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I downloaded Babble, a free app which resembled the facebook app which i saw in development which looked very promising, good UI, not great, could be punched up a little bit, i think it might be a beta though. I didnt see a fb chat portion of the program or the ability to view pictures, but hopefully on a final version there should be something
Hi,
I'm the developer of Babble. The application is very beta right now, I just wanted to hear some input from people who download this first version. More features will be included once I am sure they work as expected.
The ability to view photos is actually present in the version on the market. Just long press on a wall post and under the person's name you have the option to view albums or view photos of that person.
One thing that's coming soon is notifications - new messages, new pokes, new friend requests, replies to your comments etc. Also coming some time later: tagging photos, uploading photos to albums other than the default one, creating and viewing events and groups. I'm also working on optimising the wall to be a bit faster, but it's not easy with all the photos in there.
Chat cannot be included in this application, unfortunately, at least until Facebook releases an open API for that.
What makes Babble different from the other Android Facebook apps out there is that it uses the official Facebook APIs and abides by the Facebook Terms and Conditions for application developers. This means that my app never gets to see your login and password - hence the difficult login mechanism on first install. Sorry guys, that's how facebook wants it, I can't and won't make any hacks to bypass it, I want the app to make it to Facebook Application Directory one day so I have to play by the rules.
I hope I'll be able to deliver the best Facebook mobile experience to everyone, just give the app some time to mature But I think it's even useable as it is right now!
It's working pretty well right now for beta, what I noticed straight away was it took awhile to post a status change on facebook its self after posting on the phone. Also it's hard to tell if it actually posted or not from the phone. It could be a bit more UI friendly but for the most part for beta its running well. Can't wait to see where this app goes.
The posting is a bit slow, but honestly I can live eith it.
One request. Please make notifications opitional. I really dont need my email and this app going bonkers on a reply. My wifes phone goes off all day and honestly its kind of annoying. I dont personally need notications, but i tolerate the email ones.
You can turn all the email ones off in the settings of facebook thats what I do
Thanks for the app, its already a good app in its beta state! I'm looking forward to the faster wall.
thanks again
Anyone else have the issue when they click "see all friends" it just loads and loads?
See all friends is a bit slow to load right now, that will be taken care of soon.
By the way, since this is XDA-dev I imagine lots of you have access to logcat, so if the application ever crashes on you with a Force Close (which it doesn't ever do when I'm using it, but who knows...) please paste the error trace here. thanks !
Its really simple right now, but its great at what it does have. Great to get status updates and all the replies to them.
Nice app. I can't wait to see where you take this!
Ps. to the guy talking about the friends never loading, my loaded just fine even over an edge network.
For now this is excellent, great job avesik.
are Babble and FBabble the same thing?
fbabble has chat.
To be precise: fbabble is only facebook chat,
babble is (will be) everything else but chat
Thanks. Using Babble, don't need chat. I have AIM for that
Looking good so far. We need a good facebook app that doesn't just wrap the mobile facebook
the app is quite good actually but its a bit slow (while loading) hope that it could speed up abit
good job man, i love the app, i just havent sat down to go through the program, wouldve done it yesterday, but i had to perform major surgery on my xbox 360, had to fix my RROD, but overall its great. It would be pretty sweet if chat could be integrated, im using fbabble, but its got some bugs to be worked out, and facebook chat just seems to be the redheaded stepchild of chat programs
A new version is out, no new features this time, but thanks to some optimizations it should run faster and take up less memory!
I ll be be glad if the next version has notifications
damn admob, i really hate that stuff >.<
good app otherwise
***** Updated June 3, 2011 *****
Thanks again to everyone who helped with the beta testing. Just wanted you to know that I just posted version 1 to the Android Market. It's free and you can get it here:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.greggreno.whattowatch
-Gregg
***** Updated May 5, 2011 *****
Uploaded a new version to the same location. Here are the changes:
- Improved the scrolling position after adding more titles to the bottom, but still not perfect
- Fix bug leaving the Netflix registration window open
- Set maximum title list retrieval to 50 at a time
- Fixed bug with extra Edit Search Criteria icon showing in apps list
- Fixed size and look of loading images
- Added ability to turn off ads by buying an unlocker from the Android market
Netflix still hasn't fixed their problems with TV series and getting the data right in their API
***************************
Hi all. I've been working on a new Honeycomb only app called What To Watch, and I'm looking for some beta testers. Anyone interested in helping out?
I wanted a better way to browse for Netflix movies and also manage my queues. For example, I wanted to do something like "show me all Sci Fi movies available on Instant with a 3 star rating or higher, rated PG-13 or R, sorted by release date". I couldn't find any other web site or app to do this, so I figured I would build it myself.
There are 3 main sections:
1) My Searches - this is where you can create your own searches and save them for later. I create two to start with. Click on one and it will display the list in the panel on the right, 25 at a time. Once you click on one of the My Seaches items, you can edit it by long pressing it or clicking the Edit button at the top. Note that this uses a beta API from Netflix called OData. It's the only API that lets you do sophisticated searches like this, but unfortunately it is subject to change from Netflix and it may not always be current with the main Netflix library.
2) Netflix Queues - what you would expect. For example, what is in your DVD and Instant queues.
3) Top Lists - this comes from the Netflix web site rather than the API. It shows what the top titles are for each category. This method won't show the star ratings until you drill into a particular title.
You can download the apk here (note this is case sensitive):
http://jigawattlabs.com/temp/WhatToWatch.apk
Known issues:
This is the first release. Should probably call it an Alpha!
