Greetings All,
I'm happy to report that we've finished our released candidates and that
this afternoon we'll be submitting version 1.0 of the Wikipedia Android
application for a very quiet launch. I stress .. a very quiet launch. We
don't want any large publicity at first. Our current plan is to push to the
Google market today, Amazon & F-Droid market next week, and to do PR after
we see the reviews coming in late next week. That way we have time to do
any fixes or workflow tweaks.
Many thanks to the mobile team for getting this out and specifically Yuvi &
Brion who worked some furious hours to get us to this point.
I'll post a link to the store after its published and you should get your
friends to try it. But no need to push it to any major news sites .. not
yet at least.
--tomasz
wwops, sent to steven only by mistake. copied to the list:
On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 5:27 PM, Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>wrote:
> I dislike the lighter color of the action toolbar though on mobile (the
> delineation between content and navigation is cleaner in the current
> Android app)
>
We can match with the standard darker style instead if we prefer it.
and the fact that it makes the top toolbar more cluttered. Mostly all I
> want to do on mobile is search and read, and I think people are used to
> just scrolling down for more content, not using a TOC dropdown.
>
I think I'm agreeing that a labeled TOC dropdown is a little cluttery,
though something would be nice; scrolling through vvvveeeerrrryyyy long
articles can be a chore, especially if you're in the middle and aren't sure
whether to scroll up or down. :)
-- brion
Greetings All,
Looking at the finish line we have RC4 ready for you! Next time were going
to call these betas :) Everyone has been doing a kick ass job squashing
bugs and preparing for our app to be ready for Global Dev on 1/13/12. With
this update you'll see updates for ICS (Android 4.0), language fixes, near
by me updates, and more.
For those that just want to get going:
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/android/WikipediaMobile-RC4.apk (MD5
dae4c369a8abaae3ee514d0f8206a95a)
Nightly's here:
http://integration.mediawiki.org/WikipediaMobile/nightly/ (Google
maps wont work as the app is not signed yet)
Key points to test (mostly same as before)
* Browse as you would normally do on WIFI, 2G, 3G, & no connectivity
* Save an article that you're on and then load it as a saved page. Delete
that saved page.
** Go into airplane mode and load the saved article. Follow a link
* Open your browsing history and load a previous page
* Tap 'near me' and browse articles. Move the map and tap 'redo search
in this area'
* Share a link with someone on twitter or facebook
* Change your language preference in the Settings menu
* Use a phone that is in a non-US locale to test other languages like:
Hebrew, Japanese, Arabic, etc
* Change the font size settings to 'Small' & 'Larger'
* .. and whatever else you may want try out
Items fixed or updated since RC3
* Wikipedia Android app is stuck when triggering 'Jump back to a section'
from cache
* Wikipedia Android app sometimes shows old home page
* Jenkins marks automatic Android .apk builds as failure due to symlink
already existing
* Android app doesn't update locale when system locale changes
* "Share" feature should send the canonical/desktop form of link instead of
*.m.wikipedia.org
* Regression: Wikipedia android app no longer shows history for viewed
articles
* PhoneGap app needs to show visual feedback when clicking the W 'home'
button
* Inter-wiki "Read in..." button graphic
* Android app web view is very tiny on Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
emulator
* Android app nearby me should allow user to redo search after map move
* Android app 'cache' branch: crash during navigation
* Android app 'cache' branch: keeps forgetting what page I left off on
* Browsing history is not updated
* "About" is always showing [[en:Wikipedia:About]]
* App not usable on Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.0 ICS with xhdpi display)
* Navigating pages on Android 4 (ICS) tries to load about:blank in external
browser
* Saved pages open without markup fixes, in full window (breaking app) in
Android 4.0 (ICS)
* Android app should support (or always?) use HTTPS
* Android app should not forget that its just done a near by me search if
the location hasn't changed
* Android app doesn't allow search when webview overlaps with an image
* The "language" entry in the settings dialog is moving
* After the language is changed the page content does not change
* Wikipedia Android app doesn't surface disambiguation page for 'Go'
* W goes to English home page, even when in another language
* Search language is not in current language
* Wikipedia Android should maximize touch surface are of near by me detail
boxes
* Current location in Nearby missing
* Wikipedia Android app drops pins after tapping an article
* Wikipedia Android app doesn't show pins after redo search until user taps
the screen
* Fix Wikipedia icon in Android app
* Update to PhoneGap 1.3.0
* Wikipedia Android app name isn't localized
* After using manage applications to "clear data" application won't restart
* Give the site Main page a better title in history
* Wikipedia Android app should have a better no search results page
* Previous and next Nearby (map) article
* Close Nearby view
Known issues
* Tapping the hardware search button dosen't always show a blinking cursor
* Android 4.0 minor glitches:
** https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33615 off-by-one in menus
** https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33552 search bar doesn't
expand in landscape mode
Feedback page @
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileAndroidFeedba…
(edit away)
As before there are bound to be bugs but don't think that someone will file
them for you. If you don't file it then chances are that we wont know its
an issue. If your not sure of wether its a bug or not then come join us on
#wikimedia-mobile (freenode) and we'll sort it out.
thanks!
