ground goes black the time color changes to green and the time moves around after minute or so.  I don't get to see my background, I don't get to see the weather and the kicker to it is there's no settings to change this behavior.

So, I took on what became known as Desk Clock Plus as my next project.  For the most part, I'm pretty happy with it.  I've got a bunch of features that I'm happy with (Silent on dock being one of my favorites).  The rotating backgrounds I feel is a nice feature and of course the selling point that I think most people with the dock will be happy with is the ability to set the damned screen saver time out... to OFF.

This being said, I did have a programmer epic fail yesterday after the initial publish.  I uploaded the APK to the market at 12:30ish and by 1:00 I had 3 force close reports and 1 email (thanks for that!).  Turns out that Java still hates me and that I apparently don't understand how recursion works with Java.  So, some quick code reorganization and it looks like it fixed the problem.  All of this came about because I didn't uninstall the application first or clear the settings.  Very bad, stupid programmer...

I do have another change for that, but I forgot to include it in the last push, it's not a big deal so that will have to wait.

Finally, in regards to the price of this application, even though I did code 90% of it from scratch (I did use the stock alarm system as I didn't want to take the time to figure it out on my own... yes I got lazy).  With that and the fact that it's really just a clock, it's a free application.  I do have a donate option that's disabled for now, once PayPal gets back to me and approves my app request I'll make the changes and enable it. It also amazes me that in 24 hours I have ~350 downloads with 150 active installs.  Launch Bar (free) is up to 4117 downloads! 

I do have some other good ideas for the app planned, but I'm not sure how long it will be until I get to them.  I think I want to go back to the Launch Bar widget and implement some of the things that I learned from the Desk Clock and make that guy a little faster.

Scolling widget... sort of

The paid version of the Launch Bar was just updated. The new feature is that the widget "scrolls". Well, fake scrolls... I run the Launcher Pro home replacement app and it supports scrolling widgets however, it looks like the scroll can only be vertical. The launch bar is of course horizontal and as far as I know you can't make a horizontal scrolling widget. The reasoning is pretty simple, the left / right swipe motion is reserved by the system to change home screens. So my original idea of using the gallery and a nice smooth horizontally scrolling widget went out the window. Although, this was probably for the best as the design change allowed me to add more than 7 icons and not require a special home replacement (although I highly recommend Launcher Pro).

So, here's how it works. There is now a 'Mode' button that will give you 4 choices:

• Classic - This is the Launch Bar that we've come to know and love. Seven customizable buttons
• Arrows - When this is selected, you see two gray arrows that will allow you to scroll one icon left or right in the list. It's a continuous loop, so when you get to your last icon, the list will start over. I cut the number of icons down to 6 when the phone is in portrait mode. This was for sizing / usability reasons. You can also double tap the arrow to jump seven icons at a time.*
• Scroll Bar - When selected, you will see an orange bar below your icons. You can touch that bar at any point to jump to that part of the list. Sadly, you can't slide your finger over the bar to scroll (you can't have a true slide bar as the left / right slide is reserved for the changing of screens).
• Mixed - When the phone is in portrait mode it will use the Scroll Bar mode. When the phone is landscape it will use Arrow mode. This came about just because of how widgets are sized differently in portrait vs landscape. It gives you the best of both worlds in my opinion.

I'm sure that there will be other minor changes here and there as oddities are noticed, but I think that's the majority of the major enhancements for now. Although, if a reasonable enhancement request comes in I'll be more than happy to put it in.

Finally....

It's been a while since I was able to update both of the applications (a month or more for Pro and 3+ weeks for basic). I was busy trying to re-organize the code so that it would be easier to update both applications. In some cases I would have to make the same change in four places for some of the common code... bad bad programmer! I consolidated a bunch of stuff and probably need to consolidate some more with the new direct dial feature. Plus the birth of my second child put a damper on things... ;-)

New for the custom button on the basic version and all of the buttons on the pro, when you long press the item in the configuration screen you will be prompted for a "Button Type", either Application or Direct Dial. The application will operate as normal. The direct dial will list all of the phone numbers in your contacts and the picture associated to that number. Long pressing one of the phone numbers will set that button, allowing you to call your favorite person(s) with just one touch.

Next up, scrollable widget!

Update

Been a while since I've published anything... I've been busy cleaning and consolidating code for both the basic and pro versions. This should hopefully make both of them easier to manage. Coming from a .NET world, the Eclipse IDE has a bit of oddities that takes a bit of getting used to. Plus switching from VB to Java and back to VB is alot like going from English to German and back.

I only updated the basic version and this was really intended for people who have upgraded to 2.2 already. The long press on the first button (Phone by default) will give you the choice of the Phone or a picture gallery application. The long press on the fourth button (Browser by default) will give you your choice of browser(s), Google Talk, AIM, Twitter or Facebook. If you don't any of these applications installed then you obviously can't choose them...

Not Quite Frozen Yogert?

I'm sure the apple fan boys are going to making the same jokes, so might as well beat them to the punch. Apparently I was one of the "lucky" few to get the runny version of FroYo via the OTA update.

Quick update in case someone links to me saying that USB tethering doesn't work. A coworker currently in the UAE sent an email from his laptop by tethering his Droid which was connected to WiFi. I suspect the the reason why he did this is that TV in the middle east is very bad and he was very board.

Froyo...

Being a Moto Droid owner, I was happy to see the news that Froyo was finally available. I planned on doing the manual update at lunch today. However, I was greeted by a message on my phone after returning from a meeting saying that I had an update to install. In my small circle of Droid owners here at work, I am the only one to receive the OTA update. This also includes my wife who is the primary account holder. My guess is that since I'm a android developer I go to the front of the line?

One of the things that I noticed was that the camera icon on my Launch Bar went away and was replaced by a second Google Maps Icon. I'm sure that they changed the class name or something stupid like what they did with the HTC Sense and Blur. However after running the configuration screen I was greeted with a force close... I still haven't heard the end of it. I found that not all of the code that went into the last update / fix for the Base version made it into the Pro version. So, a little code merge and testing later and all seems to be working again. I really need to learn more about the Eclipse IDE. I shouldn't need to maintain two sets of code that are the same in both applications.

First thoughts on Froyo...

• Updated Multimedia dock is nice
• The gallery and camera apps seem to have some nice enhancements
• The speed increase is very noticeable.
• No wireless tethering? I'm pissed at that and more pissed at the BS reason of "The Droid doesn't have the necessary hardware."
  
• Although, there is a USB tether which just means I need put a micro USB cable in the laptop bag for emergencies. (Although rumor has it you can only get to Verizon's web site...)

So far that's it for now...