Authenticating with Netflix isn't quite right yet. You may wind up with the web browser still open after exiting the app, and you may get another instance of the app. But just exit everything and it should be ok
There is a bug with the Netflix API with TV series and specials. This is a problem on their end, so you might get some unexpected results when browsing TV shows
I would appreciate any and all comments in terms of general UI impressions, bugs, performance, usability.
You can reach me directly at [email protected].
Thanks!
-Gregg Reno
I just tried it out, seems to work great. I just wish there was a way to actually watch Netflix on my zoom
Thanks for trying it out. I'd love to be able to watch netflix movies as well, and I think we will see that at some point. Hopefully once Netflix makes that possible, I can integrate that into the app.
I'm also going to implement a friends feature, where you can mark your favorite movies and share it with friends, and see what their favorites are.
Comments from other folks are welcome!
My first impression of the app is that it has some shared elements with amazon's web page, which is great. But the reason I say first impression is that it isn't registering with netflix.
Sent from my Xoom the way it should be, rooted and with SD card.
chbennett - thanks for testing. Can you give me some more info on the problem you had registering? When clicking almost anything it should prompt you to register. If you say ok, it should take you to a Netflix web page. You may have to log in and then it should prompt you to give permission to the What To Watch application. If you approve,it should take you back to the app and you should be able to run any of the searches on the left.
Where did you run into problems?
I installed it on my XOOM. Log in into Netflix without any problems. Searching also good, but could be good to add additional information about movie like Availability (for some of it shows when it will be available in stream).
It's a pity that we still missing Hulu or Netflix apps on our XOOM. Get used to watch it on my iPad(
greno1 said:
chbennett - thanks for testing. Can you give me some more info on the problem you had registering? When clicking almost anything it should prompt you to register. If you say ok, it should take you to a Netflix web page. You may have to log in and then it should prompt you to give permission to the What To Watch application. If you approve,it should take you back to the app and you should be able to run any of the searches on the left.
Where did you run into problems?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically all it did for me (ill try it again) was stall out on the "registering with netflix" in app pop up, going no further.
Edit: still doesn't work
Sent from my Xoom the way it should be, rooted and with SD card.
Great app! Forcecloses when I click on New Instant Choices under Top Lists category
Also when going into the Instant Que list; I click one of the movies and it takes me to the description. I can also click on Similar, Drop from Instant or Add to Disc. If I choose Drop from Instant and click the back arrow it still shows in the Instant Que listing. Can we have the option of clicking the Instant Que button on the top left corner in the movie description to go back to the Instant Que listing and if we do happen to press the back arrow could the Instant Que listing automatically update with the removal of the movie?
Kozdoba - I will be adding additional information like directors and awards, but I'll also look at adding availability. Do you have an example title in mind I can test with?
bishop72 - thanks for finding the problem with the New Instant choices. I'll look at that one, but it may be because that's a really big list and I'm not handling it correctly. Also, good idea about removing titles from the instant titles if you click the remove from instant button. But the problem with that for me is if I remove it from the list, it should probably close that title window because it's no longer in the instant queue. Maybe someone hit the remove button by mistake and they want to re-add it?
Also I notice that there is some type of caching going on with the adding and removing from queues. When you add or remove, it does that action and then sends another request to netflix to get the current status. But it may not register that quickly. So you may hit remove from instant, and then I get back a status from Netflix saying it's still in the instant queue. If you click it again, it shows up ok.
I appreciate the feedback - good or bad!
greno1 said:
Kozdoba - I will be adding additional information like directors and awards, but I'll also look at adding availability. Do you have an example title in mind I can test with?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look this series soon will be available online.
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Death_Note/70081003?trkid=2361637
downloaded the apk to nook but just got a parse error failed to load. I really love my netflix and was looking forward to tablet style look on nc.
The app installed fine, the Netflix login auth worked fine as well. The fit & finish look good as well. Some of the images and searches render a bit slow, but that could be my wifi. I will play with it more through the day and report back.
I believe i heard that Netflix was going to do a live stream with Netflix only productions, so a Top List of Netflix Original or something would be good.
Everyone - thanks for testing and for the comments. I really appreciate it! It's interesting it worked for some but didn't work for dbolton. Not sure why that is.
dbolton - can you post a screen shot of your error, or email it to me at [email protected]? I also took a few screen shots so you can see what it should look like:
http://jigawattlabs.com/w2w/screen1.png
http://jigawattlabs.com/w2w/screen2.png
kiteOregon - once Netflix posts a list of their own content in some type of list, I'll definitely look at adding that. For the Top Lists section, I'm just using the Netflix RSS feeds linked from the bottom of the page. Modified it somewhat to return no more that 50 at a time though since it would load too slow.
Thanks again!
-Gregg
Thus far all is working well. I really like the interface too, great job!
I am going to keep tinkering with it and let you know if I run into any issues or have any suggestions.
Thanks for the great app!
chbennett said:
Basically all it did for me (ill try it again) was stall out on the "registering with netflix" in app pop up, going no further.
Edit: still doesn't work
Sent from my Xoom the way it should be, rooted and with SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I heard that Netflix was having problems with authorization from 3rd party apps. As a work around the suggest launching your browser and log into Netflix. Leave the browser running, and then launch the app and try to register again. Can you let me know if that works?
-Gregg
garyh2 said:
Thus far all is working well. I really like the interface too, great job!
I am going to keep tinkering with it and let you know if I run into any issues or have any suggestions.
Thanks for the great app!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! Working to add more features.
somehow I now have a 'edit search criteria' icon (same as main apps icon) in my app drawer as if it were a separate app.
