Database Develop

[Q] Distortion of words / writing while scrolling???

Hi,
I have just purchased an HD7 and I really like it so far but I have a question regarding some screen distortion I am seeing when I scroll through menu's, apps, etc...
For example (and where it is most noticable although it does happen in other areas as well) when I go to the applications menu (where all apps are located to the right of the Windows screen) and I scroll through the apps from top to bottom, all the writing beside each app icon becomes so distorted while scrolling (almost static like) that you cannot even make out what the words are saying until the scrolling stops and then everything is ledgable again. Is this normal?
On my Galaxy S the scrolling does not affect the font / writing this way at all and even on my old Omnia i910 I dont remember seeing this type of distortion when scrolling.
If someone can please advise me on this I would really appreciate it. Is this normal for this device? Does yours do it? Anyway to fix it?
Thanks
yiannisthegreek

It's normal behaviour but I'm not sure of the cause. From what I've seen, this only happens when using the black theme. If you use the white theme it doesn't happen.

Shadowise said:
It's normal behaviour but I'm not sure of the cause. From what I've seen, this only happens when using the black theme. If you use the white theme it doesn't happen.
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Click to collapse
Thank You for the reply. Really? Hmmm... That is odd. I wonder if this will be something that will be fixed in updates perhaps?

I use a black theme and this doesn't happen to me at all. Certainly not to the point it's unreadable.

jimbonics said:
I use a black theme and this doesn't happen to me at all. Certainly not to the point it's unreadable.
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Click to collapse
Hmmm... Now Im confused... One person says it happens to him and one says it does not.
Do you experience any distortion of the writing in apps, etc while scrolling? It is minimal when I scroll slowly but when I scroll fast it is quite noticable.
PS... I did also try the white theme and it does not do it in the white theme as was mentioned by the other poster... Only in the Black theme.

I guess I'm not sure what the deal is. When I'm scrolling fast, it could be a million dollar screen with perfect clarity and I STILL wouldn't be able to "read" what was there. I mean, I have 20-20 vision and am a pretty quick reader and I can barely read my chat log scrolling slowly. When scrolling fast enough to "distort" you would have to be able to read about 120 words per second (I scroll through three screens worth of text in less than a second, about 40 words per screen). That's 7200 words per minute which is darn near World Record Speed Reading (not counting those who skim most of it and lose a great deal of comprehension).

I'd just like to say that it's not a major issue for me, but it does happen. When scrolling the app list, the text does fade out, but I don't really see it as much of an issue as the items are moving so fast that you wouldn't be able to read the text at any rate. As the list is alphabetical, I know where I need to stop, I'm not reading the apps one by one as I go along.
I'm not sure now if the OP is experiencing a different issue but he did confirm, as I have, that it doesn't happen in the white theme.

Shadowise said:
I'd just like to say that it's not a major issue for me, but it does happen. When scrolling the app list, the text does fade out, but I don't really see it as much of an issue as the items are moving so fast that you wouldn't be able to read the text at any rate. As the list is alphabetical, I know where I need to stop, I'm not reading the apps one by one as I go along.
I'm not sure now if the OP is experiencing a different issue but he did confirm, as I have, that it doesn't happen in the white theme.
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Click to collapse
@Shadowise,
Yes... This is what I am talking about and again Thank You for your answers. I also really notice this when using the People Live Tile and especially in the synced Facebook listing. The text DOES fade out and the smaller the text the more faded it seems to become. Again... This is in the Black theme.
Also, I have noticed while in the People "hub" when scrolling from side to side that the screen itself darkens / dims out while scrolling and it also DOES this in the White theme as well. Is this also normal behavior?
If your not sure what I am talking about then please go into the People tile and just hold your finger on the top of the screen (where it says people in big letters) and slowly slide your finger and you will see the screen darken / dim out as it scrolls - unless there is something wrong with MY device in which case you may not notice what I am talking about.
Please let me know if this happens to you and if this is normal as well. Again... my Android does NOT do these things and so I am not sure if this is normal behavior.
Thanks in advance...
yiannisthegreek

My screen absolutely does not do this. The people tile actualy looks sharper than the apps screen, regardless of how fast I scroll. The screen does not dim out _at all_.
Black background.

It happens over here as well this is due to Motion Blur, the quality of screen used by HTC is poor and this is a known issue with the HTC HD7 and HTC Surround. HTC should have used a better screen specially for its flagship device on the Windows phone 7 platform. But i guess thats the main reason they didn't; the platform is new theres no need to increase costs for a niche emerging market.

