OnThisPhone apps

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Fixed - Startup crash issue (Read below for more info)

Fixed - Association issues (Some activities couldn’t be started, and one script function didn’t work)

Fixed - Download issue. By removing the Url resolver (For now). It was too buggy.

Fixed - Crash issue on KITKAT or lower, where the app tried to use an API on android that didn’t exist prior to LOLLIPOP.

Very early update; very late report A few days ago, i posted a hotfix for the app that addressed a problem where if the user started the app, and an episode was null or the current episode string was empty, the app would crash. It is now fixed, and it has been fixed for a few days. This is just a late report, because it happened so impromptu. My brother told me he had this issue just an hour before he had to go to work (Where he likes to listen to podcasts). So i rolled up my sleeves, and fixed the issue in less than 10 minutes, and thankfully, a manual update from the Google Playstore could be made shortly thereafter. Crisis averted! If you had this issue, too, i’m sorry for the inconvenience. I don’t have a tester, so i have to do version testing myself, which i can only allot about 2 days for, sadly! Depending on what was added.

Two weeks I’ll be posting a new update in two weeks from now. So don’t expect one next week.

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Fixed - Player update issues. It now forces updates onResume and onCreate. In other words, the episode progress bar and the text doesn't show 0. Hopefully. I only did minimal testing for this one.

Fixed - Issue with the "Add from URL" activity crashing.

Fixed - An issue when downloading episodes. I'm not entirely sure what causes it, but at least now it doesn't crash.

These fixes were made thanks to your feedback. So thank you for reporting issues. Website It's been slow the past two weeks due to some personal issues that has since gotten better. I've talked about my generalized anxiety disorder on here before, and sometimes, it gets to the point where the best thing to do is to just do nothing or relax. I should have some screenshots to share for next week, so look forward to that.

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Added - A quick and easy way to see directly in the episodes list if an episode failed to download or not.

Changed - Where clicking the recommended podcast notification takes you. It now takes you to the podcast itself, instead of the explore activity.

Fixed - Minimized the amount of duplicates for the social feed header in the main activity. It's difficult to eliminate completely, because some images might not share the same link, but will share the same actual physical image.

Fixed - A crash bug that happens when a month has 31 days, and the app is used around those days. Hopefully, it's fixed once and for all now.

Removed - Some superfluous notifications. It gets less cluttered now.

Date Time Stuff So... It turns out that the datetime issue the app has struggled with for the better part of a year now was my bad. I didn't really think about the order in which i set the different dates using JodaTime.

For anyone having some issues with JodaTime crashing your app, or behaving strangely, ALWAYS remember to set the year first, the month second, and the day last. Otherwise, setting the day could give you an error where it says it can only be between 1 and 28. Hopefully, i saved someone a lot of trouble by saying that here.

Social Feed The social feed for the app will have to be on the back burner for now. I am way too focused on the website integration of the app to continue to tweak the social feed right now. But i will totally return to this feature sometime this year. It makes too much sense not to. Perhaps when i get serious into user log-in integration, i will revisit it.

Long Wait A lot of stuff has happened since the last update. I got sick, i got busy tweaking the social feed, i've been doing a bunch of personal stuff. But now i'm back, and the app will get regular patch updates once every two weeks like usual. Focus will switch to the site.

Links

JojoScript download page Facebook page Twitter PayPal or credit card Donate bitcoin: 1A5Tif5kp7P9CQ1hpcUbYewhriaLardvpi

PlayStore download

Added - A social feed for your current favorite podcasts that's displayed directly in the main activity. Now you will always be up to speed on what people are saying on social media. The fan music, videos, pictures, thoughts and so on.

Added - Ability to comment out things in scripts using /**/

Added - Code highlighting for scripts (Finally)

Added - A notification you can add for scripts that allows you to edit them very easily.

Removed - The old social feed functionality.

Fixed - Issue where the app would automatically add a bunch of older episodes to your episodes list. It now makes sure to only add episodes no older than two days.

Fixed - A very odd class cast exception that occurred under very specific circumstances during background operations.

