The Mobility Digest App for Windows Phone is Live!
Get Mobility Digest on your Windows Phone 7 device today! Why? Because that’s what all the cool kids are doing! But seriously, it’s my very first program of any kind with any language so keep that in mind before you rip me a new one about missing features please. It took me a few weeks of fumbling around C# and Silverlight, but I finally managed to this app finished and working. The app is free, and I intend on updating the app with additional features as I learn more about C#.
Currently, the app allows you to get a list of articles from the main page accompanied by their descriptions. If you pan to the right, you will see a control for selecting different categories specific to individual OSs. If you click on the articles, the app will navigate to the browser and direct you to the corresponding webpage. Hitting the back button will return you to the app.
I plan to add additional layout configurations, full article viewing from inside the app, and comment support in the future. However, know that I am still learning everything, so I cannot implement any of these or other features until I learn how to do so. Anyone familiar with .NET, C#, and/or Silverlight who wants to give me some pointers, please feel free to do so. I’m always trying to learn more things, and the more resources I have the better! I also welcome any suggestions on features, but be warned that the more advanced the feature the less likely it will be added(due to my lack of knowledge in this area). If anyone wants me to make them a similar app, shoot me an email with the subject line “app request” and I’ll do it for free. Please leave all comments and suggestions in the comments below. Anyway, enjoy guys!
Download the Mobility Digest App!!!
UPDATE: Please do not update the app if one appears before Monday(3/21/11). I uploaded the wrong .xap to the marketplace and I am not allowed to cancel a submission once it’s been sent in. The update(if it passes certification, which I hope it doesn’t) will not break the app but it will screw up the layout a bit. I will submit another update as soon as this MS allows me to(I can only have one update submitted at a time for certification). If you download the update by accident, the fix will be coming 3-5days after the wrong update was released, as that’s about how long it take MS to certify my app. Sorry for the trouble guys!
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Congrats!
Where would you like us to provide feedback?
@Idrankbluekoolaid: Here in the comments is fine
@Danny Lam: Great job Danny and congratulations on starting so strong. One thing that you might consider is using a progress indicator during category loads. You don’t want the user to keep tapping buttons thinking the app isn’t responding.
@yss: Great suggestion! And I was considering adding it, but I’m not sure how to bind the progress bar to the download process(idea how to check the download process). I just finished changing the buttons to radio buttons, so you will now have feedback that the correct category is selected before you swipe back to the article list. I will try to add some more features before pushing this update forward though and will keep you all updated when I do push it out.
@Danny Lam: It’s part of asynchronous processing. With that said, don’t try to jump in head first. I don’t want you to start jumping from topic to topic trying to learn “cool” stuff.
TODO: Async / indeterminate progress bar for cat. loads
Promise in version 1.6; do it in 1.3. Everyone will think you’re a hero. 🙂
@yss: I know the download process is async(WP7 only allows async downloads), but I still need to figure out how to gain access to it’s progress. It will be on the todo list for sure. But load times are actually quite quick right now since it’s only downloading 1 stream at a time and it’s all text.
Considering adding images but that will increase load times dramatically for sure. If I do add it, it will be either optional or only active when connected to wifi.
I was thinking about loading all the feeds across 5 panoramic items instead of just the one. I think this would be a much better use of data and will probably load faster than images on just one page. Will add an option revert back to single list too. What do you think?
@Danny Lam:
I think images would give the app a bit of life, but please make loading images optional and not just restricted to wifi, with a Dell venue pro that would be a no-no 🙂 I like the idea for using a panoramic view, that should be confiurable as well so we can choose what feeds to show and just have the content we desire and save data on loading stuff we will not read.
@efjay: I currently have no way to optimize image downloads, which is why I chose not to implement it(at least yet). As for the panoramic view, that would be the best case scenario, in an upcoming update you will have the option to downloading all 5 pages at startup only. I will improve on this view in later updates.
Question: Do you guys think I should prioritize refining and improving the UI or work on getting the articles to display in-app with a functional comment system? The former you will see lots of incremental updates and the latter you wont see anything for awhile while I figure out how to do it.
Where is Simmons with the Droid App?
The app seems to work fine. There seems to be an ad or something behind the banner at the top that is a little distracting. After clicking on the category it appears to not do anything. If I then swipe to the left or right I notice that the list changes but I was expecting something to happen after I clicked the different categories.
@TimN_FL: The extra ad banner was a mistake I forgot to correct when trying to figure out why the ads were not displaying. It has been fixed in the next update as well as feedback from category selection. The update was submitted to the marketplace 2days ago and show appear soon. I was unable to cancel the bad update so I posted an update here to tell people not to download it. I will put up another post when the next update(version 1.4) is deployed, which should be any day now.