Ok... I am confused again... One answer says that this absolutely DOES NOT happen to him and another answer says that it DOES... LOL!!!

This happens because of the 4.3" screen. It's not the best screen in the world. The 4.1" dell venue pro screen never exhibited this behavior and when I switched to the hd7 I noticed it immediately.

It's called response time, it's not fast enough as some other screen, basically it's more prominent while using black theme because it takes full response time (i.e. 8ms) for a pixel to change it colour from black to white and then to black again while you scrolling.

microhaxo said:
This happens because of the 4.3" screen. It's not the best screen in the world. The 4.1" dell venue pro screen never exhibited this behavior and when I switched to the hd7 I noticed it immediately.
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The funny thing is that the more I play with it the more I notice that this only really happens within the stock Microsoft OS apps like People, Zune, etc. When I scroll through other 3rd party apps such as Facebook (actual app and not the synced version in the People tab), FIM (Facebook Instant Messenger), among other 3rd party apps that this fade out / distortion does not take place.
Anyone else find the same?
EDIT... I have confirmed the fade out / screen distortion to again seemingly only to be affecting the Microsoft stock OS apps again after going into Marketplace, Office, (along with the others mentioned above). It does not seem to affect 3rd party apps... Facebook, FIM, Yellowpages, YouTube, etc.
Again... Anyone else find the same or can check?

jimbonics said:
My screen absolutely does not do this. The people tile actualy looks sharper than the apps screen, regardless of how fast I scroll. The screen does not dim out _at all_.
Black background.
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Click to collapse
We're not talking about the whole screen, just the text.

Shadowise said:
We're not talking about the whole screen, just the text.
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Click to collapse
Actually... I am talking about like 3/4 of the entire screen when scrolling from side to side in any Microsoft stock OS App.
Like I said in my previous post... if you go into say the People live tile and place your finger on the top portion of the screen where in big writing it says "people" and just slowly start to move your finger to scroll you will see the bottom half of the entire page / app dim out until you remove your finger or it completes its scroll.
As I said... it does this on my device in EVERY Microsoft STOCK OS app like People, Zune, Marketplace, XBOX Live, etc but in 3rd party apps it does NOT do this. This happens in WHITE theme as well.
To try and reproduce this please go to any Microsoft OS App like "people", press your finger at the top of the page and move your finger side to side in short movements and watch your screen. You should see the dimming effect unless my phone is defective or something.
Please tell me what you find.

i'm pretty sure this is not a bug or an issue, it's just intentional, and it's 100% a software thing, you can see that in many wp7 reviews...
but a different thing is the effect you see scrolling the applist, that one is related to the hd7 screen and you won't see it using, for example, an omnia7

elmerendeiro said:
i'm pretty sure this is not a bug or an issue, it's just intentional, and it's 100% a software thing, you can see that in many wp7 reviews...
but a different thing is the effect you see scrolling the applist, that one is related to the hd7 screen and you won't see it using, for example, an omnia7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have an HD7? Can you confirm if your screen does the same "dim / fade out" thing in the Microsoft apps as I have described? Also... Why does it not do this in 3rd party apps then like youtube for example? I have even checked the HTC Hub app and in the HTC app store it does not fade / dim out but it sure does in the Microsoft Marketplace app. Weird.
As for the thing you mention about the app list and the screen - well that is my first big dissapointment with this phone. I have a Samsung Galaxy S and of course the SAMOLED is AWESOME but this phone is said to have the S-LCD (Super LCD) display which is supposed to be a pretty good screen too.

Well... I found a youtube link regarding the BLACK theme scrolling words distortion. Here it is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RperdOR8y5g
But I have not found anything about the screen fade/dimming in Microsoft apps so I hope one of you out here can reproduce it and tell me my phone is ok (even though it will still kinda suck)... LOL!!!

djpianz said:
It's called response time, it's not fast enough as some other screen, basically it's more prominent while using black theme because it takes full response time (i.e. 8ms) for a pixel to change it colour from black to white and then to black again while you scrolling.
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Click to collapse
this is the full reason why ^

[SOLVED] Pic quality degrades on Live tile...