My initial reaction is very positive, but I have the same issue as garyh2. When I tell it to uninstall, I am informed that it is part of the main application so obviously I left it there. This is a weird bug though...
The only other thing I noticed is that the placeholder icons that appear before titles and images populate are slightly larger than the images and titles that replace them. This doesn't really cause problems but is slightly distracting.
I really like the power search function and the ability to save searches and haven't really seen this functionality elsewhere. Good job!
Thanks garyh2 and vidriera - ill take a look at that. The edit screen is a separate activity rather than a fragment, which is probably its somehow getting its own icon. Just one of the differences with honeycomb I need to figure out.
Also good point about the loading graphic. I'll fix that too.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Note: This version of the app has hit its token limit, for more info on my plans and its future, check out this post: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=56228193&postcount=553
Hello guys! From the creators of Sliding Messaging Pro, I would like to announce one of our new projects: Talon for Twitter!
This one, along with klinkdawg's EvolveSMS are the two brand new apps that we have been creating the past few months. They are full of polish, features, and beautiful design and KitKat style! Both of these apps are availible on the Google Play store today, but lets get to know Talon a little first
Talon for Twitter - Google Play Store
-----------------------------------------------------
Play Store Description:
Get fully immersed in your Twitter with this beautiful, feature PACKED Twitter client with a design that actually makes sense!
Created with Android 4.4 (KitKat) in mind. Includes full screen layouts, stunning animations and more! Of course that doesn't mean earlier versions of android get left out! The only thing that wasn't able to be recreated in Android 4.3 and below was the transparent navigation and status bars... Sorry! It just isn't possible
Beautiful, up-to-date layouts, designs, and neat animations isn't the only thing Talon has going for it though! The list of features is enormous as well, doing everything you could ever want from a Twitter app right off the bat. Even though it is new, I have added every single major and minor Twitter feature that I think is absolutely essential plus a ton that most people wouldn't even think of. Here is a pretty comprehensive list of its features:
Twitter features:
- Live streaming support
- Support for 2 accounts
- View your timelines (main, mentions, direct messages, links, and pictures)
- View retweets, favorites, Local and world trending, user profiles, Twitter lists, and more
- Favorite users
- Search Twitter
- Delete, favorite, retweet, quote, and reply to statuses
- view replies to statuses
- Update your profile picture, banner, location, and user description
- block, follow, and add users to lists
- search for your friends to tweet at
- Attach pictures to your tweets
- Attach locations to your tweets
- And the list goes on
Customization features:
- Extremely powerful developer theme engine (Read the second post )
- Choose between either "Talon" or "Hangouts" layouts
- Choose from 3 beautiful base themes (light, dark, and pitch black)
- Custom text sizes
- Night mode
- Auto-Refresh options
- Custom notification settings
- And many other goodies in there as well!
App Features:
- "Talon Pull" to be always listening for interactions (mentions, retweets, favorites, new followers, and direct messages)
- Expandable, actionable, and dynamic notification system
- Full app popup
- Full emoji support
- View in-line Twitter and Instagram pictures
- View in-line YouTube thumbnails
- Native YouTube player
- In-app browser
- Complete landscape and tablet modes
- Advance to new pages in a "windowed" viewing mode
- Never leave your timeline with in-line replies, favorites, and retweets
- Actionable toast bar so you always know where you are and can jump to the top
- Hiding action bar
- "Do not disturb" mode
- Widget for main timeline
- DashClock Extension
- Draft system for unsent/failed tweets
- Google style pull to refresh for quick refreshing
- Save tweet pictures
- Share content with other apps, to and from Talon
You will never go back to your old Twitter client again!
Enjoy Talon and don't hesitate to contact me with questions, requests, or bugs!
Thanks!
Contact me (Luke Klinker):
Email: [email protected]
My Twitter: @lukeklinker
Talon's Twitter: @TalonAndroid
Google+ Beta Page
Emojis
Here are two different emoji plugins for you to choose from, choose whichever suits you best, install it and never worry about it again!
Sliding Emoji Keyboard - Android
Sliding Emoji Keyboard - iOS
Permissions Explained:
- Write to Storage: Saves pictures to your SD card and writes them into the cache.
- Read from Storage: Used when backing up settings.
- Location: Used for trends and attaching locations to tweets.
- Network Communication: Obviously have to be able to interact with Twitter
- Network State: Used so the user can toggle background sync to only over WiFi.
- Run at Startup: Re-schedules the background refreshes.
- Keep Awake: Used for background refreshes and waking the screen.
- Vibrate: Used for the notifications.
Credits:
- Jacob Klinker: to many things to list! Tons of ideas, support, and inspiration
- Aaron Klinker: Icon Design
- Other open-source libraries and resources used can be found under the 'Get Help' section in settings.
-----------------------------------------------------
Screenshots:
-----------------------------------------------------
Closing Comments:
I have worked really hard to bring you guys a great experience right from the start this time and it really shows, from the login screen to the timelines, you will be fully satisfied with the design, execution and finesse that Talon brings to your phone. It isn't going to take months to get up to speed like Sliding Messaging did. I have designed this to be efficient, fast, and just work, right from the start. I learned a ton from that app and Talon goes to show just how much.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do, sound off in the comments with question, concerns, suggestion, or whatever else you feel like saying about the app!