Fixed - Strange report that a user sent in that would crash the app for some podcasts that uses strange image formats, or corrupt images. Hopefully, it's fixed now. But keep sending in if you experience random crashes upon playing any podcasts. It can only help.

Fixed - An issue for some devices that tried to install and sync the app on multiple devices while on Android 4.4 and lower. I'm not sure if what i did fixed this issue, or if that was even the issue. But i did some research and i made the changes necessary to remedy this situation. If the problem persists, keep sending the same reports, and i'll try something else.

Extra feature I wasn't planning on adding any more features for a while, but a discussion me and my brother had on Xmas day made me really in the mood to make this latest social media integration. I was going to include Instagram results as well, but it turns out that Instagram isn't interested in apps like mine, that just wants to display images. It's nothing personal, i know, and i don't hold a grudge. But it kind of sucks having to exclude such a big network. Oh well.

Expect additions for the social feed The app already fetches plenty more data on each of your favorite podcasts, so i’ll make sure it shows that stuff as well for the next update. I also have plans for you to be able to tweak it. How many of your top listened to podcasts you want featured there, and how much it should sample from your recent listen history. Good stuff ahead.

Website I’ll be focusing on the website 2017. Which is might as well, because i really don’t want to add any more features to the app for a long time (Unless it’s related to the website, of course). Personally, i can’t wait to jump into CSS, HTML, PHP, SQL and most of all, 2017. See you next time If some of the Multidex stuff i changed around ends up causing some unforeseen crashes or issues, i will be posting an update that fixes it, but barring something like that, i suppose i'll see you next year. 2016 was a really good year for the app. 2017 will be a really good year for the website (As well as the app, what with its integrations with the site and all).

Happy New Year!!!!

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JojoScript download page Facebook page Twitter PayPal or credit card Donate bitcoin: 1A5Tif5kp7P9CQ1hpcUbYewhriaLardvpi

PlayStore download

Added - An "On Statements" section of the Jojoscript documentation that you can view from the script menu.

Added - Some more Script functions.

Changed - Some script related behavior.

Changed - Some small behavioral changes for when tapping the list in the search activity.

Fixed - Hello Internet and other Squarespace feeds started requiring a User-Agent header in order to work (Stupid, i know). But now they work.

Small update I ended up taking a week off this time, so you’re only seeing 1 week of work. But next time, it’ll be more packed.

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PlayStore download

Changed - The way that the app handles episodes that don't download properly. It now makes sure the user is notified properly, and whenever an episode can't be downloaded, it gives you the ability to redownload it directly from the notification itself. The timeout time for episodes that can't be downloaded has also been decreased significantly. (Hopefully, this won't affect redirected URLs of episodes too much, and make those impossible to download)

Changed - You can now install the app on external storage as well. I can't test this, but i changed the manifest value of install location to auto.

Fixed - Clean install for devices with Android 6.0 and above now asks for read/write permission at startup.

Fixed - Ad clicking issue. They can now be clicked.

Fixed - The donation section in the about activity. It was a little confused as to what was marked beta.

Fixed - Crash issue when invoking a function called "JustPlay" without the whole app being loaded. I will work to make this feature available when the app is in this state, but for now, it's simply unavailable. At least it doesn't crash anymore.

Fixed - Feature notifications and all general big notifications that the app uses. It was using a function that wasn't on devices equal to or lower than 6.0. The functionality is all the same, though. So you won't really notice any difference other than that it doesn't crash randomly anymore.

Fixed - Made the fast scroll in the feed viewer less sensitive.

Fixed - So that a few more (That i missed) activities conforms to the new theme backbone (AppCompat)

The schedule and live functionality Scheduling has gone the longest without update at this point. And the reason why i keep delaying a much needed update to it is because i was thinking of doing a double whammy with it. You see, i want the updates to include live functionality. That's right, ever since i started working on the app -- in the very very early stages of feature brainstorming -- i've wanted to have live functionality. We're talking ustream, twitch, youtube, periscope, custom urls! So be patient. Great things are ahead, and i for one am excited.

Thank you for your crash reports and suggestions, everyone! I had a few to go through with this one. Which is always good. It helps to make the most common features bug free.

