LauncherPro v0.7.7.2 is here!
Sep 2nd
A new version of LauncherPro has just hit the market. Here’s what’s version 0.7.7.2 brings:
For all users:
- Fixed a force-close issue when clicking on contact shortcuts inside folders in Android 2.2
- Fixed a memory issue with both Glow and Outline highlights.
- Fixed a problem with the 3D app drawer where scrolling very slowly would sometimes trigger a long-press.
- Added gradient shadows to the 3D app drawer’s top and bottom parts to enhance the 3D effect.
- 0.7.7.1 fixes a bug in 0.7.7.0 that made it impossible to change dock backgrounds or icon highlight colors. It should be back to normal now.
For Plus users only:
- Fixed a problem with the Calendar widget, where if you had a multi-day event that started in the past, the Agenda list view would start on that day instead of the current/selected day.
- Fixed a bug with the Messaging widget that could potentially cause LauncherPro to be unloaded from memory causing redraws.
- New: Twitter widget. The fifth widget for LauncherPro Plus users is the new Twitter widget. I originally planned to just have a Twitter/Facebook combo widget, but upon further investigation once I began its development, I decided it will be better to have three widgets instead: a Twitter widget, a Facebook widget, and the combo (“Friends”) widget. That way the individual widgets can exploit features available only on that service (for example, the Twitter widget having three separate lists for timeline, mentions, and direct messages).
The Twitter widget is pretty straightforward. Go to Menu > Preferences > LP Widget Settings > Twitter Widget, and choose “Twitter Login” to authorize LauncherPro to access your Twitter data. When you add the widget to a homescreen, the first update (You’ll notice it says “Loading…” at the bottom of the widget) might take a few minutes since it has to fetch quite a bit of data for the initial set up. After that, updates should be pretty quick.Inside the widget, you have three different views: Timeline, Mentions, and Direct Messages. You can switch between these views using the three buttons at the top. There’s also a “Compose” button to write a new tweet. Clicking on a tweet on the list will bring up a menu with options to reply, retweet, or send a direct message to the user.
The update rate is fixed at 15 minutes for this initial release. Future updates will include selectable update intervals. You can force an update at any time by pressing the “Refresh” button (the one with the little arrows) at the bottom of the widget.
Update: version 0.7.7.2 makes links inside tweets clickable.
Click here to download the APK file.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or bug reports, please don’t post them in the comments. Head over to our forum and post them there. (READ the rules and stickies first!)
LauncherPro v0.7.6.0 Out in the Wild!
Aug 19th
A new version of LauncherPro (v0.7.6.0) is now available in the Android Market.
Before I get to the changes, a little warning. I’m going to Uruguay tomorrow until Tuesday, so if there are any bugs in this version, I won’t be able to fix them until Tuesday. Update at your own risk 
Ok, so here’s what’s new:
For all users:
- For Droid X/Droid 2 users: Added support for SMS notifications on the dock when using custom icons.
- New: LauncherPro Shortcuts!. This deserves a rather lengthy explanation.
LauncherPro Shortcuts are a new way of creating, adding, and sharing custom shortcuts for LauncherPro. Shortcuts are created and shared as LPS files.
LPS files are self-contained shortcut files that have all the info needed to make a shortcut, including the label, icon, and Android intent (more on intents in a bit). They are written in a new format that I created for this purpose, which is based in XML. Don’t worry, I created a web-based tool for creating these files so it’s as easy as filling out a form and downloading the resulting .lps file.
A shortcut always needs an Android intent to be “executed” when the shortcut is clicked. Intents are the standard way of launching activities/apps and sending information and commands to apps in Android. If you want to create your own LauncherPro Shortcuts, please read this page for a detailed explanation of how intents work and how to make your own.
