gReadie v2.4 Released
Just a quick note to announce gReadie v2.4 has been published and will start showing up in the marketplace over the next few hours.
There is only one functionality change in this release, whcih is to add a “Download All Posts” option to the main menu which will download and cache all unread posts ready to be taken offline. So if you are about to disconnect remember to give this one a tap first.
This release also includes a number of significant bug fixes
- The issue where some times your feed list would not load and you would just have an “all” is now resolved.
- Feed titles containing odd characters such as ' have been fixed.
- The occasional looping of feeds after marking one read is fixed.
- Live tiles not updating on certain mark read actions is fixed.
So in terms of stability and polish this is a pretty significant release.
As always let us know if you have any suggestions of feedback.
gReadie v2.3 released
We are pleased to announce gReadie v2.3 has passed through Microsoft certification and is in the process of being rolled out to the marketplace now. Keep an eye on your Marketplace tile for the update notification.
As well as the usual array of bug fixes, performance and stability updates, we have the following changes in this release.
- There is an option to use the full Internet Explorer application to view URLs instead of just the internal browser.
- The newly relaunched Delicious is supported again
- Chinese sites encoded with GBK will now download better
- The share on Google option has been added to the quick save options
A behind the scenes change I will call out is in how we handle Google authentication tokens. If you are ever asked to log back in to Google, this simply means your authentication token has timed out and we are not able to refresh it. Hopefully this will not happen much, but in our experience Google does time them out occasionally and that can make gReadie appear as though it is not working. Hopefully this change makes it clearer what is going on.
Finally for our trial users, we have switched from the Smaato ad-network to Microsoft pubcenter. It was recently made available to Australian developers and by all accounts pays much better than Smaato. So you should notice a difference in the ad content, but overall no change in functionality.
With Mango now in general roll out, we are seeing a good amount of interest in gReadie v2. Thanks everyone for your support and feedback while making this switch to this new version.
gReadie v2.2–Submitted to marketplace
We are very excited to announce the submission of gReadie v2.2 to the marketplace for certification by Microsoft.
Hopefully the process will be faster than v2.1
There are loads of changes in this release making gReadie faster and more stable than ever.
Changes include:
- Chinese Translation
- Choose language inside app separate to the phone
- Improved UI for swipe panel, stays open/closed between feeds
- Mark a full feed or folder read
- Marking a feed/folder read progresses to the next
- Marking a post read progresses to the next
- 3 header font options, including a stylish Chinese option
- Option to enable animations
- Improved handling of websites encoded in Latin1 (Europe)
- Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements
gReadie v2 Swiping
Between version 1 and 2 of gReadie there was a significant UI change that needs explanation as I know it will be controversial for some users.
This change is to the swiping mechanism that allows you to quickly swipe between posts or feeds/folders.
In v1 you could simply swipe anywhere on the page, in v2 this was not possible as the reading page is now using a Web Browser control to host this content. This control allows us to provide inline images and links, but it also needs to accept touch gestures to navigate the content and so we can not capture a swipe between posts as being separate from a swipe around the content.
To remedy this we introduced what we are calling a swipe panel.
Tapping on that little up arrow (or anywhere around that general area) will open up the swipe panel.
You can then swipe left and right inside this panel to move between posts or feeds. Then a simple tap will hide the panel again.
We will happily agree this is not quite as usable as it was in version 1, but we believe it is still quite usable and a good compromise.
Having said that, we are always open to feedback. So let us know what you think and how you feel we could improve it for you.
gReadie v2 available for download
After a two month development and beta program, we are very excited to announce that gReadie v2 is in the marketplace and ready for download by anyone with a Mango device.
If you already have a retail copy of gReadie installed, you will be prompted to upgrade by the marketplace. This is a free upgrade for existing users, and remains full featured, free and ad-supported for trial users.
For a full run down on the new features, check out the gReadie page on this website.
If you have a beta version of gReadie installed, we suggest uninstalling it now. It should not conflict with the retail version, but there are no current plans for further beta releases.
Translating gReadie v2
As I detailed on my personal blog, something that caught me out when submitting gReadie v2 to the marketplace was that I had not yet taken the time to get it translated into all the languages gReadie v1 supported.
It turns out that the Marketplace does not allow a developer to remove supported languages when updating an application. It was frustrating, but understandable. I would not be happy if an app I had purchased was updated and I suddenly couldn’t read it any longer.
Unfortunately it meant that I needed to rush together French and German translations from a mix of the gReadie v1 translations and Google Translate.
So while I offer my sincerest apologies to our French and German users that they are going to have an awkwardly translated application for a little while, I have also put together a kit with all the files you need to help tidy up the rough edges and get the translation back up to scratch.
You can download the translation kit here.
