Hello IT... Yes, the programmer messed up.

I've been meaning to post this for a week now (wow, time flies when work kicks your ass).  The problem looks to have been due to a change in the launch app when undocked feature that was added for the scrolling dock extension.  It basically boiled down to not encasing things correctly in curly braces {}.  I didn't catch it because I didn't test the app outside the dock (yes, I know bad programmer!).  The app launched and it checked the state of the device to see if it was in the dock.  When the answer was no I check to see if if was launched from the dock.  When the answer to that is no, it shouldn't do anything, but the missing curly braces caused it to exit.  When you do VB .NET for a living, those little things will get you when you're not used to it.

Now for a bit of good news, I finished (what I think) is the last new feature for the scrolling dock.  I'm happy to introduce: Tablet Mode.

Screen shot provided by the super awesome Aussie commenter Omniwolf.  I will be happy to purchase him a beer (or any other beverage of his choice) if I ever travel there!

The Tablet Mode will extend the dock the entire width of the screen and provide a smooth continuous (instead of five icons at a time) listing of your applications.  Tablet mode will only display the applications and actions that you have configured (ie you will not see a blank plus icon).  So, if you only have seven buttons configured, you will only see those seven buttons repeated.  Currently, there is no long press menu when you are in Tablet Mode, as I'm not sure it would work well in this case.  If you are using a theme, you may want to go back and re-download the theme to pick up the tablet dock background image (if applicable to the theme).

The last note about all of this, when I released the hot fix for the app closing issue, I had all of the Tablet Mode code in place but hidden from activation.  I started to get a bunch of error logs in due to some of the Tablet Mode changes, but by the time I realized that the code had changed to the point where I couldn't exactly pin point the issue.  I think that I have them fixed or trapped, but I'm not 100% sure, so if you have problems with the app force closing or if tablet mode just doesn't turn on for you, please let me know.  If I get an error log via the market with the latest version I'll be able to track it down and get it fixed.

What's next?  I'm going to go into maintenance mode for a little while.  I have a couple of minor bug reports that I need to look into.  The Theme Downloader sucks and needs to be looked at.  After that, I'm going to work on the advanced weather add-on.

Desk Clock Plus Version 1.0 Released

I am very happy to announce that I have published the changes for Desk Clock Plus that I've been working on for the past 6 months or so (remember, I'm only a lunch time developer so things take time).  So what's new?  That's a very big question....

The big thing is the addition of 'Application Extensions'.  The basic features of Desk Clock Plus (ie the features from the versions prior to this and what the 'Stock' clock app does) will always remain free.  I don't feel it's right for me (or legal) to charge for that*.  However I understand that there are some users who what more from this application that others don't need.  I think the dock configuration is a good example of that.  Some users have asked for this and I would image that others wouldn't care if they could do that or not.  So for one US dollar (or your approximate equivalent) you can purchase this extension for your devices.  As I said before, I don't see myself getting rich off of this application, but with the holidays coming up and more importantly the office holiday beer exchange I could use a couple extra bucks.

One more thing to note about this... I am a little sketchy about how the code for this works.  I'm pretty sure that I have it implemented correctly (the Pay-Pal system was much easier to work with and debug).  If you have a problem please contact me (or leave a comment) I don't want to leave someone who has paid for this (or is trying to pay) high and dry.  There are a couple of bonuses with this.

1. When you purchase this extension, it should work across all your devices that are connected to your account.
2. If you get a new phone or second device, you should just need to go in to the 'Purchase Extensions' screen for things to be reset internally, so you will not have to 'repurchase' this extension.

Now, on to the changes for this version:

• Scrolling Dock Button Extension - More documentation to follow, but the quick over view is that you can go into the settings --> Scrolling Dock Configuration to set the number of docks and to configure the docks.  Swipe the dock left and right to change docks.  Additionally you can long press a button change a button's:
• Action - internal to Desk Clock Plus
• Application - Launch a 3rd party app
• Clear - Clear action or application
• Add Dock -  Add a new empty Dock.
• Delete Dock - Delete the current Dock.
• Scrolling time / Weather - As a bonus for anyone who purchases an extension I also enable the feature of swiping the time or weather to change it to Digital Time, Analog Time or Weather (I'll add more 'windows' as I add more paid extensions.