LPS files need to be stored in your SD card, either in the root of the card, or inside the folders “download”, “downloads” or “lpshortcuts”. To add an LP Shortcut to a homescreen, long-press on a blank spot, choose “Shortcuts” and then “LauncherPro Shortcuts”. If you have any LPS files in the previously mentioned folders in your SD card, they should show up on the list. You can click on “Create New” to go to the web-based LauncherPro Shortcut Creator tool. You can also access the LauncherPro Shortcut Creator tool from your computer, and then put the generated LPS file in your SD card.
Here’s a topic in our LauncherPro forum where you can share and download LauncherPro Shortcut files. - New option: Display memory usage. This is only meant for testing/debugging/troubleshooting purposes. When enabled, LauncherPro will display its current heap memory usage (in kilobytes) on the screen. Android has a heap memory limit per app of 24mb for high-resolution devices (Droid, N1, etc) and 16mb for medium-resolution devices (Hero, G1, Legend, etc). If you’re having memory-related force closes, this feature might help you understand why, and tweak or remove stuff from your homescreens until you achieve a safer memory usage. You can enable this under Preferences > Advanced Settings (it’s at the very bottom). Note: this feature is quite CPU intensive, so scrolling through homescreens will probably be less smooth when this is enabled.
For LauncherPro Plus users only:
- Fixed the QuickContact popup not showing on the Messaging widget when the sender doesn’t have a photo assigned.
- Fixed not being able to move/remove the card-style Messaging widget when there are no SMS messages on your phone.
- Fixed the Calendar widget displaying multi-day events only on the first day. Both the calendar and agenda views should now display these events on each day they take.
- Tweaked the Calendar widget to use better localized strings for dates.
That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the Friends (Twitter + Facebook) widget next week or the one after. It’s the most complicated widget (as far as coding goes) in the LauncherPro Plus series yet so it’s going to take more time than usual to finish it.
LauncherPro v0.7.5.1 released!
Aug 13th
A new build of LauncherPro has just hit the Android Market. Here’s what’s new:
For all users:
- Fixed a bug where changing the icon on the default dock shortcuts would revert back to the default icon after restarting LauncherPro (this didn’t happen when you changed the shortcut too).
- Fixed the menu button not responding after using the trackball or a hardware arrow key.
- Fixed a bug in the 3rd party scrollable widgets code that would cause the widget to be accidentally lifted while scrolling it.
- Changed the loading mechanism for the new “Activities” shortcut feature, since it wasn’t loading on some phones due to the amount of data on the list. It should load on all phones now. If you have a lot of apps installed, it might take a couple of minutes for the list to load.
- Set dock shortcuts to ignore swipes when they have no swipe gesture action set.
For Plus users only:
- Brought back the daily updating of the calendar widget to keep it up to date. I’ve tested the memory usage when using this and the previous memory leaks are fixed.
- New Messaging widget!. The fourth widget in the LauncherPro Plus series brings your SMS messages right to your homescreens. There are two styles to choose from, a card view that shows one message at a time, and a list view that shows all your messages in a list. Since widgets are now resizable, there’s only one pre-set size for each style, you can resize them to your liking. After you’re done resizing a widget, press the “Back” button on your phone to save the changes and go back to the launcher (just repeating this because I saw a lot of people complaining about their phone being “frozen” after resizing a widget).
In the card mode, you can scroll vertically through your messages. There’s buttons to reply and delete any message, and you can click the sender’s photo to bring out their QuickContact popup (on phones that have this functionality, otherwise it will open their contact card).
In list mode, you can reply to any message by clicking on it. To delete a message or mark it as read, long-press on it and choose the desired option from the menu. You can also click on the sender’s photo to bring up their QuickContact popup (again, only on phones that support it). Clicking on the “Messaging” title should open your default messaging application. There’s two additional buttons, one for marking all messages as read (the button with the checkmark) and the other to compose a new message (it should create and open a blank message on your default messaging application). - Edit: 0.7.5.1 fixes a bug in 0.7.5.0 where moving the new Messaging widget would cause it to stop automatically updating until either the screen was rotated or LauncherPro was restarted.
Click here to download the APK file
If you have any questions, suggestions, or bug reports, please don’t post them in the comments. Head over to our forum and post them there. (READ the rules and stickies first!)