One more thing to say before I leave you here, please remember that this is XDA, and you are all expected to be a little bit different Android users, if you are having a force close or something, I would like you to be able to post a logcat of it. If you are wondering about why I did something the way I did, then I will probably explain it to you in a programming sense instead of how I would to a normal user on the Google+ beta page or something, because that makes much more sense to me, is easier on me, and you should be able to understand it a little bit better... Just keep that in mind and stay on topic please
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
1.) Push Notifications
I am just going to say this now, before anyone asks: Push notifications will not be coming to Talon unless something changes with the Twitter APIs. I have created "Talon Pull" with is simply an always on, listening/streaming service that will receive new tweets from Twitter whenever your Twitter handle is included. To read more about this option, look at the "Talon Pull" section below the "Reasons" section.
Reasons
This will be the more technical part of this post, if you don't want to read and understand it, then you will have to just accept my answer from above. If you don't accept that I know what I am talking about... Then by all means, read on, I will try to keep it as simple as possible.
To access Twitter, they have provided us with the REST APIs (currently version 1.1). These APIs allow developers to communicate with Twitter in real time by just submitting requests to get data from the network. They make it relatively simple - if you know what your doing - to obtain the data that they allow you to get and store, but there are plenty of limitations to these APIs, which make sense: Twitter is a completely free service and make their money off of advertisements. They want people to use their official Twitter products (such as the web or their own Android app) to access their services because they are able to place advertisements in them and that is the only way they make money. So they just aren't going to make some things available for 3rd party developers.
One of those things is their push notification system. As I said before, they allow us to access their services with these REST APIs, but they also have a Streaming API available so that a 3rd party service, such as this one, could be "always connected". Sounds great right? Maybe, maybe not. More testing probably needs to go into it, because it is very new in Talon. For the past few weeks though, I can say that it doesn't seem to take up much more battery than sycning on an intervol does. So try it and let me know. I have done the best I can to optimize this service, but if you want to know more about it, read below in the "Talon Pull" section
What these streaming APIs should be used for is a server side interaction that would then connect to GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) and send push notifications from there. I would love to say I am working on something like this, but it isn't possible for a developer like me. I don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to set up a complex server like this. The knowledge I could get, but I am a 20 year old kid, working off of this 1 MB/sec internet connection while being a full time college student at the University of Iowa. I wouldn't be able to handle the upkeep of the system like this or the traffic. I just don't have the backend necessary for this type of thing, and there aren't many developers who do. So push notifications from the server side? Way out of the question.
That leaves only one thing to do: wait. Maybe Twitter will open up some kind of push notification service to it's developers, but I wouldn't count on that. The ideal thing for them to do would be to set up their own GCM server for us to communicate with, but I don't see that as being likely at all because of the advertising. That would take away one of the main draws for their app, leaving it with almost nothing that 3rd party developers can't do. For now though, "Talon Pull" seems to be working well and I would encourage you all to try it out. Battery seems to be fine, the one drawback is that you must be connected to a datasource right when the interaction happens or it won't be saved or shown.
Talon Pull - My solution/workaround
As I said before, this is NOT push notifications. Push notifications are sent to your device to notify you from some kind of server. They aren't always on, and only turn on when your device receives the info from the web service.
Talon Pull on the other hand, uses Twitter's Streaming API to just create an "always on" service to be constantly listening for and streaming tweets that contain your Twitter Handle. The way this works is that you are signed in with your API keys after you turn on the option to enable Talon Pull. I then just create this "listener" that Twitter's servers will send new tweets to. Luckily, they will take care of most of the filtering of those tweets on their end, to reduce the load as much as possible on your device (because before the filtering, it literally will receive every single public tweet that is happening. It was amazing when I first flipped and saw the tweets flowing over my log haha). So we filter it down to as few of tweets actually reaching your device as possible, then I start broadcasting the notifications when you receive the new ones.
Overall, it is a relatively simple process, the problem with it though, you have probably already realized, you have to be constantly connected with a data service or the app won't know when to receive the new tweets. Obviously that is the part that is going to end up taking the battery (if it does), not "bloated" or "un-optimized" code as some of you I sure believed. So far though, through my testing, it doesn't seem to have a very big impact on battery overall, but I suppose that it potentially could if you are using Twitter that much more than I do.
If there was a better way, I wish I could find it. I think that this is the method that most 3rd party services use to send you those fake "push notifications". So there ya have it, hope you learned something. It works well and it is the only way to get a lot of information like who favorited or retweeted your statuses
Conclusion
Thanks for the read, if you made it all the way, hope that gives you an idea as to why push notifications just aren't even an option at this point and what my solution to that problem has been, even if it is not ideal. It works, and it seems to be working quite well for me.
So just know: "Talon Pull" isn't quite the same as push notifications, but it is as close as you are going to get and is working better for me than I would have ever imagined. Enjoy!
2.) Translucency
Why aren’t my status bar and navigation bar translucent like in all of the screenshots?!?
This is an Android 4.4 KitKat feature only. Get a new phone/ROM if you want it.
3.) Theming Support and Limitations
We have created a pretty powerful theme engine for Talon and EvolveSMS this time around, but it isn't without its limitations.
The main app color will always be orange. Don't ask to change it. That isn't something I can theme dynamically or read from an add on package, themers can change the orange glow on the in-line buttons (favorite, retweet, and send), but that is as much as your are going to get with that one.
4.) Viewing users who "retweet" and "favorite" your statuses
This is another thing that isn't going to happen at this point. It isn't possible to get the user ID's or their names with the current version of the API's.
Maybe Twitter will open this up in the future, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.For now, the best you will get is the numbers on them
The only way to get this information is through the use of "Talon Pull" and the Streaming API's. When you get a retweet or favorite, it will be put in the interactions drawer on the right side of any activities with drawers.The only way to get this information is through the use of "Talon Pull" and the Streaming API's. When you get a retweet or favorite, it will be put in the interactions drawer on the right side of any activities with drawers.