The kit contains all the files and instructions needed to make the translation and details of how to send the updated files back to us to be included in the next release.
If you are unsure where to start, or would like to check on the status of other translations that might be going on, please don’t hesitate to drop us an email at support@quidsmobile.com
Finally, as Chinese was not an official language of the marketplace, I was not stopped from removing it from gReadie v2. If any of our Chinese users would like to provide a new translation, we will of course welcome it and include it in a future update.
gReadie v2 beta 5
We have just released the fifth, and we expect final, beta for gReadie v2.
That is not to say there will be no more changes before the launch into the marketplace, just that we will wrap up the beta release process and start distributing through the marketplace once submissions open on August 22nd.
The changes in the beta refresh are mostly around adding features back into the app.
Those features include
- Share posts by Email and SMS (with bit.ly shortening)
- Save posts to Google (star), Read It Later, Pinboard and Instapaper
- Single click button in post list to save to your favourite service
- Ability to mark a post read or save it to above service while offline (synced when online next)
- “Low Contrast” mode enabled app wide with grey on black text
- Font size adjustment enabled app wide
- Screen Orientation lock
- Option to sort oldest posts first (default is newest posts first)
- Feed / Folder management. Also works offline and is synced when you get online next.
- Lots of little UI tweaks to tidy up design
You should not need to uninstall the previous beta for this update, though you should unpin any feeds/folders and pin them again as the deep link structure has changed and it may cause problems if you have a previously pinned feed.
Ps. Don’t forget the UserVoice site! It will keep going after the beta phase and become a general place for suggestions.
gReadie v2 beta 4
We have just released the latest update to the gReadie v2 beta.
The primary focus of this update is to get our offline support up to scratch and fixing the stability of the background agent that updates your live tiles.
There are now two background agents gReadie will run, and you have the option to turn either off if you like.
- First we have what is called a “Periodic Task”. This runs roughly every 30minutes unless your phone is almost out of battery and it will update the unread counts on your live tiles. This task does affect battery life (hopefully minimally) so you should only turn it on if you have gReadie pinned to the start screen and you want the unread count displayed.
- Secondly there is the “Resource Intensive Task”. This will only run when the phone is plugged into it’s charger or a USB post, has recharged to more than 80% battery life and has either a WiFi or USB pass-through internet connection. The job of this task is to find new posts and download them for you in the background. It does not affect performance much (since the phone is plugged in anyway) so we suggest leaving this one on as it will help gReadie to perform faster when you are using it. The other use case for this feature is offline reading during a commute. We want you to be able to leave your phone charging overnight, jump on the train or bus in the morning and have all your feeds cached up and ready to go. You can even mark posts read and the status will sync with Google next time you are online.
This is the final big change we wanted to make in v2 thanks to the power of Mango. From here the plan is to build back up the basic functionality from v1 in terms of sharing and customization. Microsoft has announced that submissions to the marketplace will open August 22, so hopefully we will be ready to submit a working version for all those early Mango adopters.
Finally, you will need to uninstall previous versions of the beta if you have one installed.
Ps. Don’t forget the UserVoice site!
gReadie v2 Beta Updated
Just a quick note to let everyone know the beta download of gReadie has been updated.
You will need to uninstall the old version first (though the deployment tool should do this) to ensure you get the latest database schema. The original beta tools had a bug that stopped us from using the database update process, that is fixed with the latest tools from Microsoft so shouldn’t be an issue with future releases.
There are a couple of features updated in this release
- Folders and feeds are now displayed in a much nicer folder structure instead of just mixed in together.
- You can now download post contents while reading a summary, similar to gReadie v1.
- You can see your starred item from a unread feeds screen menu. Still no add/remove capability here yet.
- Feed titles are displayed in post lists, useful when viewing folders, shared feeds or the “all” list.
- Lots of performance improvements.
The download link remains the same, if you ever lose track of which version you are running I will be updating the version number in the settings screen. This is “v2.00 beta 2”.
Ps. Don’t forget the UserVoice site!
gReadie v2.00 released to beta
We are very excited to announce a public beta of v2 of gReadie for users with developer unlocked mango devices.
Full details are available here.
In addition to testing gReadie on wider array of devices, we are also hoping to gather user feedback about what you do and don't like about the original gReadie and get more things right this time around. So with that in mind, the current beta contains only the essential basics of a Google Reader client. From here we are going to build back up to the feature rich client that is gReadie v1 through community engagement, hopefully in time to launch with the release of retail Mango devices.
So please also visit our new UserVoice site to participate.
Finally, for anyone wondering, gReadie v2 will be a free upgrade for anyone who has purchased the original. So even if you are not in a position to try out the beta we encourage you to drop by the UserVoice site and offer up your opinion on what you want to see in the new version when mango rolls around.