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Fixed - A severe crash issue with the play notification

Notification Issue The issue had to do with an implementation of a new player notification (You know, the little player in the notification drawer) i made, which also used some new APIs, apparently! The play notification worked well on 24 and up (7.0+), but not on every other version of Android. Thankfully, my brother is on 6.0, so i caught this issue very quickly. So here’s a quick update that addresses this issue. Sorry for the inconvenience!

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PlayStore download

New Permission - NFC! (System doesn't seem to ask the user for it, so you probably won't even notice it. But it's there).

Added - "Just play" functionality. Which lets you just play an audio from the Feed Viewer and so on.

Added - A feature you can turn on that notifies you if new audio/video is available in the download folder. So it's easier than ever to add episodes externally.

Added - Some new ways of sampling podcasts. Across the app.

Added - New recommendated podcast notifications.

Added - A Nerd Stats widget to the nav drawer/dashboard. Off by default. Enable it in Visual -> Show or Hide -> Widgets

Added - Full Mic Button Controls! It even has full script intigration!

Added - Two new themes! Enchanted and Islander

Added - Fast scroll to most big lists!

Added - A clean function that gets invoked each time you delete an episode. It makes sure that old/junk/useless files in your episodes folder are deleted, and not taking up a bunch of storage.

Added - The ability for scripts to have icons!

Added - A seasons/event theme widget for the dashboard. It's automatically turned on during events, to notify what event it is! So now event themes won't be as confusing anymore.

Added - Android N Quick Settings tile support! It adds so that you can run any script from the quick settings in Android N and up. Which means you can switch any setting from tapping it. Or run any script from tapping it. Fully supported! Enjoy!

Added - Schmeckles!

Changed - Major style overhaul!

Changed - Updated the theme viewer!

Changed - Updated the JodaTime library! It's now on a much higher version, which (Hopefully) should fix some time related issues.

Changed - A few notifications! They behave and look slightly differently now!

Changed - Minor Feed Viewer Twitter button changes.

Changed - Split the Episodes and Podcasts setting into two.

Fixed - "Last played" info in the Feed Viewer. It showed bad info due to view holder and other such stuff.

Fixed - Proper xml formatting when exporting feeds to an OPML. (So now you can import Ice Cream Social to your heart's content)

Fixed - Image loading problem that made episodes without an image load much slower (The default image, that is).

Fixed - MainActivity actionbar theming for white actionbars.

Fixed - Minor graphical issue when scrolling left and right in the main activity.

Fixed - Crash issue in the Favorites activity.

Fixed - issue where the featured list would stop updating if it was last updated on a 31st or 30th.

Fixed - Crash issue when removing feeds that has an apostrophe.

Fixed - Possibly fixed an issue with the features feature. I made the whole thing throw exception and handle them accordingly. So hopefully, the user will no longer be disturbed by random "Podbox has stopped" messages.

Fixed - Script multiplication issue. It now makes sure to clear the list before re-initializing it.

Fixed - Crash issue when adding episodes externally if the app isn't loaded.

Fixed - A crash issue relating to the auto playlist functionality.

Fixed - Issue where the app would make the text and image invisible when the app was started from a previous "onDestroy" action.

Fixed - The download function. I overhauled it! It now gives you a notification if a download fails!

Fixed - A crash issue in the background service which would make the app crash randomly.

Fixed - Compatibility issue with some podcasts that have the wrong  RFC-822 date-time. PewDiePie's podcast is a good example of this. Where it reads April where it should be Apr.

Optimized - Pressing pause and play is now faster. I added a delay to when views are posted

Fixed - Strange freeze issue relating to the PodBox web function. It's temporarily disabled until development of the site continues.

Removed - Animation effects for the Feeds fragment in the Main Activity.

Scripts - Updated the resource viewer.

Scripts - Added some more fun functions! You can't spell function without fun!

Scripts - Added resource support! Custom images, sounds, anything!

Scripts - Added advanced functionality for scripts. They can now affect a lot more stuff using the Arbitrary permission.

Moving to Android Studio The ADT for Eclipse was discontinued about the time 6.0 was released. But now 7.0 is here, and i can no longer use Eclipse for Android development. Luckily, the full version of Android Studio is much easier to use than the beta version i got so frustrated over way back when! And, of course, it allows me to implement 7.0 features to the app as well!