5.) Clearing the Cache
If you know much about caching in Android, then you may wonder why in the world I would want to clear it every time you switch themes.
The answer is pretty simple: to vastly improve the performance and the smooth scrolling in the app, I save the profile pictures according to the current theme's style, whether that is circle (like the "Talon" layout) or square (like the "Hangouts" layout). This preference is also available to themers in the add-on themes.
By caching them directly as circles, it alleviates the need to do it on the fly which could consume quite a bit of processing power on older phones and would just be a complete waste to render them like that every time.
You may think it is a hassle, but you would be thanking me if you knew the difference it makes.
You can also view the current cache size and clear it manually from "Advanced Settings".
6.) Battery Consumption
If you use Talon a lot throughout the day, it is going to take up battery, simple as that. I find that on a 30 min refresh intervol for the different timelines and manually going in and browsing/updating throughout the day, it takes about 4-5% of my battery. I would say this is pretty normal because there are days that Google+ takes up to 10% with just casual browsing.
If that isn't acceptable for you though, then there are a few things you can do to reduce battery consumption:
1.) Turn down the refresh interval on the timelines. This is the big one. It is those background services that are going to drain your battery.
2.) Turn off "Refresh on Startup".
3.) Turn off "Talon Pull" and "Live Streaming"
4.) Don't have it sync the second account's mentions
And if all else fails... Get off Twitter and do something productive for awhile =D haha any app that accesses the internet and refreshes as much as a Twitter client is inherently going to use more battery in the background. There are ways to reduce it, but not always ways around it!
7.) Custom ROMs Immersive Mode
My custom ROM has "Immersive Mode" and Talon doesn't seem to play nice with it! What's up with that?!
The way that immersive mode works in your ROMs currently isn't so hot unfortunately. There is a reason Google didn't put it into the whole system because app developers would have problems implementing the "translucency" with conflicting system stuff.
Not to fret to much though, I was able to get things working smoothly with it in Talon. The problem was that my ListView's are expanded through the different system bars. This can be a big problem if you try to switch to "Immersive" in the middle of doing something in the app. You will notice the margins get all wanky on the top and the bottom of your lists.
It can be easily solve though by just restarting the app by swiping it out of your recent apps screen. Sorry, but that is the best I am going to be able to do here, Translucent bars an "Immersive Mode" just weren't meant to work together.
Theming in Talon
Theming in Talon for Twitter
Real quick, before you get to far into the content, I want to let all you developers know about one of, if not the standout feature of Talon and EvolveSMS: one incredibly powerful theme engine.
Along with these apps, me and Jacob have completely redesigned and rethought our old "Theme Engine" from Sliding Messaging! Although the Sliding Messaging one was cool and great for the average user to customize, it was slow, cluttered, limited, and just bad design from a developer perspective. This won't be an issue with these apps though. We remade everything about it to bring you the ultimate themeing and customization experience, without the bloat and slowdowns. You won't be disappointed when you see what it can do!
All this theme engine takes is a little bit of knowledge about layouts and resources in Android, along with the Android SDK to compile and distribute your package as an APK, then you can make both of these apps into literally ANYTHING you want. We are able to read the layouts, drawables, and some of the colors directly from your compiled package and place them in our apps! Sweet huh, you thought this kind of design your own thing was only for homescreens
And the best part: it is completely free and you can easily share these themes with anyone when you are done by just sending the APK or putting it on the Google Play Store!
For more info on these and to start making Talon really your own, check out these links:
1.) Talon Theming Example/Walkthrough on GitHub
2.) Google+ Community Theming Section - A great place to share so anyone can see and use your themes, not just XDA users
3.) Google+ Theming Post
gonna try it out soon
Amazing Twitter app, absolutely loving it so far. It is just stunning, and kudos to going with transparent navbar instead of immersive, it looks fantastic and doesn't require a gesutre to get to.
Yeah, I completely agree that transparent is the way to go over immersive on something like this, it takes more work, but definitely with it!
Why do you only support for 2 accounts? It's just a question!
Pac-Man said:
Why do you only support for 2 accounts? It's just a question!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, a little embarrassing, but because the logic behind coding more than that gets way complex... haha
klinkdawg24 said:
Well, a little embarrassing, but because the logic behind coding more than that gets way complex... haha
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't worry! But I hope you'll add multiaccount. There're a lot of people that love it
Anyway it's a good app with a perfect design. My sincerelly congratulations!
Enviado desde mi Nexus 4 mediante Tapatalk
Will love to try it, I paid for falcon and then it got free
Hoping for xda version
Maybe I'm just stupid.. How do you pull up replies to others tweets? Beautiful app btw... Love it...
wow this app looks beautiful, would love to try it, unfortunately, i dont have a credit card and can't purchase from google play. Will there be a free or xda version coming soon? if not is there any way for me to try this out? signed up for the beta as well
I got the app a couple of hours ago and it's amazing.
Just a few things..
Where did the Talon Pull notifications go when they are received? I have to manually to update the timeline anyway.
You have to pull down for too long in order to update. You should adjust it
You should definitely implement threaded DMs, that would be pretty cool
Great app btw,
donwhall70 said:
Maybe I'm just stupid.. How do you pull up replies to others tweets? Beautiful app btw... Love it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
right now, you can only look backwards at tweets, looking forward will come when i figure it out haha
alkspo said:
wow this app looks beautiful, would love to try it, unfortunately, i dont have a credit card and can't purchase from google play. Will there be a free or xda version coming soon? if not is there any way for me to try this out? signed up for the beta as well
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, because of the token limit, this app is going to be paid, I thought about an XDA version with different tokens, but that would just go against Twitters rules still
Kage0x said:
I got the app a couple of hours ago and it's amazing.