I assign pics to my most frequent contacts and pin their tiles to the home screen. When I first get the new pic saved for them and showing on the tile it looks great...nice and clear. After time passes (not sure how long) the pic quality starts degrading. I found a thread here about someone's wallpaper doing that. Is my problem related? If so will that HD Wall app fix it? I'm just OCD about how stuff looks on my screen and if it looks like crap when I know it didn't before I gotta fix it
*EDIT* Just noticed that thread with I linked was for Android =/ gah nm

I was googling and ended up finding an article that mentioned Live tiles are 173px by 173px so I re-sized an image (ended up being 173x174 to preserve its aspect ratio) and assigned it to one of my contacts that has a tile on the home screen...guess we'll see if that keeps the image quality from degrading. Unless someone else knows for sure why this happens it'll be trial and error for now. So far the image is fine after an hour...only time will tell

Momomuffins said:
I was googling and ended up finding an article that mentioned Live tiles are 173px by 173px so I re-sized an image (ended up being 173x174 to preserve its aspect ratio) and assigned it to one of my contacts that has a tile on the home screen...guess we'll see if that keeps the image quality from degrading. Unless someone else knows for sure why this happens it'll be trial and error for now. So far the image is fine after an hour...only time will tell
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So far the re-sized (smaller) Live tile images have remained in good shape many many hours after the quality of the bigger images would start degrading. For all who care, I consider this work-around good enough for me

[APP] JotPad -[U]- 7/Dec/2011

JotPad v1.1
Hi guys, I'm posting my app here, and I'd like you guys to let me know what you think about it, and what should be improved. Just post in this thread and I'll be notified and get back to you.
Here's a short description (so you don't get bored), for the full description just visit the app page.
Have you ever need a pen and paper to help illustrate your ideas during a conversation but couldn't find any? Someone is asking you for directions and you really want to do a sketch to help the explanation? Look no further, the JotPad app is what you need, use it to jot down anything you need!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some of the features are Live Tile and multitouch support, as well as various colors and image backgrounds and shake to clear.
Download Link: http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=dd496842-8119-4420-9bc6-1d39a58a6b87

I like it
How about allowing multiple drawings and saving items: inside the app, or as a JPEG, or share by e-mail.
Rated 5 stars

Oh thank god! I have been searching for a draw/note app that support zoom, and here we have it; have a thanks mate!

z_rudy said:
I like it
How about allowing multiple drawings and saving items: inside the app, or as a JPEG, or share by e-mail.
Rated 5 stars
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks mate! Yeah, I have the same ideas as well, but hadn't considered the share by e-mail option before, thanks for the suggestion!
fiinix said:
Oh thank god! I have been searching for a draw/note app that support zoom, and here we have it; have a thanks mate!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your support, I'll have more stuff added when I have the time (doing this on my free time). If you feel like the app is missing something just let me know and I'll try to implement it.

I love it too! so cool, clever and clear= best handwriting app by faaaaaaaaar!
shake to clear screen I rate your thread and your app on market place with
ps. can you set the pen active as default by start?

mirolg said:
I love it too! so cool, clever and clear= best handwriting app by faaaaaaaaar!
shake to clear screen I rate your thread and your app on market place with
ps. can you set the pen active as default by start?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks!!
About setting the pen active as default on start, I will look into that. But I'll explain my rationale of why I did it that way. When you swap between apps the guidelines for app developers say that the app should preserve all of it's environment, so if you were erasing lines on my app, and then you went for some facebook browsing and then came back to my app you should still be in erasing mode since that is what you were doing when you left.
I suppose I could set the pen as active when you start the app and retain the drawing/erasing mode when just multi tasking?
EDIT: I just noticed you have a tablet with Windows 8. :-O Cool stuff, how does Windows 8 work on that? I've only used it on a regular laptop. What about the battery life, does it last long?

Good. I will have a try. It sounds nice.

glowwormccc said:
Good. I will have a try. It sounds nice.
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Thanks, let me know what you think after you gave it a good try.

A simple but useful app~
very gd!

