MSPA Reader App

I noticed recently that the twitter part of the news section has been throwing an error and not loading. As it turns out, Twitter has changed the API used for getting a list of a person's tweets. I will have the app switched over to the new API in the next update, so tweets should load again.

Edit: (8:44 pm)

I have noticed that navigating to specific sections in a comic can be very difficult. Currently, there are two ways to do it: scroll through the log forever or try to guess the proper page and jump from there. Sure, you can narrow down the log by date, but it can still be tedious. In the next update you will be able to access something like this:

I have sent out a minor update to fix a couple of issues.

Added:

Added swipe gestures when reading. Swipe to the sides to go forward and back.

Fixed:

Next button not working on some Homestuck pages (some still broken)

Crash when app is closing

This is just an update to fix 1.18, which I had to pull from the store because of a major bug which I inadvertently introduced while fixing something else.

Fixed:

Pages with dialog are no longer broken

I realized that the previous update needed to be amended so it doesn't spam error messages. Also, a user notified me of an issues with some pages that have colored caption text not displaying properly. I fixed the issue and I don't think I broke anything else.

Changed:

Removed a specific archive error message

Fixed:

Fixed a bug where clearing the cache would erase user settings

I have added error handling for two minor bugs. Sorry there have been no updates for three months, I have been busy with my studies. Also, stay tuned for Windows 8 (RT) app news!

Fixed:

I have uploaded a small update for some of the thins added in the last update.

Changed:

Images in the dialog box no longer auto stretch, so small images in chat will not be stretched out. Likewise, Large images might get clipped, but turning to landscape mode should fix that.

Fixed:

So, the update that is currently in the tubes has a bug which I just discovered. Unfortunately, I cannot change the current update so I will have to wait for it to be published before I can fix it, and then it will be another week for that update to get certified. Sorry.

The 1.15 update has been submitted and is awaiting approval by Microsoft. It usually takes them about a week to publish it.

Changed:

Code for parsing pages is more robust

Overhauled archive navigation code

Improved under the hood navigation code for the rest of the app

Added:

Dialog boxes can now contain images (took a while to implement)

Fixed:

Fixed Trickster Mode pages

As I discussed recently, the most recent Homestuck pages are not loading on the app properly. The reason for this is because some of the formatting changed and some extra (non-essential) flash files were being detected. That caused the app to determine that the page was a flash page and not viewable. It also caused captions and dialog to not load properly.

The root of the problem is that the code for parsing pages hasn't changed since I wrote it (poorly) back in September 2011, and I never really updated because until now there had been no pages that had substantially different styles. Obviously that changed, and so I have undertaken the task of completely recoding the parsing functions. My primary goal in doing this is to remove any dependencies on things like color codes or specific styling, and make it far more robust. Due to my early inexperience, I used landmarks in the page styling code to identify where everything was on the page, because it made it easier to make my program, however it had no margin for change. I am also looking into a way to add images into the dialog box.

I have just submitted the 1.14 update to Microsoft, so you should see it either on the 11th or the 14th, depending on how long it takes them to certify the update. The changes are below.

Changed:

Finalized night mode

Combined the Tumblr and Twitter tabs into one news tab

Added:

Added option to reset to default settings

Added landscape mode to the rest of the app

Added tumblr feed for news about the app, essentially integrates this blog into the app

Fixed:

Fixed a crash when resuming app (most common crash)

Aside from some coloring, the main page of the app hasn't changed since version 1 way back in 2011. I have decided to replace the Tumblr and Twitter headings with a combined News tab. This tab has the Tumblr feed, Twitter feed, and my blog feed for news about the app. I also added a filter at the top of the page for those of you who only want to view posts from a certain feed.

Some of you may be familiar with something that looks like this:

A few updates ago I added a landscape mode to the page views only. I had originally planned to roll out landscape mode to the entire app at that time, but I ran into problems with resizing portions of the interface, so I held off for a while. The next update (1.14) will have complete support for the landscape orientation.

To solve the problem I ended up actually removing the offending code completely when I merged the news feeds into one box. The main page should work very well in landscape now, however on other less used pages, such as the about page, I designed the interface to dynamically fill out the page when changing orientations. While this worked very well in my testing, it could have negative side effects on other screen resolutions (I tested with 800x480) found on phone such as the Lumia 920.