An anecdote Since the latest update was an important patch to fix some crash issues, my brother suggested that i should send him the APKs before they go live, just to make sure everything works! Which is a great idea, so that's what i decided to do! When i sent him the Dropbox link to the file via Facebook messenger, he said that he couldn't figure out how to download the file from Dropbox. Perplexed and annoyed at his answer that it only said "Open in app", we both gave up and decided to take it in person the next day! So anyway, it turned out that he couldn't figure it out because my portrait bubble in Facebook messenger was obscuring the upper right icon in Dropbox (Which lets you download the file). I thought that was really funny! I was literally in the way!

Old code Since going through the code in the Main Activity of the app, i've discovered a lot of old code! It takes me back to when i started coding on this app! I barely knew anything about how the Android API worked! Or how ADT worked! So whenever the code was in need of using the "Clean" command, i got extremely confused as to why ids weren't being referenced the right way from the XML files. And that's how this code came to be. Where the title text is called the description text, and vise versa! <TextView            android:id="@+id/listdescription"            android:layout_width="fill_parent"            android:layout_height="wrap_content"            android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"            android:layout_alignParentTop="true"            android:singleLine="true"            android:text="Common sense with Dan Carlin"            android:textColor="@color/primary_text"            android:textSize="15sp"            android:layout_weight="1"            android:gravity="bottom"            android:textStyle="normal" />        <TextView            android:id="@+id/listtitle"            android:layout_width="wrap_content"            android:layout_height="wrap_content"            android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"            android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"            android:layout_weight="1"            android:text="17h"            android:singleLine="true"            android:visibility="visible"            android:textColor="#bbbbbb"            android:textSize="12dp" /> The moral of the story is that, you should just jump headfirst into the things you want to do! Even if you know nothing about it! It's easiest to learn by doing, as they say! And seeing the before and after for myself, i've never been so certain about this learning strategy.

Finally out It’s finally released. Fairly broken with some features, but because of that, i’ve decided to have a new update available in two weeks from now, and it will contain fixes and fixes only! I’m going to go hog wild on it! So hang in there. You’ll only have to deal with some minor brokenness with your favorite features. Thankfully, the most common features work just fine.

Links

JojoScript download page Facebook page Twitter PayPal or credit card Donate bitcoin: 1A5Tif5kp7P9CQ1hpcUbYewhriaLardvpi

While you await the next update, i figured i would compile every facebook status update so far!

As you can see, i’ve been working very diligently! (Sorry for the compressed quality! I took these screenshots directly from the Facebook page) New First Time Startup activity:

A post from Sep 20

Whenever i feel burned out on the current todo list i'm on, i always go to something outside of it! Something i feel like doing at that moment! And that something this time was a resource functionality for scripts! So the app officially allows scripts to include Base64 content! So now scripts can have custom sounds, custom images and custom files of all kinds! I feel this opens it up to even more possibilities! Anyway! It's back to the usual schedule for me tomorrow! Sorry for taking so long on this upcoming release! I want it to be as awesome as i can make it!

Mic control will be back stronger than ever in the next update! It even sets a playback background now! And you'll be able to fully configure it in the settings.

Fast scrolling is coming back, and it's even better than before!

Something a lot of people would expect to see in any app that plays music! I've been meaning to add playback controls for a very long time, but seeing as it's a podcast player, and episodes are typically very long, it never seemed important.

Also, look at that shiny new unified player menu!

The settings menu will also get a facelift! It isn't 100% done yet, but here's the root of the settings activity.

A post from Sep 5 Added the first Android N feature to the app! Made so that scripts can be run from a Quick Settings Tile in the notification. Which means that any setting can be quickly toggled! Which is pretty neat!

A Video showing new animations

And finally, PodBox got NFC functionality! So now it’s easier than ever to share podcasts between each other!

PlayStore download

Added - An X button to the twitter container in the Feed Viewer

Changed - Minor changes.

Changed - Twitter button behavior in the Feed Viewer. 

