Blog updates

Sunday 16 September 2012

CMarks Update - 2012.09.16

Time for a quick update.

  1. Added the ability to "hide" any of the Root folders i.e. Search Engines, Synced Bookmarks, etc. Also added a new option in the Settings, Application Defaults to allow you to manage this list. Only for the Full app, though!
  2. Fixed a couple of crashes happening during the local sync on 2.x devices when syncing to the special folder in Chrome. 
  3. Some performance improvements when navigating to the root folder.
Enjoy!

Sunday 9 September 2012

Cmarks Update - 2012.09.09

A quick CMarks update. This is for the Full app only.

  1. CMarks can now integrate your Chrome bookmarks into Dolphin using the same ordering you've specified in CMarks. Some caveats - though:
    • Dolphin always shows Folders alphabetically and at the top of a list. I can't change the ordering or placement of Folders.
    • Dolphin always removes any bookmark being inserted that has the same url as any existing bookmark. So if Dolphin already has www.google.com as a bookmark and your Chrome bookmarks also have it, then you won't see it in the bookmarks integrated as Dolphin will simply remove it.
  2. Performance improvements integrating bookmarks to Dolphin. Since Dolphin doesn't accept icons during the integration, I've disabled the code from retrieving them from the database which does make a difference.
  3. Fixed a crash from some devices when clicking on the "About" link the Dolphin CMarks Add-On screen.
  4. Some improvements to the "Sync" widget. Widgets require a lot more effort to make them look pretty and I never had the opportunity to make the widget look really good before. So some changes this release to make it better. Annoyingly the stock homescreen widgets have differing layouts on GB, HC, ICS and JB. So I've had to specify a widget layout for each release of Android otherwise it all goes south. At the very least, it no longer has that boring phat white background.
That's it for now - enjoy!

Sunday 2 September 2012

2012.09.02 - CMarks update

Time for another update!
  1. Users of the Full app can now integrate their bookmarks into Dolphin browser or Dolphin Beta. This has only been possible due to the recently introduced Garage API for Dolphin - until about three months ago, this was still only possible for apps created and owned by Dolphin. Some points to bear in mind, though:
    • This is currently only one-way. So any changes made in the integrated folders in Dolphin will be overwritten/lost when you sync. As normal, though, to create a new Chrome bookmark just "share" it into CMarks instead of your browser.
    • There are still some restrictions from Dolphin - primarily an integration can only occur from you clicking on a button or doing something inside of Dolphin. I can't start the integration from CMarks as Dolphin doesn't allow it - so no integration each time you perform a CMarks sync. It's annoying, but nothing I can do about it - direct requests to Dolphin developers, please.
    • To integrate your bookmarks, open the Add-Ons pane inside Dolphin (swipe inwards from the right hand edge or use the menus), then simply click on the CMarks Add-On and your bookmarks will be integrated there and then.
    • The access Dolphin allows is still very limited. As such, I have no way of telling apart a bookmark that CMarks has integrated or a bookmark the user has created. So to avoid me deleting *all* the user's bookmarks rather than just the integrated ones, I've chosen to integrate them into a new root folder called "CMarks". Yes, it's an extra folder to click into but it keeps your existing bookmarks safe. But if users would like an option to be able to use the Dolphin root folders ("Bookmark bar", "Other bookmarks") and accept that they will be completely emptied each time you integrate, then let me know!
  2. Prompted by another whingey comment on the Play Store, I've added a new popup to tell you if you have a significant proportion of duplicated bookmarks within the same folder. These sort of duplicates can only be caused by one of the many bugs in Chrome. Annoyingly, users who only have one copy of Chrome on their desktop machine will never see these duplicates until (a) their machine dies and they first sign into Chrome on a new machine or (b) install another Chrome client - of which CMarks is an example. So I still get people complaining that CMarks has duplicated their bookmarks when it clearly hasn't - they've been duplicated for days, weeks, months already! So a new popup might appear after a sync. You can disable it if you genuinely want to ignore it when you first see it. It might introduce a mild delay at the end of each sync, but it provides a quick warning that your Chrome browser has suddenly hit a bug.
  3. Update the Swedish translations - thanks again Kjell! Looks like Swedish is now at almost 100% translated (or it was when Kjell finished - sorry, I've added a couple more since!)
Until next time!