About android

Huaren 2.3

2011-01-19T16:14:00.002-07:00

Features:

Added theme. Users can choose white text on black background (the default) or black text on white background.
Fixed post reply bug.
Limited image downloading size.

Huaren 2.2

2011-01-07T14:27:00.002-07:00

Huaren 2.2 was published.
New features:

Added Huaren image support. Since some posts have a lot of images, which are not good for limited resources on handsets, image download will limit to up to 5 images per refresh and each image size should < 500K. For example, if there are 10 images on a post and each one is 300K, when the page is loaded first time, first 5 will show up. ~~Click the refresh button will bring up the other 5 images (since the first 5 are already downloaded and cached).~~
Added author name to the post list page.
Performance improvement.

Huaren 2.0

2010-12-22T11:58:00.003-07:00

Updated: 2.0.2 was released. It should be working on android 2.1 and 2.2.
I don't know if somebody has noticed, I'v taken the huaren app off from the android market right after I published 2.0. It seems like 2.0 will break since it contains some code only works in gingerbread (2.3). I will republish it soon.

Huaren 1.6

2010-11-12T10:49:00.002-07:00

Version 1.6 has been released today.

Changes:

Added favorite tab and management menu. Right click(long press) to invoke it.
Added page navigation menu, long press to invoke it.
Added post context menu, also long press to invoke it.
Some UI changes.

Huaren 1.5 released

2010-10-28T11:31:00.001-07:00

Huaren 1.5 changes:

Added user login feature.
Added a delimiter for quoted content.
Changed current page to a editable field to enable a 'jump' feature. It may need some work in the future. Currently, it's a three step action: enters number; click 'Done'; and finally click pre or next button.If you enter 5, it will take you to either page 4 or 6 depending which button you click.
Added post refresh button.

Screenshot for jumping pages:

App settings page

Huaren 1.0

2010-09-16T12:41:00.014-07:00

I almost finish the first version of the huaren app development. It took more time than I expected. But I think I made good progress considering most of the time, I had to start working on it at 10:30pm. I am a little exhausted because I suck at Photoshop and I have to finish the icon design in 30 days before it expires. It pushed me harder than the actual coding. Once I release the beta version to the android market, I am going to slow down my development pace to enjoy more with my family and wait to see how many users are out there, if it make sense for future releases. I have some other ideas on what exciting apps I want to write. I may switch to those. Anyway, here are something about the huaren app.

Features:

Light weight, fast rendering
Support portrait and landscape modes
Posts and images are cached (same posts are valid for 1 day and no expiration on images)
Every step/view state is stored. It returns to the previous page you were browsing after interruption.
View post full version by clicking one button

Known issues:

Some posts are corrupted returned by the server. But you can view next pages.
Be careful to view post with lots of images (monkeys are fine). The app may crash because of the out of memory exception. Will add a setting to toggle the external image download feature.
Images uploaded to the huaren server are not rendered, monkeys are working though. ~~Can be fixed by adding a new feature~~. May not be easy to fix.
Some JPG images are not rendered (bug in android). May be fixed by updating to future version.

TODO:

Add post refresh button
Fix known issue 1 by using the regular urls to support login, hot topic feature
Add hot topics in a separate tab
Add favorites
~~Rendering images on Huaren (changed to disable images)~~
Enable link on post view
User login/~~logout~~
Post reply
Enable http gzip

Some screenshots of my Huaren android app

2010-09-10T12:13:00.006-07:00

Why AdSense make life so hard

2010-09-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

I am jumping to the Google AdSense wagon. It's mainly for my first feature android app. So to be able to add ads to my app, which hopefully will compensate a little bit for my effort and hardware upgrade, I need a AdSense account. But there is no separate mobile AdSense account, therefor I have to create my personal web site and populate some content though I don't have the intention to put ads on this blog. errrrh.

Hey, I was wondering what does 'Don't be evil' mean?

My first android app

2010-09-10T10:52:00.003-07:00

I am writing my first android app. I am a long time java developer so it's natural for me to extend my knowledge to android world. This app is essentially a simplified browser to one of my favorite message board, www.huaren.us. It's in Chinese and I got a lot of help by reading the posts, particularly on travel and parenting boards. Although it's seems like most of the registered users for that message board are female and they favorite the other closed fancy black/white phone, I hope there are still some potential users for my app out here.

It's in alfa version now and has most main functions. Consider I'm a full time employee and have a two-year old daughter who is super attached to me. I don't have a lot free time every day, usually after 10:30pm when my sweet heart falls asleep. The progress may not be as fast as I wish it to be. But my plan is to release the app (beta version) in one month.

I haven't decided the name for my app and has some troubles to create a nice looking icon. Any suggestions?