--tomasz
RC3 is ready quickly on the heels of RC2. This includes a small bug fix
that was causing the search bar to show up on subsequent web views.
As before, we'd like to push a new minor version of our iOS Wikipedia app
and need your help testing. This is mostly for bug fixes and an updated
account for our geo service. For those that just want to get going download
it from here, drag into iTunes, and sync.
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/iOS/WikipediaMobile-RC3.ipa (MD5
df8b9590be2651c38e12392df7bb97d8)
NOTE: If you haven't given me your UDID then this IPA will NOT work for
you. I need to have your IPA before we build a new version in order for it
work. If your try the IPA and find that it wont install then follow these
instructions to send me your UDID and I will build a new version.
http://www.innerfence.com/howto/find-iphone-unique-device-identifier-udid
Things to try
* Near by me (GPS, 3G/Edge, just WIFI, no connectivity)
* Tap search and make sure the search bar clears for new input* General
browsing to make sure the app is stable
* .. and whatever else you can think off
Known issues
* Lots of feature requests but no outstanding launch bugs
Feedback page is here @
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileiOSFeedback(e…
away)
As before there are bound to be bugs but don't think that someone will file
them for you. If you don't file it then chances are that we wont know its
an issue. If your not sure of wether its a bug or not then come join us on
#wikimedia-mobile (freenode) and we'll sort it out.
thanks!
--tomasz
After some positive results in tests this morning, we're switching the
Android mobile app from loading pages in an <iframe> to loading them into a
<div> directly within the main document.
I like the ideal world of content separation that iframes should give, but
there are a lot of bugs in mobile browsers related to iframe handling,
which interfered with layout, scrolling, clicking on UI elements in the
search bar, etc. Some additional bugs made the app unusable on the latest
Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich")-based phones.
There could be some regressions, especially related to layout & style,
because the content is now in the same document as the main UI. Good
modularity should keep the styles separate but... there might still be
surprises. ;)
Latest nightly builds should include the new code, or wait for RC4 which
should come soonish.
I also ran some experiments with iscroll <http://cubiq.org/iscroll-4>, a
library that can manage improved scrolling of <div> sections including zoom
support. While these were positive in functionality, it was also much too
slow on medium to large articles, so needs to be put off at least until we
separate out sections better, so there's less material to scroll around.
-- brion
The floating, fixed-position header bar (header bar always at the same
place at top of the screen while other things scroll) causes a number of
problems in the app, including:
* https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32917 - It's difficult to
tap into the search box
* https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31524 - section links on
file pages scroll too far down
My 'absolute' branch resolves this by removing the 'position: fixed'
floating toolbar and letting it scroll off the page:
https://github.com/brion/Wikipedia/commits/absolute
This lets us drop the event handlers that screw up the search field
focusing, because we don't need them to work around the bug where click
events went through to the background elements. It fixes the scrolling /
reference / hashlink issue by getting the header out of the way, so going
to a position in the document actually shows it at the top of the screen.
It also provides more screen space for reading, which is a big plus in
portrait orientation where a toolbar eats proportionately more screen space.
The downside is that if you've scrolled down on the page, you have to
scroll back up to get to the search field etc.
This is pretty much how the stock web browsers on iOS and Android work,
however, so I don't think it's such an awful thing to do. Any objections?
Preferences on making things sometimes auto-pop up?
-- brion
Greetings all,
RC2 is ready to go and should fix the GPS freezing issue that we were
seeing in RC1. As before, we'd like to push a new minor version of our
iOS Wikipedia
app and need your help testing. This is mostly for bug fixes and an updated
account for our geo service. For those that just want to get going download
it from here, drag into iTunes, and sync.
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/iOS/WikipediaMobile-RC2.ipa (
MD5 35dce1738cb3837f7c4cdfcdbc758022)
NOTE: If you haven't given me your UDID then this IPA will NOT work for
you. I need to have your IPA before we build a new version in order for it
work. If your try the IPA and find that it wont install then follow these
instructions to send me your UDID and I will build a new version.
http://www.innerfence.com/howto/find-iphone-unique-device-identifier-udid
Things to try
* Near by me (GPS, 3G/Edge, just WIFI, no connectivity)
* Tap search and make sure the search bar clears for new input
* General browsing to make sure the app is stable
* .. and whatever else you can think off
Known issues
* Lots of feature requests but no outstanding launch bugs
Feedback page is here @
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileiOSFeedback
(edit away)
As before there are bound to be bugs but don't think that someone will file
them for you. If you don't file it then chances are that we wont know its
an issue. If your not sure of wether its a bug or not then come join us on
#wikimedia-mobile (freenode) and we'll sort it out.
thanks!
--tomasz