LauncherPro v0.7.4 now in the Market
Aug 6th
A new version of LauncherPro is now available in the Android market. Here’s what 0.7.4 brings:
For all users:
- New: Activity shortcuts. When adding shortcuts to your homescreens or dock, there’s a new option called “Activities”. This will let you create shortcuts to activities (screens within applications) that are not usually accessible directly. For example, you can set it to open your calendar’s Agenda screen, or even LauncherPro’s preferences screen. The activities are sorted by application, and you can choose the label for the shortcut. Please be ware that a LOT of activities aren’t meant to be called from external applications, so with many of them you’ll get an error message saying that we cannot open that activity, or the activity might open and crash immediately because it’s missing information that it expects to receive.
For Plus users:
- Fixed a bug with the Calendar widget. The system that made it update at midnight every day (to keep the calendar updated) was leaking memory and causing force-closes after several screen rotations. For now, you’ll need to manually refresh the widget (use the little Refresh icon at the bottom of the widget) every day, until I can find a solution to keep it up to date without causing memory issues.
- For Droid X users: Initial support for proper resizing of Blur widgets! Many of the Blur widgets now resize just like on the Blur launcher. Some widgets still show some weird behaviour when resized, hopefully I will be able to fix it in a future update.
Click here to download the APK file
If you have any questions, suggestions, or bug reports, please don’t post them in the comments. Head over to our forum and post them there. (READ the rules and stickies first!)
LauncherPro v0.7.3 released!
Aug 5th
The new version of LauncherPro just hit the Android market and it brings some very cool stuff! Here’s what’s new:
For all users:
- Improved screen rotation speed
- New “Launch shortcut…” action for dock icon swipe gestures. Now you can also launch shortcuts like Direct Dial, Bookmark, Direct Message, etc. with the new shortcut swipe gestures!
For Plus users only:
- Fixed a bug with the new Calendar widget that was causing force closes and screen reloads.
- Fixed the bug where opening an event from the Agenda part of the Calendar widget would show the wrong date.
- New “Add” (“+”) button on the Calendar widget for adding events to the calendar.
- New option to use 24-hour format in the Calendar widget. It’s under Preferences > LP Widget Settings > Calendar Widget. Make sure to refresh the widget (use the icon on the bottom bar of the widget) after changing this.
- NEW: Resizable widgets!. Now you can resize any widget! Long-press on a widget until it lifts up the screen, then release it in the same spot. You should now see a resize box around it and a yellowish overlay. Use the resize handle to change the size (use the overlay as a guide) and release the handle to see how the widget will look resized. When you find a size that you like, press the “Back” button on your phone to save the changes and go back to your homescreens.
Edit: We now have initial support for resizing Droid X widgets too!
Click here to download the APK file
If you have any questions, suggestions, or bug reports, please don’t post them in the comments. Head over to our forum and post them there. (READ the rules and stickies first!)
A quick update…
Aug 4th
Sorry for not having posted a changelog for 0.7.2 yet. I’ve been super busy working on another major new feature for Plus users and didn’t have time to do a proper changelog (with screenshots and all), so I’m going to post a quick one until next update.
Here’s what’s new in version 0.7.2.0:
For All users:
- Improved code for 3rd party scrollable widgets. This should improve stability and performance when using 3rd party scrollable widgets like Pure Messenger, Android Agenda Widget, etc. Credit goes to Francois Deslandes (creator of Pure Messenger) for the code.
- Fixed force-close when opening the “Hidden Apps” screen on the preferences on some phones.
- New Calendar icon on the LauncherPro Icons menu.
- New: Option to change the icon only on dock shortcuts. When you long-press on a shortcut you’ll get choice to either change the shortcut or just change the icon.
- NEW: Dock shortcut gestures! Now each dock shortcut has an optional secondary action that you can trigger by swiping your finger upwards or downwards on it. Actions vary from launching any app selected by you, showing screen previews, showing notifications, hiding/showing the status bar, and opening the app drawer. Option to set a shortcut as the swipe action (so that you can set it to a Direct Dial shortcut, for example) will come in a future release.
