ChromeMarks Update 2011.06.05

A long overdue update to ChromeMarks. As usual, the list of the all important stuff:

1. New app icon and artwork. Thanks to Dries Oeyen (http://nexworx.com/dries) for his work and for everyone who voted. Thanks also to the runner up Émilien.
2. Significant changes to the core of the sync engine. I've written some of it in native code (which is C). This may not bring much performance improvements, but it does allow me the potential to easy merge large chunks of the real Chrome source code into the program and benefit from reliable code and not having to rewrite it into another language. But I'm new to this and I can't guarantee there isn't a memory leak here or there or any incompatibility. I'm nervous as it's compiled for a specific architecture which allegedly should work on all current android devices - but until it's out there, I won't know for sure!
3. A fix for users that had overriden the home folder and experienced a crash when they opened the app. This was usually due to that overriden folder being deleted later or updated later and the app not handling that well.
4. Italian translation. Thanks to Sergio Alisi for all his work.
5. More captures of corrupted databases. Android really does have a lot of soft spots..!

Sorry it took so long this one, but I had to learn C from scratch and it took a while to get something stable enough to prove this was a valid direction.

ChromeMarks - Vote for a new logo!

Hi all. I've opened up a public vote for a new app logo. Since so many of you [ :-P ] like to leave comments on the market about the logo, now's your one and only chance to help pick the new one!

Simply goto www.howardb.com and click on "vote" in the menu. There are four logos to pick as very kindly provided by two fantastically eager designers. Personally, I'm happy with *any* of them - but you've seen my last attempt, so this time, I didn't want to be the one making the choice.

Please register your approvals using the online vote. Votes are open for two weeks until 20th May and will be used from the next release of the app.

Feel free to leave some comments on the poll, but I don't think I can respond to them, so if you do have questions, it would be simpler to mail me direct chromemarks@howardb.com

NOTE also that the Chrome logo is still copyright Google, so I can't make the new logo any more "like" the chrome logo - it deliberately has to be different, so please don't ask for it to be more Chrome-y as my hands are tied.

Thanks again!

ChromeMarks updated - 2011.04.16

An update to ChromeMarks today. Was due to release this two weeks ago, but the Developer console was a bit sick and I haven't had a chance until now to try again.

Here are the changes:

1. User request. Added the ability to choose what folder the "home" icon opens. At the moment this is via the Settings, but I may make it an long click option when you click on a folder.
2. User request. Added the ability to choose from a list of installed browsers to open a bookmark with. Long press on a bookmark and select "Open in...". If you've only got one browser, then it will work just like a normal press of "Open".
3. FULL VERSION: Fixed an issue where Google would deny a "sync local bookmarks" if one of the local bookmarks has an empty name. Thanks to Andrew for the debug logs.
4. FULL VERSION: If you set the "force folder length" to an empty value (rather than a number) this caused an failure. 
5. Some improvements to the functionality for Honeycomb users (e.g. Xoom). You should now be able to use the menu properly. I've had to disable Theme support, though, as it doesn't work well. Sorry I missed it - I did try the app a while ago in the emulator but since it doesn't have the lvl installed (grrr, google, grrr) then I couldn't actually test the app properly.
6. For the American users out there, I've changed the spelling on initialise to the non-official spelling initialize. Always thinking of my users.. :-)
7. Some icon tweaks. If anyone would like to design a new icon, do please contact me!

There's a bit of a back log of auto-errors that I'm working through, so a belated bugfix release soon.

ChromeMarks updated 2011.03.12 - Integrated bookmarks

An update to ChromeMarks has just been published. Most changes are in the full app:

1. Experimental integration with the Stock Android Browser. The app can now export *all* Chrome bookmarks and folders into your local browser. Choose to include dummy folders, or omit the folders and prefix each bookmark's name with parts of the folders it is under. This is one way in this releaes - any changes made to the integrated bookmarks in the stock browser will be overwritten and replaced with the next sync. It's also only alphabetical at the moment..
2. Noticed from the analytics that a few people are experiencing database errors that are clearly Android corruption. This is not something the app can create or fix. So I've added some popups to let the user know that the app is unlikely to function properly until the database is fixed. The only fix appears to be an uninstall and reinstall. I don't know if a "reset to default" will fix it.
3. Noticed also that every now and then the inserts of local bookmarks fails due to an invalid bookmark. Again, a popup has been added to ask the user to mail me with details so I can try to help fix it.
4. The usual bug fixes.

A screenshot showing my stock android browser bookmarks. You can see dummy folders and the bookmarks beneath them indented according to their hierarchy.

If you try this new feature, please do mail me to let me know if it works for you - or not!

Chromemarks - updated 06.02.2011

Another update. This time to add in the feature most voted for on the community website (see, it works!):

You now have a choice of four sort options (though the Chrome sort order is only for the paid app).

This did require some changes to the database and most of the data I'd never been capturing anyway. So you need to re-download all your bookmarks anyway.. :-)

Some other bug fixes as well. I'm sure I've found a bug somewhere in the android installer process - *a few* users have been reporting the icons has gone missing for the app and the acra error reports are showing missing resources in the apps for a handful of users. I don't know what is making part of the install go missing for only a few people, but I've got a hunch it's to do with reserving id's for drawables and strings in the library project. The documentation doesn't say you can't, but it doesn't say you can either and I think this might be the issue. We'll see if this cuts down on the reported problems.

A sprinkling of other bugs as normal.

Barring any further issues or a sudden increase in votes on the website for other features, I'm back to looking at integrating bookmarks into the browser. Yikes!

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!

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.