Sunday 30 January 2011

Whos Making The Brew V1.3


Due to time constraints this weekend, I've only had a few hours this afternoon to play around in the Android world. As a result of this I've only added two small features to the application.



New features:

1) Improved design and usability to how to add players to a group.
I wasn't happy with the way you add players to groups at present so set out with a new design in mind, this one should hopefully be much more user friendly and functional than the last.
In order to add a group, now when you select "Add Group" from the menu on the home screen, you get presented with a dialog box to type the name of the group in.


2) Added animation effects when displaying the results of a round.
This was a request from a user and I like it. Simply animation at present, the initial rows appear to fly in from the back ground when results are show. Eventually this is the type of effect which will be controllable from a settings menu, when I get time to create one.


Any comments. issues, bugs please let me know. 

Future releases to include.

* Profiles for different activities, not just making tea.
* Improve design and functionality of Groups.
* GPS based Tea Rounds, using Android's location based services to load and save groups of players dependant on a particular geographic location. 
* Statics on brew round players. 
* Settings menu for control of features and animations.
* Ability to hook into Android's contacts list to chose players.
 
* Improve styling and graphics in general.



Simply scan the barcode with your Android phone to take you to the Market

Works and tested on all Android phones version 1.6+

Sunday 23 January 2011

Who's Making The Brew v1.2

After another busy weekend with little time available to coding "Who's Making The Brew" I have managed to add several features as well as improving the overall architecture.

Firstly after spending of time researching/reading I determined the original design wasn't the best so I went about re-factoring and re-designing the Activity Stack so its more in-line with recommended practice. Overall I'm pleased with the outcome and believe this will make it much easier to control Activities and the Activity Stack and provide and more stable and intuitive application flow.


Features Added:

1) Improved architecture, Activity Stack and Application flow.
  • Should make it easier to add features and functionality at later dates.
  • Stability and application flow improvements may be noticeable.

2)  Ability to Add players in to a Group (See below for screen shots)
  • This includes the functionality to add players to a group with a given name.
  • Ability to view existing groups.
  •  Re-load or delete existing groups.
3) Additional graphics and style improvements
  • Additional graphic on loading screen.
  • Unified textual formatting on all screens.
 




Any comments. issues, bugs please let me know. 

Future releases to include.

* Profiles for different activities, not just making tea.
* GPS based Tea Rounds, using Android's location based services to load and save groups of players dependant on a particular geographic location. 
* Statics on brew round players. 
* Ability to hook into Android's contacts list to chose players. 
* Improve styling and graphics in general.


Simply scan the barcode with your Android phone to take you to the Market

Works and tested on all Android phones version 1.6+

Sunday 16 January 2011

Who's Making The Brew v1.1

Didn't have a great deal of time this weekend but managed to get afew hours to spend on improving the application.

I have afew goals I'd like to reach in order for me to be pleased with the application and sorry to say it but its not there yet.

This weekend I tried to pick things which I could get completed in time. I'm trying to think of this project like a work project and do it agile(ish) and do small improvements often and keep the interest going. 

The three features I have added are:

1) The ability to email the results to someone after the brew round has been ran. Unfortunately it looks like the Android API for sending emails isn't up to scratch. I first started by creating a simple HTML table but then realised, after a hour or so of pain, the <table> tag isn't a supported tag when sending HTML emails and is removed. I reluctantly settled for very basic emails template showing only the core results. Any suggestion and improvement here would be appreciated. (See below)

2) Ability to quickly re-run the round after the results. This simply invokes the generator again, nothing special, more a feature I thought may be useful. (See below)

3) Ability to remember the last ran brew round, and re-loading the players when the application start. This was a new area of Android programming to get my head in to, seems simple to be honest, SQLite is very similar to all other SQL databases Ive used, just different way of interacting with the DB than normal.


Any comments. issues, bugs please let me know. 

Future releases to include.

* Ability to associate groups of players  e.g. work. home friends. 
* Re-architecture application after doing a little bit more research.
* Improve styling and graphics in general.
* Profiles for different activities, not just making tea.
* Statics on brew round players.
* Ability to hook into Android's contacts list to chose players.

Sunday 9 January 2011

Whos Making The Brew

Ive finally taking the plunge and published my first Android application on the Market.

"Who's Making The Brew?" aims to easy the pain and difficulty of deciding who's making the next brew.

Commonly at my work and at friends everyone wants a brew but no one wants to make it.

Its a simply application at present but I've got a few more things I want to add to it before I say it complete. I've been learning Android for a few weeks now and thought it was the easiest  and best way to finally apply some of the techniques and code I've learnt.

The application consists on a three stage process.
1) Enter your players
2) Run the round
3) Display the results

Its tiny in size at only 96K including animations and graphics.

I have already noted things I've done wrong and things I would do better but since it my first application these things where always going to happen. Any comments and feedback are always wanted.

Future changes to include:

* Ability to email the results to people.
* Statics on brew round players.
* Ability to store the most recent brew round entrants.
* Improved graphics and styling.


Simply scan the barcode with your Android phone to take you to the Market

Works and tested on all Android phones version 1.6+