Just a few things..
Where did the Talon Pull notifications go when they are received? I have to manually to update the timeline anyway.
You have to pull down for too long in order to update. You should adjust it
You should definitely implement threaded DMs, that would be pretty cool
Great app btw,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1.) They go to the interactions drawer on the right, make sure you are on the newest version and it will work better (1.01)
2.) i changed it for the version im releasing now
3.) yeah the dm's have a lot of work i know!
Version 1.05
(up in ~2 hours)
Well, day one is coming to a close and i have added some nice stuff for all of you
There was an update earlier that solved some issues with the Talon Pull service not working and tweets being saved twice in some places. That was version 1.01.
Changelog for 1.05:
Correctly mute retweets
- Higher quality images on timeline
- Dismiss all on interactions drawer
- In-app browser is now optional
- Lowered swipe length for Pull to Refresh
- Option to display both screenname and name on timeline tweets
- Open app from clicking icon on widget
- Finished German translation
- Fixed contact images on layout change
- Attempted fixes for Play Store crash reports
I hopefully got the force closes that were reported today taken care of. Although there weren't many, which makes me happy
Let me know how this version works for all of you!
hi mate
the last update is wonderful
it fix almost every complain ppl have.... BUT.....
PLEASE and i repeat PLEASE don't use the same way of plume to manage DM
the DM must be in threaded conversations, with the ability to delete entire threads, just like a normal "sms" application does, and just like tweetbot does.
please fix the dm section and this could be the real deal for android users.
faremoney said:
hi mate
the last update is wonderful
it fix almost every complain ppl have.... BUT.....
PLEASE and i repeat PLEASE don't use the same way of plume to manage DM
the DM must be in threaded conversations, with the ability to delete entire threads, just like a normal "sms" application does, and just like tweetbot does.
please fix the dm section and this could be the real deal for android users.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DMs will get a big rewrite, but I have a few other things I need to do first
klinkdawg24 said:
DMs will get a big rewrite, but I have a few other things I need to do first
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very nice app. I only have two "issues" Local Trends is displaying trendings from another country. The same happened to me with Falcon Pro so, I guess you both use same location service. It would be nice to have an option to select trends manually for people who is living in another country and wanna know what is happenning in their "home"
The other issue I found is that I think data loading is faster in other Twitter clients especially with timeline refresh
OK, this gets better and better.
The pull to refresh is better than before, but it still needs some improvement. Take a look at how the one from the gmail app behaves. That one is perfect. But this is just a minor issue, so it's not a big deal
Regarding the DM issue, could you at least change the order in which they are displayed, or at least give us the opportunity to do so? It's kinda weird to have the old ones first. But it really depends on long will it take to rewrite the whole thing, if you're going to do it
Also, I really think mentions notifications from the Talon Pull should go directly into the mentions tab instead of the additional drawer, but maybe that's just me
awesome. perhaps the only competitor falсon. you can do that display images if given a direct link to it? (everywhere)
view who retweet/favorite. display real-time, I mean like 20:14, but not 14 minutes ago. thx, man.
So the finial version has come out. Im sure a lot of you guys have updated to it. Plus a lot of you have been using the Dev version along the way.
What are your guys thoughts?
I like the the new version but also there are still tons of things are are bugging the *poop* out of me.
I thought this was going to be "THE" version that appeased almost all android fans. Fixed a lot the issues since 2.3 while bringing a lot of new features.
1st the things i dont like.
1. Battery % WHY THE *heck* do we still not have an option to turn on a battery % next to the battery icon?????!!!!!!!
2. Hangouts picture (when syncing with FB) not always showing up bug is still present.
3. I like the new light colors with white and grey but why did they choose that color of teal. Im not super excited about that but i do like the white backgrounds.
4. Multitask menu. I dont like how EVERYTHING is in there. And why do we STILL NOT HAVE A CLEAR ALL
5. Google Now launcher. I like it and dont like it. Dont like how everything is so big and dont like how i cant have the middle space be my default. But Nova fixed that. Plus im rooted so i changed my DPI
6. Battery life. Ive only used it for 1 day (going on 1 day) but it seems my battery life is worse then on 4.4.4
7. Battery menu. Dont like anything about it.
Things i do like.
1. Material design (in most places) animations and universal layout for apps is nice.
2. Lockscreen notifications although i dont like how EVERYTHING is on there but im still messing with the menu for this feature.
Im still playing with it and im sure it will get better as apps update (what took them so long) but over all im kinda disappointed with the amount of hype 5.0 got.
Same here, like it but meh it's not there yet, hoping for apps updates etc. And my battery life is slightly worse too
I like it so far, but smart lock seems buggy as hell. I've got my Moto 360 set up as a trusted device, and even went so far as to set up face unlock, and still, I'm prompted for a passcode more often than not. There really needs to be a rescan option -- or, better yet, just make it work like it's supposed to.
Battery life seems worse for me too but I will give it another few days before really making that decision
Make sure you turn WiFi always scanning off. I am getting better than the Dev preview because of the fixed WiFi drain bug. I like it though.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app
You cant know anything about battery one day after update, after update system still need some time to "sit on place" and its drains battery.