Fixed - The app now hides the autoplaylist horizontal scrollview IF episodes list is 0 and Subscriptions list is 0

Fixed - Crash issue in Feed Viewer when going back and forth. Sometimes only going backwards once.

Fixed - Issue where you couldn't even begin to change the podcast episodes folder! (Where folders are stored).

Fixed - Crash issue when rotating the device while in the Feed Viewer.

Optimized - The feed viewer. It now scrolls much smoother!

Quick Patch It addresses a few crash issues. I noticed the crashes were quite frequent for my brother! And i also addressed some other stuff that people had issues with! Hopefully, this patch should make the app much less crashy!

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PlayStore download

Added - A rudimentary resource viewer!

Added - A like button in the player. Only function for right now is that it automatically tweets what you're listening to (Without having to favorite it). But more is planned for it in the near future!

Added - So that you can view your favorite podcast category in Nerd Stats (Actually, this wasn't a planned feature. Just one that was very easy to do once i had made a few new functions for the new "Feature System")

Added - A battery class! This class is used for battery saving purposes! It's automatically activated on low battery. It can also be disabled and activated in the settings menu.

Added - Daily stats for nerd stats! Keep track if your daily listening habits by scrolling through a diagram. View your average listen time, your favorite day, and more! A fun feature for those of us who are super geeks! Numbers = awesome!

Added - Zip Folder functionality. Now you can add zip files as folder feeds. Good if you're like me, and you always keep a few audio tracks of inspirational or extremely funny material on your phone at all times, but want to keep the storage space they take at a minimum!

Added - "old podcast" warning functionality.

Added - A way to toggle between showing the total time remaining for episodes in the episodes list's header. You can now show All, Downloaded only or Streamable only.

Added - The rest of the locales in the locale list (Sorry for the delay. It's not exactly the most riveting thing to do)

Added - Folder selection! You can now place your podcasts in any folder, internally or otherwise!

Added - Some additional script functionality. (In order to properly make settings functionality for scripts)

Added - Error messages for when audio won't play. So now you'll know what the issue is, if you encounter one.

Added - A log window for scripts (Log is turned off by default for each scripts respectively)

Added - A social feed for your subscriptions.

Added - So that you can add episodes from any file manager.

Changed - Made improvements to how Nerd Stats are showed.

Added - Some minor additions.

Changed - Streamlined the "Add" functionality. It now only has one "Add" button for when you use Share from other apps!

Changed - So that playlist functionality is a little more distinctive.

Changed - Minor changes and optimizations to the category browser and the explore activity!

Changed - The style and functionality of the tweets segment in the Feed Viewer.

Changed - So that you don't have to be signed-in in order to make any requests to Twitter. So now you can see tweets in the Feed Viewer at any time, and so much more.. Hehe!

Changed - So that youtube feeds show an "Add" button instead of a download button. This is to make the UI more clear.

Changed - Colors for various themes. They now work better with the app's new use of the third theme color. (Some colors were generally changed as well)

Changed - The theme picker now shows the third color at the bottom of each circle instead of the player color.

Changed - Default and Files icon across the app! It's a bit tweaked from the last one. Kind of made it my own.

Changed - So that the app uses all podcasts instead of just audio podcasts when doing lookups for iTunes podcasts.

Changed - Improved the way the player menu (The bottom right button in the player itself) works and looks.

Changed - Favorite style changes

Changed - Made several improvements to the search functionality. It now makes more sense, is easier to navigate and works smoother.

Fixed - Startup crash issue when, in very very rare circumstances, a podcast would glitch so bad that the app couldn't read from the database.

Fixed - The "Episode no longer exists" toast when playing lazy listen episodes.

Fixed - An issue where you couldn't favorite a lazy listen episode!

Fixed - Crash issue when tapping "Add" from the Feed Viewer activity. On podcasts you're not subscribed to.

Fixed - DataBase corruption handling. It now deletes the database, and also makes backups of feeds you add.

Fixed - So that you can stream videos. It used to say "Can't play this video".

Fixed - Crash issue when opening and closing the Feed Viewer activity.

Fixed - So that podcast episodes with short or no description doesn't mess up your ability to scroll the detail slider / description in the player itself. It now functions the way it should.

