Tablet Optimisation

I'm designing the algorithm for tablet-optimising my app right now! It's not easy for a novice like myself. The basic idea is that the app will show you as many days as it can, arranging them horizontally - if you have enough room for 3 days, it displays 3 days. How it will do this is quite simple - I've figured out the magic number, the minimum possible amount of space a day can take up. I have set it as 270dp for now (dp is the density-independent pixel Android uses for super-awesome scaling functionality). The amount of days a screen can fit is calculated thus:

days = floor(screen width / 270)

But if I did this, the app would look terrible! Each day being 270dp means that a day only takes up about three quarters of my Desire's screen. So it readjusts the width of a day so it fits the screen:

width of day = screen width / amount of days

Each day is constructed as before and its width designated to it, then it is attached to its fragment as normal.

Here is the hard part. It works with tabs, as it always has. But with this system, multiple tabs can be open at once. How do you switch tabs? I'll have to design a way to do it, which will be difficult, and then I'll have to write it, which will be even harder. I'll get there, though, eventually. With luck.

If anyone knows how to help, I would really appreciate it. :)

=O

Just found this:

Android:Timetablr Helps You Stay in School bit.ly/xV3GwP

— XDA Developers (@xdadevelopers) February 11, 2012

I was looking for that tweet for a while :P

More about Timetablr

I'm getting the feature list for v1.0 together. Here it is so far:

• Swiping tabs ala Android Market (I took the first step this morning - I made swiping tabs, but no content, and the same old tabhost)
• Tablet optimisation - I have sketched a couple of designs, settled on one, and it's number two on my list. As soon as I have swiping tabs working, I'll begin the tablet view.
• Notifications - Perhaps a premium feature. Either an ongoing one saying what's next, or an alert when the new period starts. Perhaps an option of either, or none.
• A vastly improved widget - 99% of the time, you want to know what's on next, not now. The 4x1 widget will be reversed to reflect this. It will also be a lot better looking, hopefully.
• A 4x3 widget - It will show what's now, what's next, and what's after that. It will be quite similar to the actual app, but in widget form.
• Lots and lots of bug fixes - I want Timetablr 1 to be the most stable release yet. I'm going to do lots of testing to make sure it's all working properly. This will be what I do last, but it's pretty much the most important.

Possible features:

• A new add activity UI
• Weekend classes (It may not be possible, but I'll try)
• Period end times (again, may be impossible)
• Colour-coding - been tossing over this one for a while. If I do it, it'll only be colours in the Android Design swatches, and breaks will still colour grey.

I'm going to go through all the emails people have sent me, and the xda-developers topic, looking for suggestions I could implement. Some, unfortunately, won't be possible.

As you can imagine, it may be a while before Timetablr 1 is released, but I hope it will be worth it.

Timetablr update

I just released Timetablr 0.9 to the Android Market. It brings me back a bit, way back - the new UI I made uses LinearLayout, just like the original Timetablr (well, not ORIGINAL, but nearly). It's way better, though, because it supports any amount of periods and break colouring and current period highlighting and other fancy things like that. I really like the new UI, and I've now designed the tablet UI, which I hope looks good. Everything is going brilliantly, basically. I hope, once I get 1.0 ready (and I'll spend a lot of time trying to find and fix as many bugs as possible, and adding lots of new features, so it may be a while), I'll get some more users. I've been sitting around the 350 mark for the past 10 days or so. Over 800 installs through the market, and nearly half have kept it - is that good? I don't know.

Well, that's enough from me, for now.

Released

It's such a nice feeling, seeing my app on the Market. And it is, finally, on the market. Link here. Try it out. Hopefully, you'll like it.