New Baka-Tsuki Android App: Development

[Nandaka]

That may need a lot of work, but then again "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

If it ain’t broke, break it and build something even better.

As long you can fix it back, then ok

EDIT: How to link ABS to your project => http://www.grokkingandroid.com/adding-a ... r-project/

Update:
- Update project.properties, from ../../library => ../library. Your library folder is like this, right? If not, then maybe we need to exclude project.properties file from repo.


- Update target api for library from 14 to 17.

[Thatdot7]

Yep, my directory is now like that =D.. we don't have to exclude it =P

EDIT: can someone that has access to the Play Store account post a comment on a review or somewhere that the bug of overlapping text can be fixed by setting a linespacing preference for now?

EDIT 2: I figured out the problem. The difference between a "1" and "150". The instructions in "EDIT" is still a good fix for now =D

[Thatdot7]

For guys who don't know what is this "ActionBarSherlock" that we are talking about, sit down, get a coffee.

ActionBarSherlock is a library for Android that allows the bar that is on the top of apps from Android 3.0 and above on older phones. Overall, it will make the app feel like a newer phone.

Here are some screenshots:

Spoiler! :

This action bar that it provides will allow the developers to possibly cut down on menu items and make them into icons.
And it looks pretty awesome.

BUGS:
- Black text on a black theme >.<..

Spoiler! :

Side note:
Linespacing bug has been fix, (I hope).

[Bloodscythe]

ActionBarSherlock huh?
The only thing I noticed was that Next/Previous is in the top bar... Which looks like a really good feature!
But, arghh, black text bug... I think that the majority of people use the Black theme so I hope that's fixed soon. Although, right now that bug happens for the White theme.

[Nandaka]

ActionBarSherlock huh?
The only thing I noticed was that Next/Previous is in the top bar... Which looks like a really good feature!

If your phone doesn't have hardware menu button, it also will show the overflow menu button (3 vertical dot).

EDIT:
- Update style for dark theme on old android. Screenie:

- fix invert color on old android.

[Thatdot7]

Nandaka, you're my hero =D

So I made a little wireframe of what I was thinking in terms of a tablet UI.
https://www.fluidui.com/editor/live/pre ... 9888491141

I don't really think the app needs to be changed in portrait, however, in landscape, the listview will stretch a bit too wide.
Also, there is an opportunity to add the Baka Tsuki character that you guys seem to want to do.

NOTE: I only put in the longest light novel title in there. On my Nexus 7, that will probably form 2 lines in the purposed layout.

Those are the main 2 screens I think will be pretty cool in tablet. Also note that these layouts can be limited to just large screens and landscape devices by putting it in res/layout-land-large

As Nandaka said, the download list keeps track of the current background downloads. All downloads occur on the background, but the way we presented them before was misleading. What i did was to create a separate view so you can check if there are any download tasks occuring. Dont forget you can actually download entire novels, so it might take a while. The download lists basically tells you "dont worry, we are working on it".

Sorry, what I meant by "notification" was similar to how the Google Play Store downloads stuff.

Hum... i didn't quite get this one, but basically you want the customizations options to work on the go? (like changing line spacing inside the novel content?)

Exactly =D... for more of an example, sort of like how Pocket handles those types of settings.

Thanks for reading this.

[Nandaka]

Nandaka, you're my hero =D

So I made a little wireframe of what I was thinking in terms of a tablet UI.
https://www.fluidui.com/editor/live/pre ... 9888491141

Make it like this:
- Novel List Page

Code: Select all

-----------------------------------------------------------
| Main | Teaser | Original  |                             |
|---------------------------|    Highlited Novel Title    |
| Novel A                   |                             |
| Novel B                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel C                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel D                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel E                   |        xx cover xxx         |
| Novel F                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel G                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel H                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel I                   |                             |
| Novel J                   | Synopsis ...... ..... ..... |
| Novel K                   | ......... ...... ... ...... |
| Novel L                   | .... ....... ....... ..  .. |
| Novel M                   |                             |
-----------------------------------------------------------

