Version 6.0 released : transitions

As promised before, I worked on transitions between two photos for this next release. The implemented transitions are :

• Dissolve : photos fading into each other.
• Fade in/fade out 
• Zoom in and zoom out: The next photo replaces the previous one from inside or outside
• Slide left and right : The next photo replaces the previous one from left or right
• Random : any of the above

To make playing with the above transitions possible, I used a sliding menu to change the layout or transition during slideshow playback.

New photo frame version 5.6.1

Highlights of this version are:

• Transitions : Next to fade-in/fade-out, there is also a dissolve transition which shows the two photos blended together. More transitions to come ..., I'm open to suggestions.
• Completely redone recent slideshows. There is now the possibility to
• Rename the slideshow to whatever you want
• Delete the slideshow from the list
• Start the slideshow using the button next to the slideshow
• Go to the folder represented by this slideshow. This is a very useful feature if you often show photos from a subfolder of a certain location.
• The recent now has a (R) at the end to indicate it is a recursive slideshow.
• UPnP should now retrieve the photo with the best resolution instead of just the first one (depending on the server this would be an ok one or just a thumbnail)
• Unreadable photos crashed the app, this will now show nothing instead.
• Fixes the bugs introduced in 5.6 impacting a lot of users, sorry for this.

Released new photo frame version 5.5

The highlights of this version are

• Maximum delay between two photos is now 600 seconds
• If a layout with multiple photos is used, it is filled up as fast as the photos can be loaded.
• Selecting a specific photo starts the slideshow from that photo.
• Better full screen usage
• A new random layout as shown in the next picture

Let me know any additional feature you would like to see in the comments!
Also I keep a page about  the digital photo frame on google+, I've you would like to be kept up to date, click the follow button on the right.

Crash reporting android apps

I started using https://www.crittercism.com for crash reporting of my photo frame app. It only makes the app 40 kB bigger (peanuts on a 1Mb app) but sends the stacktrace automatically to their servers.
Where I normally receive one or two crash reports a day, it was soon clear to me that the problem is a lot bigger than that. Thanks to the detailed stack trace, I was able to resolve most of the problems really quick.

On a daily basis I have 300 people checking out my app but only 100 or less keeping it. Now it is clear to me why. Most of these users run into a crash that does not occur on my test devices. I hope the number of users that keep my app will be higher now and that the current users will have a more stable app.

New app : Tel/SMS shortcut

I released a new app to create shorcuts to start a call directly from your home screen or to send a predefined sms to one of your contacts. Just a little productivity tool, I use myself a lot.

Tell me what you think!

Android development tools

I created a bitbucket repository containing some unix scripts and groovy scripts I use when developing android applications. I will continue adding things as I need them. I hope somebody else gains time using these.
Let me know if you use them and feel free to add things in the bitbucket repository.

Currently it contains a conversion script from svg to png's in the different sizes needed and conversion from strings.xml location files to a csv and the other way round to ease collaboration with another team doing the translation. The wiki should explain more.

Special networks

By default the photoframe app searches servers in the local network which is fine for most of the users. But sometimes the server is not found or the server, you want to access, is in a different network (could be over VPN for example). In that case, you can enter the server name or its ip address in the options menu and then only that server will be shown. No network scanning is done at that point so the only server you will see is the one you entered.
Unfortunately this only works for the network option, not for upnp. If anyone knows how to get this working with the cling framework or just how it works with UPNP. I already found this interesting page explaining UPNP. Since it works with UDP unicast it doesn't seem to be easy to do. I should be able to skip the discover state and add a device with the fixed ip directly.