Archive for September, 2010
An Important Announcement
Sep 28th
As you may or may not know, LauncherPro is based on the stock Android 2.0 Launcher. All the base code comes from it, and all of LauncherPro’s features were added on top of it.
While that has worked really well, the problem is that the 2.0 stock Launcher wasn’t coded to have 7 homescreens, or a lot of the features that exist today in LauncherPro. That means that many features in LauncherPro are a bit hacky code-wise. The stock Launcher’s code isn’t very flexible either, so in order to implement some of the features I want to add to LauncherPro, some major changes need to be made to the code.
Instead of keeping on adding stuff on top of the stock Launcher, I’ve decided to do something more radical. A few days ago, I started rewriting LauncherPro from scratch. That is, starting with a totally blank canvas, and building it with LauncherPro’s feature set (and other features in my todo list) in mind.
What does this mean for you?
Well, the final outcome of this decision should be, in a nutshell:
- Improved speed
- Reduced memory usage, which means fewer force-closes and possibly allow us to have up to 9 homescreens
- Increased flexibility. I’m coding everything to make it as flexible as possible, which will allow LauncherPro to better adapt to new device form factors, such as tablets.
- Cleaner code that I’ll know inside and out. That means that adding new features can be implemented faster since I’ll know every single line of code in LauncherPro.
- Rewriting the app will give me the opportunity to fix the little bugs that haven’t been addressed yet, and to improve parts of the code that could use some improvement.
The current LauncherPro will continue to get updates while I work on the new code, albeit perhaps a bit less frequently. Rewriting the entire app from scratch is a huge undertaking, but it will definitely be worth it in the end.
Hope you are as excited as I am about this new chapter in LauncherPro’s history 
Edit: A few people have asked about how will this affect LauncherPro Plus users. Rest assured, you won’t have to pay again to get the Plus features. The new rewritten LauncherPro will simply replace the current one.
As a side note, right now I’m working on an update for the current LauncherPro, which will bring a new feature for Plus users, some bugfixes, and more. It should be out in the next couple of days.
LauncherPro v0.7.9.0 released!
Sep 21st
A new version of LauncherPro has just hit the market. Here’s what v0.7.9.0 brings:
For all users:
- Increased the sensitivity for swiping through homescreens. It should respond to shorter swipes now.
- New: Customizable homescreen grid size! You can now choose how many columns and rows of icons/widgets to have on your homescreens (Preferences > Homescreen Settings). There’s also an “Auto-fit items” option which will resize the grid cell size to match the grid dimensions, so that widgets/icons don’t overlap.
If you increase the grid size and move stuff around (or resize widgets), and then want to decrease the grid size again, make sure to revert your changes, otherwise some widgets will be unusable, and some icons might fall off the screen.
For Plus users only:
- Fixed the Calendar widget’s Agenda view not updating at the end of each day.
- Enabled vertical scrolling in the “Facebook Login” process so that users with low pixel density devices (like HTC Wildfire) can reach the buttons.
- New: Friends Widget. This is the last promised widget in the LauncherPro Plus series (Note: there *will* be more widgets in the future, after making some improvements to the current widgets). The Friends widget blends Twitter and Facebook updates into one widget. If you’ve used the individual widgets, then you already know the drill. There’s a Timeline view (with your Twitter timeline and Facebook news feed) and a Wall view (with your Twitter mentions and Facebook wall). A third view might come in a future update with Twitter direct messages and Facebook inbox. Since the Facebook API doesn’t support sending direct messages, those would be read-only, with no way to reply from the widget.
There’s a small logo over the contact pictures to show which network each status came from. The “Compose” button will let you update your status on both networks at the same time, or only one network (use the checkboxes to choose where to post the update to).
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 v0.7.8.1 is here!
Sep 11th
A new version of LauncherPro is ready to download. Here’s what’s new in version 0.7.8.0:
For all users:
- New: Ability to use custom icons and labels on homescreen shortcuts. Long-press on a homescreen and choose “Shortcuts”. After selecting the shortcut, you’ll get a popup with the icon and label for the shortcut. You can click on the icon to choose a custom icon from your gallery, and you can edit the label before adding the shortcut.
Edit: There’s a bug in this new feature when adding “Applications” shortcuts. If you don’t use a custom icon, next time LP is restarted, the icon for that shortcut will be missing. Will be fixed in next update. In the meantime, if you want to add an application shortcut without a custom icon, you can open the app drawer, long-press on that application until the drawer closes and the icon lifts up, then drop it on your homescreen.
Edit 2: The aforementioned bug is now fixed in 0.7.8.1
For Plus users only:
- Fixed a problem with the Twitter widget putting some mentions in the timeline view instead of the mentions view.
- New: Facebook Widget. It took a lot of work but the new Facebook widget is ready. It works very similarly to the Twitter widget. There’s two views: news feed and wall. You can switch between the two views with the buttons at the top, or use the “Compose” button to create a new post.
Clicking on a post will open it in a new window, where you can “Like” that post, read comments, write your own comment, or open any link/photo/video associated with it.
Here’s a couple of screenshots:
Next widget will combine both Twitter and Facebook updates into one stream. After that I have a very cool new feature planned for Plus users, along with some new stuff for all users. Stay tuned.
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 v0.7.7.3 released
Sep 6th
This is a minor update that brings some bugfixes and improvements. Here’s what’s new:
For all users:
- Replaced the old dialog for picking applications (when adding shortcuts to homescreens, dock, or dock swipe actions) with a custom one that loads much faster. Users with lots of applications installed should see a dramatic speed boost when bringing up this feature.
For Plus users only:
- Update service (for Twitter, and soon for Facebook) now runs only when it has work to do, that is, when it’s time to fetch new statuses.
- Fixed a bug with the Twitter where tweets with links became unclickable. Because of limitations on the Android framework, we can’t have the entire row (tweet) cilckable in addition to the clickable links, so from now on, in order to bring up the menu (Reply, Retweet, etc.) you need to click outside the body of the tweet. Clicking on the author’s picture should do the trick.
- Fixed a bug where if you added the Twitter widget to a homescreen and then removed it without setting your Twitter credentials, it would keep asking you to enter your credentials every 15 minutes until the phone was restarted.
- New: Selectable update interval for Twitter. You can choose how often the widget will poll Twitter for new data. You can choose between 5, 15 and 30 minutes, and 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 hours. There’s an option called “Manually” but it’s not implemented yet (I forgot to remove it from the list before publishing this new version, it should be functional in next update).
- New: Option to choose what application to launch when you click on “Twitter” on the widget’s header. You can now set it to launch your favorite Twitter app instead of launching Twitter’s website.
That’s it for now. Hopefully we’ll have a Facebook widget before the end of the week.
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 v0.7.7.2 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!)
