Sunday, December 11, 2011

Contact Simple Widget Pro

Contact Simple Widget Pro (CSWP) has been published to the Android Market today.

CSWP continues where Contact Simple Widget (CSW) stops. CSWP adds hi-res images to widgets which is a major improvement for lower resolutions screens and/or larger widget sizes. Additionally, CSWP includes the ability to change the foreground and background colors of the contact name labels under widgets. Additional customizations and features are planned for CSWP and I am open to suggestions from you.

CSWP is available for $.99 USD on the Android Market.

https://market.android.com/details?id=cstick.cswp


Sunday, November 27, 2011

Contact Simple Widget 1.2.0

Contact Simple Widget version 1.2.0 has been published to the Android Market.

The update fixes a problem where phone numbers and emails where listed multiple times for some contacts. This occurs when the same contact was saved to multiple accounts (Google, Facebook, Exchange, etc.). The android API aggregates much of this information together so that the developer does not need to deal with it themselves. However, that is not the case with phone numbers and emails.

Additionally, the preference view has been updated to include contact, website, review and about info. Technically speaking, the original view did not match the android standard for preference views. In fact there is a specific view provided by the android API for preferences and the new preference screen uses it.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Contact Simple Widget 1.1.9

Contact Simple Widget version 1.1.9 has been published to the Android Market.

This update adds translation to Russian. Thank you very much DM. As always, if anyone would like to help with translation to other languages, let me know.

When adding the Russian language I noticed that some translated strings were very long, for example "Рабочий мобильный тел." or approximately "Call work mobile". These long strings caused the call, SMS and email icons to disappear partially or completely. So I fixed that issue before publishing this new version.

I am currently working on another version which will be published very soon, it will include a fix for duplicate phone and email listings. Additionally, it will include an improved configuration screen to include contact, review and about information.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Contact Simple Widget 1.1.4

Contact Simple Widget version 1.1.4 has been published to the Android Market.

This update includes improvements to the widget display. Most notably, I rounded the corners of the contact icons. I think that this was a significant esthetic improvement over the original contact icons. I have not heard any comments suggesting that this change was unwelcome.

I changed the default icon which is used for contacts that do not have icons associated to them. The new icon is square and fills in all of the available space. This looks much cleaner next to actual contact icons.

The final change was the addition of view and edit menu items to the contact activity. I added these so that users can quickly access and modify their favorite contacts.

If you are interested in translating to another language, please contact me. I would like to translations for Italian, German, Czech, Russian, Indonesian, Swedish or any other language.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Contact Simple Widget 1.1.3

Contact Simple Widget 1.1.3 has been published.

This update includes localizations for the Spanish language and the Spanish language for the United States. I know some Spanish from high school and college, 4 years total, but I am by no means fluent. I would like to add localizations for German, Swedish and Italian in that order as these are the predominant languages after English. Comment if you would like to translate to one of these or any other language.

An application launcher has been added to allow for the configuration of 2 new features. The first new feature is ability to show a label with the contact name directly under the contact image. By default this feature is off. The label will display the contact's nickname if it is set otherwise the label will display the contact's first name followed by the first character of the contact's last name. The second new feature is the ability prioritize the list of phones and emails such that the primary phone and email for a contact will be listed first. This main reason this feature was added is to allow for phone calls to be made with less effort. I find that I make a lot of phone calls while driving and it is convenient to have the primary phone at the top of the list saving me the time it takes to otherwise find that phone.

The icons for the phone and email list items were improved. In previous versions the foreground content of the icons varied in height which made them look ugly. I adjusted them so that the height of the foreground content is approximately the same and the overall appearance improved.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Blogger

After having a blog on blogger for more than 5 years, I am finally submitting some content. I have recently published an Android application in the Android Market (Contact Simple Widget) and it is my intention to write about future work on this and other projects here.