Blog updates

Tuesday 11 January 2011

More options!

Another update to ChromeMarks today.

Previously, when you long clicked on a bookmark or folder, you got this kind of popup:
...which was fine and reasonable. But it was based on an AlertDialog and as such had a maximum of three buttons (i know you can add more in the content area above, but that would look horrible) and those buttons were limited to a handful of letters each.

It didn't give much room for more options.

Today a new release with an improved context menu. It looks more Android now and has space enough to keep going, so more options can be added whenever:
The URL at the top is still scrollable so you can see all of it. The optons go downwards, so you can scroll to see more.

To start with, I've added several new options in this menu:

  1. Open in New window. This depends on the browser you use, but should open the selected bookmark in a new tab and not overwrite any currently open tabs. If your browser doesn't use tabs or doesn't understand the message, then it will simply open as normal.
  2. Share Link. This allows you to send the bookmark name and url to any other app that can respond to a share. So that means you can send a bookmark to someone else via email or facebook or twitter.
  3. Copy Link URL. Copies the url to clipboard so if you want to copy it to another app that doesn't do sharing, you can still get it easily.
As I come up with new options, this seems a good place to put them. Note that the context menu now looks very similar to the context menu in the stock browser.

The Folders also have a new context menu, but with less options on it, but still room to add more over time.

The other big change was the first translation of the app to another language. This translation was into French by Guillaume who kindly did it for free! I offered refunds but he wasn't listening! Merci Beaucoup!




Saturday 8 January 2011

Theme support released

A new release of ChromeMarks today. The Theme support is now available for both the Free and Lite apps in the Market.

The app comes with three Themes built in at the moment, with room for more over time and as people request them.

  1. Default. The one you all know and love (!) This uses whatever colour background and text you Android has by default. For most of us, that's a black background.
  2. Light. A fresher look. This has a white background with black text and green urls. The header bar across the top is better styled and more professional looking and the buttons merge into the folder name. There is also a default icon for bookmarks that have no icon.
  3. Light swapped. The same as the Light theme, but with the up and home buttons swapped over. This might be better for righties who probably want to press up more than home.
The usual screenshots are on the previous post and haven't changed since that beta.

Also included was a significant revamp of the Settings screens. Previously, it was one big list with stuff in any order and not quite related to the setting above or below it. I've now got a much better Settings screen where you choose the category instead. This screen has icons to help identify the categories and also a brief description of what the category does. Hopefully this further improves the feel of the app.

The usual bugfixes as well. As is traditional, the first release had a bug and was fixed half an hour later with the b release. Seems to be happening a lot recently.. :-) Thanks to Ted for quickly mailing me and letting me know of the bug.

Another release in a day or so - this should add a popup to appear if you have no bookmarks to say "Are you sure you've enabled sync in Chrome?" as I'm not happy with the comments on the Market from people who slag the app off when it's their problem. :-) Plus a couple of bugs fixed that users have spotted with the local sync.

Wednesday 5 January 2011

Theme support and improved settings

Just a quick update to show off some of the new Themes and Settings:

The new "Settings" page. Each option opens a new settings screen. The previous Settings screen was a bit of a jumble with many things listed in a bit of a random order. It also looked a bit too "plain" and hopefully the new icons and the lighter indented text make it a better.

The preference to set a Theme. There are three currently coded.

The main bookmarks list rendered using the new "Light" theme. Note the rendered button bar across the top and a bit more colour in the results themselves.

For the people who asked to be beta testers, I might be ready to send something out tomorrow.

For all others, barring any bugs, this should be published in a few days.

Sunday 2 January 2011

ChromMarks - updated 2nd Jan 2011

A new update for ChromeMarks.

The major change is the (hopefully) working Android Bookmarks sync.

ChromeMarks will now be able to copy your Android Browser bookmarks to a new folder visible in Chrome and keep them synced there. You can edit them on your PC and when you next sync in ChromeMarks, the changes will be reflected in your Android browser.

This is the first release for this feature, and probably the one that makes most people use the "edit/create" functionality built into ChromeMarks - so I don't doubt that a few new errors may be spotted over the coming weeks as more and more people start using more of the functionality.

As such, I'd suggest that if you really rely on your bookmarks (Android browser and/or Chrome) then I'd hang off trying this out until most of the bugs are ironed out. The worst that could possibly happen is it just deletes a bookmark you didn't want it to, so it's not like it will set your phone on fire... -)

That said, it'll never get the bugs fixed unless some people give it a whirl!

Other changes this release include a ton of bugfixes. Thanks again for all the bug reports, they really do help me get exactly to the root of the bugs.

The main bugs so far have been due to the annoying way that android handles orientation changes. When you turn your screen around, android destroys the activity and starts it again. Sounds reasonable, but if the activity is busy doing something (e.g. opening a folder, syncing) then that existing work starts to crash as it is no longer attached to a working window. Grrr. Hopefully I've fixed most of these now - though admittedly I can't get the Settings screen to work well yet..

Additionally, I've made substantial changes in readiness of Theme support. Although you can't tell, the app is already running a new Theme. The next release should bring some more options, including a "Light" theme that looks a bit more fresher.

Enjoy!