Hi works great in app, the live tile is a little wonky though, text gets cut off and moved up a lot of the time, ie if you write one word on a angle it puts it top left and cut off, or if you write 4 words underneath each other, can only see the bottom 2 the others have moved up (there is space below so room on the tile to display) other than that love it.

frakius said:
Hi works great in app, the live tile is a little wonky though, text gets cut off and moved up a lot of the time, ie if you write one word on a angle it puts it top left and cut off, or if you write 4 words underneath each other, can only see the bottom 2 the others have moved up (there is space below so room on the tile to display) other than that love it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know what you mean, I've made it like that because of the following problem. The drawing page is rectangular but the live tile is perfectly square. How do you fit something that's rectangular (to fit the 15:9 screen of the phone) into something that's square (the live tile is obviously 1:1)? I had 2 options, either distort the rectangular drawing to fit, or to crop a square from the centre of the drawing. I used the latter, I cropped a square from the centre. That's why the live tile is missing the top and bottom of the drawing.
One last option would be making the pages square so all of the drawing can fit on the tile, but I thought it would look weird and wouldn't fit the phone's screen. But if you do have an idea on how this should work by all means let me know ok? Thank you very much for your comment!

[App] Tile World Clock, Now Supports Wide Tile, more customizations available

Since the keyboard disappearing issue has been resolved with the new ROM, it may be a good time to share the Tile World Clock Tool.
Features:
1. Pin the clock for any timezone you choose to your desktop
2. Clock will be updated every minute.
3. 8 different clock types to choose from.
4. Dynamic updated tile according to your theme.
Disclaimer: The clock on the tile may not be correct for various reasons. Please use the system clock for important times.
1. When background updating is working, the clock may delay for 1 minute.
2. When backgrond updating is not working for various reasions, for example, battery saving mode. The clock on the tile will stop.
2012.01.11: Update to 2.2. Minor update. The clock will be slightly more accurate (Delay within 5 seconds in my test)
2012.01.31: Update to 2.3. Supporting Wide Tile as requested. Require InterOp Unlock. This version may not be very stable at this moment. Is this the first Home Brew that supports dynamic wide tile?
Help Needed: Is there any good code who can save PNG file with low footprint and high quality?
2012.02.29: Found a really memory efficient PNG encoder. Now it is time to continue my development.
2012.03.14: Update to 2.5. More customization options available. You can even choose a picture from your library as background.
2012.03.22: Added a slightly updated new 2.5 XAP. Changed a few background images. Fixed a bug so that two line style Time/Date is correctly displayed at center.

For me it took around 5-6 (sometimes around 10) minutes to update the tile, with background tasks running. Nothing can be done i guess.
But an awesome app, nonetheless.
Thanks

Very Nice App. I had no issues in time update with background update turned on. We also did a video review on wpxbox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBoreopVpuk
I will suggest you to give user option to how often they want to which can be anything between one minute to 30 minutes.
A bit more but you can think of combining reminders with each tile so it triggers them in that time zone.

Thanks.....Good application works properly on my Omnia 7

wpxbox said:
Very Nice App. I had no issues in time update with background update turned on. We also did a video review on wpxbox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBoreopVpuk
I will suggest you to give user option to how often they want to which can be anything between one minute to 30 minutes.
A bit more but you can think of combining reminders with each tile so it triggers them in that time zone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the review.
Is there anyone interested in a clock that can delay upto 30 minutes?
As for the reminder, I think counting down and time ellapsed/stop watch could be good ideas.

could you make this app luks more offficial? Obiviously you used the wired font fron the default OS tile font, it need tweaks

xyhchina said:
could you make this app luks more offficial? Obiviously you used the wired font fron the default OS tile font, it need tweaks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's good suggestions that I should take. Unfortunately, I am not so good at UI designing. If you have more specific suggestions, pleaes let me know.

Delay till 30 minutes can be only suitable for one set of time, When I get to sleep. Saves Battery. Please do correct me if I am wrong.

If you could make the tile look the the HTC sense flip clock this would get a gazillion downloads especially if it does update properly every minute
Sent from my PI39100 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

wpxbox said:
Delay till 30 minutes can be only suitable for one set of time, When I get to sleep. Saves Battery. Please do correct me if I am wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my app, this won't happen. I mentioned this in response to your suggestion to allow user to select how frequent they could update the clock.

Aaron McCarthy said:
If you could make the tile look the the HTC sense flip clock this would get a gazillion downloads especially if it does update properly every minute
Sent from my PI39100 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The clock images can change but no animation is possible. But my intention is to match the tile format since art is not my specialty. If anybody interested in making it more beautiful, please let me know.