- Novel Details page

Code: Select all

-----------------------------------------------------------
|                             | Book 1                    |
|    Highlited Novel Title    | - Chapter 1               |
|                             | - Chapter 2               |
|        xxxxxxxxxxxx         | - Chapter 3               |
|        xxxxxxxxxxxx         | - Chapter 4               |
|        xxxxxxxxxxxx         | - Chapter 5               |
|        xx cover xxx         | Book 2                    |
|        xxxxxxxxxxxx         | Book 3                    |
|        xxxxxxxxxxxx         | Book 4                    |
|        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |                           |
|                             |                           |
| Synopsis ...... ..... ..... |                           |
| ......... ...... ... ...... |                           |
| .... ....... ....... ..  .. |                           |
|                             |                           |
-----------------------------------------------------------

[Thatdot7]

Make it like this:
- Novel List Page

Code: Select all

-----------------------------------------------------------
| Main | Teaser | Original  |                             |
|---------------------------|    Highlited Novel Title    |
| Novel A                   |                             |
| Novel B                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel C                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel D                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel E                   |        xx cover xxx         |
| Novel F                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel G                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel H                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel I                   |                             |
| Novel J                   | Synopsis ...... ..... ..... |
| Novel K                   | ......... ...... ... ...... |
| Novel L                   | .... ....... ....... ..  .. |
| Novel M                   |                             |
-----------------------------------------------------------

The main problem with that is that you need the novel to be highlighted first before you browse the content.
We usually tap the novel in order to look into it. This will require some sort of "double-tap" then.
I am not sure if that is optimal or not.

[Weaknespase]

First, when user performs clean install and doesn't adjust line spacing in settings, default value doesn't take effect - subsequent lines of text appears exactly atop of first line in paragraph.

Next, when will loading of novels list begun to take less time? 2-3 minutes for getting 8x titles when you really need to perform 5-6 http requests? It's ridiculous.

Next, my opinion is default content paddings are very big. Taking away almost 1cm from width of my not-very-big-smartphone-screen is waste of space. Old app has 1mm paddings and that is reasonable from my point of view.

Last, i really appreciate if this app will have an option to download FULL images, when downloading chapters.

PS. New look of start page looks magnificient, but i think that buttons' text is slightly too big, and action bar missing makes new desing imperfect.

[Erakk]

The main problem with that is that you need the novel to be highlighted first before you browse the content.
We usually tap the novel in order to look into it. This will require some sort of "double-tap" then.
I am not sure if that is optimal or not.

Actually, no.
The preview should already show the volumes/chapters, and when you scroll down and click on a chapter, THEN, the right fragment (the synosys or novelDetails) should go to the left, and on the right, it should appear the chapter being read.

Coming from an iPhone/iPad background, where that kind of design is enforced into you... thats what, for me, it should be.

[Nandaka]

The main problem with that is that you need the novel to be highlighted first before you browse the content.
We usually tap the novel in order to look into it. This will require some sort of "double-tap" then.
I am not sure if that is optimal or not.

Make it like this then:

Code: Select all

-----------------------------------------------------------
| Main | Teaser | Original  |                             |
|---------------------------|    Highlited Novel Title    |
| Novel A                   |                             |
| Novel C                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel D                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel E                   |        xx cover xxx         |
| Novel F                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel G                   |        xxxxxxxxxxxx         |
| Novel I                   |                             |
| Novel J                   | Synopsis ...... ..... ..... |
| Novel K                   | ......... ...... ... ...... |
| Novel L                   | .... ....... ....... ..  .. |
| Novel M                   |                             |
| Novel I                   |  Book1                      |
| Novel I                   |   Chapter 1                 |
| Novel I                   |   Chapter 2                 |
-----------------------------------------------------------

This will reduce the number of screen

[Nandaka]

First, when user performs clean install and doesn't adjust line spacing in settings, default value doesn't take effect - subsequent lines of text appears exactly atop of first line in paragraph.

Default value does take effect, only someone is setting the value to 1

Next, when will loading of novels list begun to take less time? 2-3 minutes for getting 8x titles when you really need to perform 5-6 http requests? It's ridiculous.