Where is material design music. Sadly it doesn't animate when I press the play button. I really like what was was shown in the demo .
jt3 said:
I like it so far, but smart lock seems buggy as hell. I've got my Moto 360 set up as a trusted device, and even went so far as to set up face unlock, and still, I'm prompted for a passcode more often than not. There really needs to be a rescan option -- or, better yet, just make it work like it's supposed to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have my moto 360 set up as a trusted device and I never need to unlock my phone. Only on reboot. rest of the time works perfectly.
Im not using face unlock though.
hmmm...
i don't like how you'not able to delete multiple contacts + separation of the phone numbers from the emails.
photos app gather all the jpg files that are in the sdcard which kinda sucks (dude, i don't need my album art in my photo gallery.) + you need Google+ enabled to be able to just look at the photos.
multitask is OMG.... really really nice effect but damn, is there any real need to "mark" every menu page i open? (oh, where's the "clear all" button?)
camera is ok but there is no 0.03 seconds of the new API. pictures are taken as slow as before.
material design is not bad but it shines on multiple layers only.
keyboard is really cool looking and although it'll take some time to get used to "button-less buttons" i do like it.
and battery, well, i can't say since it's only 1 day of use.
still, i think it's going to be ok (i still hate those wakelocks though... ) and last but not least, Chrome... i still miss "text wrapping" that's why i use Opera
all in all, i don't hate it, i'm not thrilled about it but i'm sure it'll "grow on me".
UI looks definitely great,performance and battery haven't improved, nor got worse. But it's too early to comment on that.
No toggle in quick settings to cycle through sound modes(sound/silent,vibrate), dafuq Google? I'm certainly missing Xposed.
very annoyed about the removal of the stock email app, i dont want to comingle gmail and my work stuff.
gjw00 said:
very annoyed about the removal of the stock email app, i dont want to comingle gmail and my work stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can DL the stock email app from the play store now
Really? I cant find it. Ended buying 'nine'
I really like having all my emails in gmail app. First day of use, I'm going to get 4hrs sot without messing with settings. It runs really smooth with hells kernel. I would like the pull downs yo have more options, but all in all, I'm happy.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app
#sharath said:
UI looks definitely great,performance and battery haven't improved, nor got worse. But it's too early to comment on that.
No toggle in quick settings to cycle through sound modes(sound/silent,vibrate), dafuq Google? I'm certainly missing Xposed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's one of my main nits as well.
I've used Power Toggles for quite a while now. Short simple and to the point and it lets me toggle between sound vibrate or silent settings easily.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.painless.pc
Not my app but one I swear by.
not available in australia. jesus christ
jt3 said:
I like it so far, but smart lock seems buggy as hell. I've got my Moto 360 set up as a trusted device, and even went so far as to set up face unlock, and still, I'm prompted for a passcode more often than not. There really needs to be a rescan option -- or, better yet, just make it work like it's supposed to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't had to enter my PIN once since I set up smart lock with my 360 and face yesterday. Works great!
You can't use the Photos app if you disable the Google+ app. So.... now I have to open the camera app and scroll through my pictures one by one to view them. Super!
I kinda don't like it.
1: The color scheme is not consistent throughout, which really irritates me. While you spend most of your time in a launcher (I use Nova pesonally) or in apps, some of those apps are system apps, and it seems like almost all of them have had color changes, they don't look good and don't even make sense.
2: Some of the features are cool, and even sound great...but they are commonly riddled with "omg, no way!" points of frustration. Smart-lock...would be AWESOME if it would just freaking work when connected to a specific wifi network! For example...in prior versions I had used tasker and secure settings to disable the lock screen and have a significantly longer screen timeout whenever I was connected to my home wifi. Tasker works just fine for the other things I use it for, such as reading my text messages outloud...but only when I'm connected to my home wifi or headphones. But the pin lock errors out, every single time. Root works, tasker and secure settings are configured exactly as they were before, and they both even have administrative rights. It still fails every time, and I get the toast message pop up. I wonder if it is because Google is worried that your neighbor might name their wifi network to the same as yours is, and have it be an open network so when they steal your phone they would automatically be able to get into it. If that is the case...well, that should be easy to fix, one make the service only work with password protected networks, and I'm also sure they could just only have it work when the network name is also reporting the same mac address. But I digress.
3: Lightflow. Ugh, enough said. You might say this is not a lollipop specific thing, but the guy posted an inquiry on this on the support thread since it was an complication with the new notification system, and they responded back saying they fixed it, and it has still not been pushed out by Google yet!
4: I find myself unable to quickly remove notifications from the lock screen and even when the phone is unlocked in some instances. For example, if I am copying lots of individual files over wifi from my computer, and there are multiple "copied" notifications as a result, the first few can be swiped away, but the rest can't! I have to click on them, and then close it. Kinda annoying.
5: One of the only reasons why I really wanted Lollipop were for the improvements to the lockscreen notifications. I envisioned being able to stop using dashclock entirely, and also having an all around easier time with notifications while the phone was locked. Nope! Sure, the basic functionality is good, I can read text messages without an app for it, and that's great...but I have to say I really miss having the unlock ability from just turning the phone on and swiping. Now I have to turn the phone on, press the padlock to get the phone to switch to the pattern lock, then do the pattern lock. That extra step is really quite annoying for me. I'd prefer to have the "extra step" be to SEE THE NOTIFICATIONS. You know, just like how it used to be with dashclock. (You would know you had a notification by the little icon right next to the time and you would swipe down from there to read them) Maybe I'm crazy, but I unlock my phone a lot more often than I have notifications to read. Especially since I can't get the pinlock automatic toggle to work when I am connected to my home wifi!