For LauncherPro Plus users only:
- Fixed (hopefully) a bug when generating thumbnails for the Bookmarks widget, where the process would fail halfway through and many bookmarks would end up with incorrect thumbnails.
- NEW: Calendar widget. The third widget in the LauncherPro Plus series is the Calendar widget. By default it shows you a grid calendar for the current month, highlighting days that have events. You can scroll it vertically to switch to another month. Clicking on a day will change the widget to an Agenda view, where you can view your events for that day and the following 30 days. You can return to the calendar view by clicking the icon at the top right corner of the widget.
An “Add” button to open the “New Event” screen on your calendar will be added in a future release. So please stop requesting it
Also, I’m already aware of a bug when opening events from the Agenda view will show the date as being in 1970. Don’t worry, it hasn’t modified your events, it’s simply displaying the wrong info. It will be fixed on the next release.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or bug reports, PLEASE DON’T post them in the comments. Head over to our forum and post them there. (READ the rules and stickies first!)
LauncherPro v0.7.1.0 released!
Jul 25th
There’s a new version of LauncherPro in the Android market. Here’s what version 0.7.1.0 brings:
For all users:
- New: Option to hide apps that you don’t use from the app drawer. Simply go to Preferences > General Settings > Hidden apps — and check the apps that you want to remove from the drawer. After restarting LauncherPro, the apps will be gone from the drawer (you can always get them back by unchecking them on the Hidden apps screen). Besides giving you a cleaner drawer, hiding apps will also save some memory and reduce startup time for LauncherPro, so if you have any apps that you never use, I encourage you to hide them.
For Plus users only:
- New Bookmarks widget!: The second widget in the series is the new Bookmarks widget. You have two styles to choose from; a thumbnail grid, or a list. Both styles come with wide and narrow sizes too. Here’s some screenshots:
Since HTC Sense phones don’t store their bookmark thumbnails in a way that’s accessible to LauncherPro, I’ve added an option to fetch the thumbnails for you. So if you have an HTC Sense phone, go into Preferences > LP Widget Settings > Bookmarks Widget and choose “Get missing thumbnails”.Also note that this will get bookmarks from your Android shared bookmarks database. We cannot get bookmarks from browsers that store their data privately, so if you’re not using the stock browser or a browser that stores their bookmarks in the shared database, your bookmarks won’t show up in the widget. You’ll have to export them to the shared database (in case your browser gives you that option, such as with Xscope) or manually add them to the stock browser.
LauncherPro v0.7.0.2/3/4
Jul 23rd
These three versions (released yesterday) are all bugfix updates. Here’s what changed:
- 0.7.0.2 – Changed verbose for the Unlock LauncherPro Plus option to change any references from “Paypal transaction ID” to “Unlock code”, and provide a link to where to get the unlock code.
- 0.7.0.3 – Fixes a nasty bug with the new highlights color options, where manually entering a color code with spaces or other invalid characters in it caused the app to crash at launch.
- 0.7.0.4 – Fixes another bug introduced by the highlights color options, where opening system folders (Starred, Bluetooth, etc.) caused the app to crash.
LauncherPro 0.7.0.2 released.
Jul 22nd
The latest version of LauncherPro (v0.7.0.2) is now available on the Android market.
Here’s what’s new:
- A new “Unlock LauncherPro Plus” option on the preferences page. This will let you get future updates to the Plus version through the market. In order to get your unlock code, please go here and enter your Paypal email address. You’ll receive your code via email.
- New option: Highlight color. Now you can choose the color of the icon highlights (when they are pressed/focused). A more precise color picker will come in the future. You can use any color by entering the hexadecimal code. (Preferences > Appearance Settings).
- New option: Stretch 4-row widgets. If you have the 5 icon rows option enabled, you can now choose to stretch 4-row high widgets to use the whole 5 rows instead of leaving an empty row at the bottom. This counts for LauncherPro widgets too.