Either the internet is slow or the parsing take some times, what is your phone spec?

Next, my opinion is default content paddings are very big. Taking away almost 1cm from width of my not-very-big-smartphone-screen is waste of space. Old app has 1mm paddings and that is reasonable from my point of view.

Weird, the margin is set by percentage (5%), except if your screen is 20cm wide, it shouldn't reach 1cm. Anyway, you can override the reading layout by supplying your own css.
These are the link for the old version (2mm):
- Dark Style: https://raw.github.com/calvinaquino/LNR ... e_dark.css
- Light Style: https://raw.github.com/calvinaquino/LNR ... /style.css

To enable:
1. Save it to your sdcard and rename it to custom.css.
2. Go to Settings -> Reading Layout -> CSS Layout.
3. Tick Use Custom CSS.

Last, i really appreciate if this app will have an option to download FULL images, when downloading chapters.

Go to Settings -> Download Full-Res Image <- nuff said

[Thatdot7]

First, when user performs clean install and doesn't adjust line spacing in settings, default value doesn't take effect - subsequent lines of text appears exactly atop of first line in paragraph.

Yep, just found the bug yesterday and fixed it. It is on GitHub atm.

Next, my opinion is default content paddings are very big. Taking away almost 1cm from width of my not-very-big-smartphone-screen is waste of space. Old app has 1mm paddings and that is reasonable from my point of view.

Hmmm.. if the border's aren't very big, it looks like crap on tablets. Probably the solution is to have a user preferenced margin then.

Last, i really appreciate if this app will have an option to download FULL images, when downloading chapters.

There is an option in the settings menu that allows you to do this. I believe it is called "Download Full-Res Images". Though, it does take some time to download all the images if there are a lot.

Make it like this then:

I guess that looks a bit more doable =D.

The preview should already show the volumes/chapters, and when you scroll down and click on a chapter, THEN, the right fragment (the synosys or novelDetails) should go to the left, and on the right, it should appear the chapter being read.

Is what Nandaka description accurate to what you meant? (I swear, sometimes, I think both of you are the same person =P)

[Erakk]

Yep, just found the bug yesterday and fixed it. It is on GitHub atm.

ill release that one as a 1.1.1, because that is one problem everyone is talking about, lol =P

Is what Nandaka description accurate to what you meant? (I swear, sometimes, I think both of you are the same person =P)

=P
Yeah, Nandaka's accurate =D

[Weaknespase]

Either the internet is slow or the parsing take some times, what is your phone spec?

Tegra 2@1Ghz, i have somewhat an "iron" reasoning, because exactly same process in my implementation takes from 20 to 30 seconds at exactly same conditions on same device. How many titles at once this app sends to server in api request? Take a note, that server accepts up to 50 titles\pageids in single request.
Also, i'm using v1.1 from market, maybe it's simply an old version misbehave. (Some earlier versions makes a 8x requests for fetching this list )

Spoiler! :

If you want, i can donate lightweight implementation of html parser xD. It has almost all 1 level functional (guess i'm feeling lazy?) as well as some level 2 functions. Interface is like generic js DOM interface. On my device it works twice as fast as JSoup, though, it is really simple and probably has some bugs.

Weird, the margin is set by percentage (5%), except if your screen is 20cm wide, it shouldn't reach 1cm. Anyway, you can override the reading layout by supplying your own css.
These are the link for the old version (2mm):
- Dark Style: https://raw.github.com/calvinaquino/LNR ... e_dark.css
- Light Style: https://raw.github.com/calvinaquino/LNR ... /style.css

To enable:
1. Save it to your sdcard and rename it to custom.css.
2. Go to Settings -> Reading Layout -> CSS Layout.
3. Tick Use Custom CSS.

I know about custom CSS support (reading this thread sometimes). I think i got worked up for nothing (it's 6 mm wide, not a 1cm, also 5% from right + 5% from left = 10% ), but i feel that for smartphones paddings can be decreased, maybe 10dip?

Go to Settings -> Download Full-Res Image <- nuff said

I'm ashamed. I'm sorry