Clock Name bug
I discovered a bug when entering a Clock Name that uses a space such as "New York". After using a space I am unable to enter any more characters - the keys no longer worked. But, I could get around this by exiting the app and starting it again and continuing the "York" part of the clock name.
Other people that only include cities without a space in the name would not encounter this bug.
So far, a good & practical app otherwise as I have only used it for 20 mins.
Well done!

Another cool app after the office/pdf uploader. I really like it !
Could you allow to add a custom background (.jpg) image for the live tile ?
Greetz
contable

devassist said:
I discovered a bug when entering a Clock Name that uses a space such as "New York". After using a space I am unable to enter any more characters - the keys no longer worked. But, I could get around this by exiting the app and starting it again and continuing the "York" part of the clock name.
Other people that only include cities without a space in the name would not encounter this bug.
So far, a good & practical app otherwise as I have only used it for 20 mins.
Well done!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't find any code in this page that will lead to this behavior. And the same issue did not appear in my test. However, your symptom looks very similiar to the keyboard disappearing bug of Mango. You may want to upgrade to 8107 or disable background task to verify.

contable said:
Another cool app after the office/pdf uploader. I really like it !
Could you allow to add a custom background (.jpg) image for the live tile ?
Greetz
contable
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any specifics for this request? Select a picture from the phone library? If so, that will involve quite a bit of image resizing work.

Thunder_ said:
Can't find any code in this page that will lead to this behavior. And the same issue did not appear in my test. However, your symptom looks very similiar to the keyboard disappearing bug of Mango. You may want to upgrade to 8107 or disable background task to verify.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you are right. It was a problem at my end. Thanks!

Thunder_ said:
Disclaimer: The clock on the tile may not be correct for various reasons. Please use the system clock for important times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually this problem happen on my mozart with mango 8107 rom. The time just stop at battery save on and close screen. Sometimes need repin clock tile then work again. Hope next version fix that issue.
anyway , this is awesome project. Thank you!

eric1204 said:
Actually this problem happen on my mozart with mango 8107 rom. The time just stop at battery save on and close screen. Sometimes need repin clock tile then work again. Hope next version fix that issue.
anyway , this is awesome project. Thank you!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a limitation of WP7. I have no idea how to fix it at this moment.

Thunder_ said:
Any specifics for this request? Select a picture from the phone library? If so, that will involve quite a bit of image resizing work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Selecting a picture from the picture hub only allows to use .jpg files.
I would prefer to choose a picture from the isolated storage of your app so it´s possible to use .jpg or .png files. The files can be copied easyly to the isolated storage with Windows Phone Power Tools. Just a suggestion...
Anyway it´s great. I have tested it over the night and the tile didn´t stop to work.
The difference to the system time is max. 1 minute....

contable said:
Selecting a picture from the picture hub only allows to use .jpg files.
I would prefer to choose a picture from the isolated storage of your app so it´s possible to use .jpg or .png files. The files can be copied easyly to the isolated storage with Windows Phone Power Tools. Just a suggestion...
Anyway it´s great. I have tested it over the night and the tile didn´t stop to work.
The difference to the system time is max. 1 minute....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Understand your point. Don't think this a common request but I will try when I got time.
As for the time difference, my application currently runs every 60 seconds. That's where the difference comes from. But I recently found a way to reduce the difference to, let's say, five seconds. I upload the new verion when I complete it.

Google Play Books: Any modules to tweak it?

I'm a huge ebook reader and love to read on my phone. As a general rule I like to use the Google Apps if they do the job I need 'em for. Google Play Books has failed me though. (Queue the image of a guy in a hood speaking with a deep voice: You have failed your user!)
Okay, stupid reference aside, here's my biggest three areas where I find the app lacking:
1.) In-ability to NOT use immersive mode. I often will read on my lunch break at work. During this time, as well as other times, I really like to have the clock visible just by a quick glance at the top of the screen. Further, it's nice to be able to see new notifications coming in and read 'em without having to exit the app.
2.) Ability to tweak visual settings. I prefer to have a light grey background vs. white. And at night I prefer to have a slightly blue hue to the letters as this makes it less bright.
3. I'd love a quick and easy way to switch between night and day display modes. Right now it's a four tap processes. Right now it's a four-tap process to do this.
So yeah... these are all of course "first world problems" in that I could easily live without them. Alternately, I could just use Moon Reader+ (which I do right now) which solves all of these problems. But I do like the clean interface and easy of syncing/accessing my books through google, so the question:
Is there any modules that can handle any or all of these tweaks?