Blog updates

Tuesday, 5 October 2010

ChromeMarks - update 2010.10.05

Another update today. The normal list of tweaks:

  1. One of my users was having a problems with bookmarks/folders never appearing. The last release bought in the debugging option and he kindly mailed me the log file. This highlighted an error in some of the processing. Basically Google always sends data back in chunks of 250. But for this user, the first batch had no bookmarks in it (they may have been long deleted entries). Unfortunately, the app was coded to say "if the batch is empty, then exit the sync". This is now fixed (fingers crossed!). But I've had to empty the database to be sure that no-one else has missed a chunk of bookmarks along the way. Sorry!
  2. A requested option was to specify to auto-sync only over wifi. This is now in place.
  3. Some tweaks to the settings screen - the text by some of the settings will change to make it clearer what that setting is currently set to. Comments?
  4. The Create Shortcut seemed to be broken. That is now fixed. Plus, I spotted it would have failed if your bookmark had no icon anyway. Also fixed. People have asked to create a shortcut to a folder - it's on the list!
  5. Some Timeout handling if a network connection takes too long to respond. Hopefully this shouldn't happen often, but I notice it frequently with T-Mobile UK screwing up all my web traffic. There isn't a "restart sync" button, so I thought I'd try to catch these errors and handle them. The last release made the batches more transactional - so now if a sync fails during batch 3, when you restart the sync it will continue from where it failed at batch 3.
I've also had to add in Analytics code. Yeah - I hate it too. But I need to put them in to find out which parts/settings of the app people are actually using. I also need to get some *anonymous* and *averaged* numbers of bookmarks and folders so I can determine if I need to optimise those bits of code. As normal, no personally identify-able info is sent to Google or analytics - honest! Once I've got a better user base, I'll stick in an option to disable the stats.

That's about it for now. A reminder that the next major release will be attempting to add the update functionality to the local phone. This may take a couple of weeks to write - unless there are any other reported bugs, it may go quiet for a short bit. But I'll still be furiously tapping away, so feel free to keep sending emails to chromemarks@howardb.com

Laters.
Posted by howardb at 20:48
Labels:

5 comments:

  1. Unknown8 October 2010 at 10:14

    I can't seem to find ChromeMarks in Android Marked here in Norway... :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. howardb8 October 2010 at 11:32

    Hi MOgnedal. The app is specified for "All locations", so if it isn't available in Norway then Google have made that choice, not me! The analytics is showing usage from Finland, so it's available in that territory.

    Can you download ANY paid apps at all..? What version of android are you running - this app is only for 2.1 and above - if you are using 1.5 or 1.6 then you'll need to upgrade if you want this app, I'm afraid.

    Another user emailed me a few days ago to say that a recent ota update to his phone had stopped him getting access to lots of paid apps (including this one so he couldn't upgrade) and he has to wait for google to spot that and fix their market.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown8 October 2010 at 15:48

    OK, I'll try with my UK SIM and see if I can find it then. If I do I'm just being impatient.

    ReplyDelete
  4. howardb8 October 2010 at 16:55

    I've never had the need to try myself, but see if you can find an app called Market Enabler. It should allow your phone to pretend it's from another location and allow you to access apps that you wouldn't normally. Though I'm not sure what happens when you try to purchase one as Google may spot the difference. But at least if it fails then, then you know Google doesn't want people in Norway downloading.

    ReplyDelete
  5. howardb9 October 2010 at 01:17

    Google have announced the following on their blog: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/10/android-market-new-country-roll-out.html

    "Effective today, users can now see paid apps in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, ***Norway***, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan.

    For users to make a purchase of paid apps in these countries, they must have the latest Android Market client, which we have started to make available as a self-update and should reach all users within the next few days. This is a silent update; users will not see a notification and will not be prompted to do anything. If you want to accelerate the self-update process, launch Android Market, navigate back to the Home screen, and after 5-10 minutes, relaunch it."

    So it looks like paid apps are coming your way. Please let me know if this works.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)