• Reorganized Settings Screen - I grouped everything into sub-properties instead of the sub groups, this way you have smaller pieces to deal with at one time.  Everything is still grouped the same way, just organized a little different.
• Redesigned GUI - This should be pretty much be transparent to everyone, however some people should notice that fixes issues with 3 digit temperatures and long city state names.
• Translation - I changed how I translate this application into other languages.  I originally sang the praises of Androlate.  There was some problems with it.  First, it was pretty slow.  Second, it didn't handle multiple string files very well.  Third, it doesn't work anymore (it was only a beta anyhow).  For this go around, I used a Chrome Extension Android Multilingual translation tool.  I was very happy with it as it fixed the 3 issues above, however it doesn't handle string arrays, so those are still in English for the time being.  I also don't know if translations are any better (I'm going to check with other users)
• Background Images - I made a major change to how background images are handled that should drastically reduce the memory that I'm using and should reduce if not eliminate the out of memory issues you would get when loading images.  This has also worked its way into the slide show.
• Performance Boost - I think this comes from the changes for the background images, but the application seems to be running much faster which is always good!

Some other things to note, I updated everything on the Android Market page added a new featured graphic, new screen shots and re-wrote all the text.

Stats wise, I'm very happy with what Google is telling me (22k downloads, 5k installed and an average review of 3.7)

As always, what's next?  Probably over the next week or two it's going to be a number of updates for bug fixes as people start using the new version.  I might have some language updates depending on how well the chrome extension did.  I have a couple more ideas for the dock configuration extension that I want to implement.  I have a security issue that I need to resolve and then hopefully some more extensions.

As always, I'm very happy that 5,000 people are using this application, so if you experience any issues or have a suggestion, please email me!

*I am happy to note that everything except for the alarm & alarm screen was written by me.  The alarm code was taken from the Google source.

Dark Clock Options

After adding the new feature of dimming the dark clock I had a couple of people email regarding it being too dark or that they didn't want it to dim at all.  I knew when I published that last update about a week ago that I probably should have just waited and added these two options.  So, just a little while ago, I pushed version 0.98.5.11 out to the market with these two new features:

• Dim Time Out -- Allows you to configure when if ever the Dark Clock will dim down.  Choices are Off, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes.
• Dim Level -- Allows you to configure how much the Dark Clock will dim out.  Choices are 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% or 80%.  The previous (and stock default) was 80%.  

Also, I'm happy to note that I've had a pretty decent bump in active installs over the past month (and specifically in the last week).  

It's crazy to me that I've got over one thousand new Active (installed on a device) users in about a week.

I'm close to having the last piece of the next major release done, so hopefully in the next week or two I'll have a  big release to write about.

Turn off that light!

It's funny how feature requests come in pairs.  I had two users email me with in three days of each other both asking about the night clock and dimming the time and turning off the back lighting on the buttons.  So, now the Dark Clock (as I've called it) will dim when the time moves the first time.  If you touch the screen when the time is dimmed then it will return to the normal brightness.  Touching again will exit the dark clock mode.  Hopefully that's what they are looking for...

I realized after pushing the update that I probably should have created options for the amount that it dims and how long it waits until it dims.  Not very hard to do, but it will have to wait until next time.

Also, I'm pretty much done with primary development on the next big enhancement... Dock configuration and adding more buttons.  However, that's going to cost you a dollar...

Minor New Feature

I have been working on some major new enhancements to the Desk Clock over the past two months.  Primary development is about 75% done or so, and I've been pretty happy with the results.  I'm hoping to have it to my beta testers later this week.  In the mean time, I do have one new minor feature that was requested via the comments (although I would prefer to take suggestions via email).  There's now an option to turn on / off the "heartbeat" (blinking colon in the time).  Since this was a pretty simple request, I figured I would take some time and put that in.  The two new text strings are being translated and once that's done I'll publish it to the market.

I'm also on the verge of another milestone, 100 ratings.  All in all, I'm very happy and surprised with the usage.  Google tells me that I've had ~15k downloads and ~3.5k active installs.  It's running in countries all over the world (UK, Germany, India, Korea, Japan, Australia).  Now if I could only get more people to use that donate button...