That’s it for now. LauncherPro Plus users, the Bookmarks widget is coming soon along with some tweaks to the People widget. I wanted to have it finished already but between creating the new unlock key system and replying to the boatload of emails about the Plus version, I haven’t had enough time to finish it.
Fede
IMPORTANT: LauncherPro (and LauncherPro Plus) support.
Jul 22nd
During the past couple of days, I’ve been literally bombarded with emails with general support questions about LauncherPro. Most of these emails are asking the same two or three questions.
As you can imagine, replying to emails takes time. Time that otherwise would be spent improving the product. I’ve literally only had a few hours to work on LauncherPro the past two days due to the sheer amount of emails. You can also see it in the blog comments here, the same two or three questions being asked over and over again, despite me having already answered them in the same comments section. Namely the three questions that kept popping up are about how to download/install the Plus version, how updates for the Plus version will be handled, and Facebook pictures in the People widget, all of which I have answered in the comments and in the forum.
So it’s time for some changes. From now on, the LauncherPro Forums are the one and ONLY way to get answers to general support questions. If you have a question or a billing problem that cannot be resolved in public, you can still email me (please read below for instructions on doing so). But any general support questions sent by email will not be answered. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the only way for me to be able to keep spending the necessary time on actually developing LauncherPro.
If you’d just like to send a comment that doesn’t require an answer, and you’d rather not post it on the forum, you can email it to me too (assuming you don’t expect an answer, of course). I still read all email that comes this way, just won’t be replying to those that should have been posted on the forum instead.
So if you have any general questions, please head over to our forum (there’s a link at the top of this page, next to “Home”) and post them. But first, some ground rules about posting in the forum:
- 1. SEARCH FIRST: A support forum is useless if it has 100 different topics, all asking the same question, or suggesting the same feature, or reporting the same bug. You can find a search box at the top right corner on the forums. Do a search for keywords relating to your question/suggestion/bug. Make sure nobody has posted about it already. If there’s already a topic about it, feel free to add your comments to that topic, but don’t start a new one. If there’s no topic relating to your issue, then start a new topic.
- 2. Read the forum announcements first: On top of every subforum, you’ll see a section with announcements. Please make sure you read them carefully before posting. There you’ll find an extensive list of features that have been already requested, and their current status in the “todo” list. There’s also a topic with frequently asked questions and answers.
- 3. Use the right forum: Inside the forums, we have different subforums for feature requests, bug reports, general questions/help, etc. The titles are self-explanatory. Please look at the different subforums and choose the one that best matches your issue. The LauncherPro Plus forums are meant to be used only for issues related to Plus-only features. That means that if you want to request a feature that’s not related to LauncherPro Widgets, you must post it in the LauncherPro suggestions forum, even if you’re a LauncherPro Plus user. Sames goes for General questions/help; if your question is not about Plus features, post it in the LauncherPro questions forum.
- 4. Be POLITE: At all times, please remain respectful of your fellow LauncherPro users. Even if you disagree with what they say or how they think. No swearing, no disrespecting, and no trolling, please.
Ok, so with those rules we should be able to have a peaceful community where users can help each other without me having to take time away from development to answer questions that have already been answered or could be easily answered by a more experienced user.
Now here’s a couple of rules for sending private emails:
- Include “[Private]” (without the commas) in the subject line. This will help me filter emails that are actually private and from people who can follow a couple of simple guidelines.
- If you have purchased LauncherPro Plus and are not satisfied with it, I’m more than happy to issue you a full refund within the first week of use. If you’d like to request a refund, please include your Paypal Transaction ID (it’s on your Paypal invoice) in your email. I need this ID to properly find your purchase and issue a refund.
I hope you’ll understand the reasons to have this new system/rules. It’s not because I’m too lazy to reply to emails. It’s because LauncherPro is still a one-man-show (until I can afford to hire more people) and having to answer to a lot of unnecessary emails is hurting the development of the project.
Thanks in advance for following the rules.
Fede