6: Most lock screen icons are blocked...and for good reason. But some of them are not. For example, in power toggles I have always used an icon that automatically makes a 14 minute timer, and another one for 29 minutes. I use this for my breaks at work of course. (The icon triggers a task in the "Trigger" app that does this) This works from the lockscreen...which sounds great because I can set that timer without having to unlock my phone...but it has also been deactivated by mistake when the phone was in my pocket. Ugh!
7: I don't like the "swipe down" from either the lock screen or from notifications bar option. A lot of this is because I am really used to using powertoggles for this, and this duplicates a lot of that functionality, but
I knew this was going to happen, I have been complaining about software "improvements" at work for the last year and a half. If something is working, don't break it!
---------- Post added at 09:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 PM ----------
svanheulen said:
You can't use the Photos app if you disable the Google+ app. So.... now I have to open the camera app and scroll through my pictures one by one to view them. Super!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out Quickpic. I've been using it for ages, and it has always been amazing. It's super fast, very customizable...and just plain works!
gtg465x said:
I haven't had to enter my PIN once since I set up smart lock with my 360 and face yesterday. Works great!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I've figured out the issue. I use "Gravity Screen" to shut my device down when I put it in my pocket. It seems that if Gravity Screen puts the device into standby, it also locks the screen in such a way that Smart Lock is disabled. Since that's normally how I shut off my device, I was seeing this almost every time. I'm hoping that the dev can fix this, because I'm really not used to touching my power button.
On another note. I wouldn't mind the email integration with Gmail, except that there's no way to label my various Exchange accounts. I have two separate Exchange accounts that I must monitor, and both simply show as a random-colored circle with a letter "J" (which is the first letter of each email address). I can't even change the color to something that would help distinguish the accounts. I just have to remember that random-color-J #1 equals one account, and random-color-J #2 equals another. It's very annoying. A combined inbox certainly wouldn't hurt, either.
I'm interested in your opinions on the Microsoft Launcher, especially if you are on it or were. This looks pretty good to me: Microsoft Launcher Review
In the past, I tended to return to the phone's native launcher because:
1. It ended up being actually better all around for what I wanted to get done.
2. It's easier to leverage other people's experience.
My reasons for going with 3rd Party launchers have been:
1. OEM was not as flexible. I can't seem to get the dark theme even with LWP+. All of my Setup screens are still black on white. It's a checkbox on the Microsoft Launcher. I can lay things out with as many icons on a row as I want and can even get my own icons for the things that have icons that make no logical sense.
2. After a factory reset you can restore your setup. With OEM you cannot unless you have root and restore from TWRP. I don't have root for the first time with my Note 9.
3. You can bring the same interface it to any Android phone such as from a Samsung to a Pixel 2 (LG) with no costly layout time and learning curve.
I don't know if it affects battery life or not. I'm used to having root so I don't know if there are apps that let me see what sucks on the battery and what doesn't.
I'm also interested in the best way to put to sleep battery suckers for processes I don't use.
Thanks!
Been on it for a while now.... And honestly I love it. It really is so useful. It has time-line built in. It has loads of customization like for example probably the best implementation of adaptive icons I've ever seen. Every last one of my icons are the shape I choose without that stupid white background. It actually convinced me to switch back to using outlook as my main client and it's been so long since I had some of the most basic email features on mobile I forgot how nice it is. I hope they continue this project. I also started testing using edge as my browser by forcing it as default and my battery usage while online seems to be better... Could be placebo. Gotta say aside from some optimization issues/ redraws here and there I've been super happy with my decision to try it out. I have religiously used pixel Launcher or the open source version here on xda called rootless launcher for years. It's been eye opening for sure... I previously used Nova and a few others but so far I'm sticking with this new Microsoft project to try and diversify my digital footprint considering I've spent the better part of my adult life freely giving away my personal info to Google without a single thought.
bobby_digital234 said:
Been on it for a while now.... And honestly I love it. It really is so useful. It has time-line built in. It has loads of customization like for example probably the best implementation of adaptive icons I've ever seen. Every last one of my icons are the shape I choose without that stupid white background. It actually convinced me to switch back to using outlook as my main client and it's been so long since I had some of the most basic email features on mobile I forgot how nice it is. I hope they continue this project. I also started testing using edge as my browser...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just figured out I forgot to subscribe to my own thread.
That thing is a lot more than a launcher. It's an environment administrator that seems to have forgotten what Android and Samsung say are impossible.
Question: I have all of my apps organized into folders. If I try it out, will it blow those up?
Thanks!
I have all mine in folders but I don't know for sure if it will allow them to import. It did import all my widgets and settings though so I'd assume the same for the folders.
bobby_digital234 said:
I have all mine in folders but I don't know for sure if it will allow them to import. It did import all my widgets and settings though so I'd assume the same for the folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Got it! I'm not sure if I'll do Microsoft, Nova or stock.
The more I work with the new TouchWiz, the more I think when they say TouchWiz is getting pretty close, my response is close to what, infuriating people? Just trying to get a black theme with the TouchWiz is a challenge while with Microsoft and most apps it's a checkbox. TouchWiz has zero control over icon size, spacing, shortcut text, behavior, gestures, or anything else. I have multiple file managers that all are labeled File Manager and I can't even rename one of the to Asus File Manager. TouchWiz on KitKat even works better. I can get black anytime I want to and with folders, I can see enough of the cascaded icons to know what is in it, and I can arrange them so the most important one is in the forefront. With Oreo, I can download a black theme if I set up a Samsung account and give them rights to everything but the 3 digit codes on credit cards, and allow them to use the information for any purpose and give it to anyone. Their privacy policy makes Google look like a saint.
Thanks for your feedback!