Fixed - So that the time ticker is called when you toggle to video directly from audio in a video podcast episode. Very specific issue, but there it is.

Fixed - How the app recognizes youtube episodes. It's now a lot better at it!

Fixed - So that the ticker is called correctly when switching between episodes.

Fixed - So that the duration of the episode you're listening to isn't 00:00:00 at times.

Fixed - Youtube playback would stop if you had downloaded any other episode, and having the storage left notification display in the main activity.

Fixed - Favorite search issue. It was disabled.

Fixed - A crash issue relating to opening and closing the History entry viewer.

Fixed - A delete podcast feed issue!

Fixed - How the app determines what file format a downloaded episode is. (This fixes youtube downloaded episodes, in particular)

Fixed - Minor comparability stuff!

Fixed - Made the dismissal of the player way more sensitive. Much easier to dismiss now!

Fixed - So that dismissing the player while it's not playing doesn't skip the episode to the end.

Fixed - So that images that don't work or are part of folder feeds show the new default icon!

Fixed - Preferences that changes values now update their values in their description in real time. So now settings like Forward Skip Interval will show the new value you choose for it instantly (Instead of having to go back and forth to see the new value)

Fixed - Part 2 of the random crash issue. It now restores the app after the OS destroys it, without it having to crash first! Hallelujah!!

Fixed - Issue where the nerd stats activity would crash if you entered it, and your listen time was larger than an integer. It now parses a long integer instead.

Fixed - Crash issue when opening play history.

Fixed - Crash issue when going back and forth from the Feed Viewer too quickly.

Fixed - Automation service is now killed properly when you kill it in the settings. It's also been set to a static variable, which hopefully won't mean something horrible.

Fixed - You can now change theme without having to restart the app!

Fixed - Bug when tapping the update function from the MainActivity multiple times.

Fixed - The padding for category images when you explore categories

Fixed - So auto updating feeds is true by default!

Optimized - Made feeds load much faster when opening the Feed Viewer.

Optimized - The player image and various other high res images! It now down scales any image that's unnecessarily long. To full HD. (Still wanna preserve that quality)

Removed - Unnecessary permission (Record Audio)

Removed - Item Long click for favorites.

SQLite Issues I'm not entirely sure where all these SQLite issues came from. It was working fine not too long ago, but now it seems to be a lot more picky about "escaping" strings formatting the syntax a little better!

Out of the blue, by the way! I hadn't done anything. Not even updated my Android security version. But oh well! At least now it works fine.

I'm aware of some strange downloading issues! The problem is that they're rare enough where they don't happen all that often, so it's difficult to replicate, and thus, difficult to find what's wrong so i can fix it!

Null is a Four Letter Word Ever since i set the app's onCreate Bundle to "null", every single random crash stopped! I read up on the error that i got. Spent a few hours simply reading the Android Developer Documentation, and when i was about to call it a night, i decided to simply make the onCreate Bundle to null, and BAM! It worked! Crash free for days now!

Long story short! All it took was four letters, and a month long problem was solved! Funny how things can be, sometimes!

New Phone I've got a new phone, so i will be able to get 7.0 once it arrives, and add a bunch of 7.0 specific features to it! I'm mostly looking forward to the multi window support

And it’s Out!! After much wait, 1.5 is finally being rolled out to people! And seeing as this process can take almost a month for some people, there isn’t going to be a new update until this one has been rolled out to everyone! It came to my attention during the break that this was an issue for people. Some people were still stuck with older versions of 1.4.x!

I’ll try to keep this blog updated with some relevant info about the progress! Like the “null” issue.

Thank you for your patience! I hope this update will be to everyone’s satisfaction!

Links

JojoScript download page Facebook page Twitter PayPal or credit card Donate bitcoin: 1A5Tif5kp7P9CQ1hpcUbYewhriaLardvpi

It’s that time of the year again! As per usual on this blog, i take some of the summer (Sometimes all) off from updating.

Save for a major issue that has to be addressed, you won’t hear from me in quite a while. But i’ll be back with a boom. I’ll finally have version 1.5, which should address every remaining core issues the app has, as well as probably adding a bunch of little new things, changing old layouts, etc! It’ll be awesome!