Photo Cube Improved Image Quality

So, on to the Photo Cube enhancements. The first requirement was made more obvious when using the larger screen of my tablet, simply put the photos and backgrounds don't look as good as they should.

The reason for this is that a while back, I had to change to a new method of cropping a photo, so that it worked on all devices. The method I used, whilst working far more reliably than the old method, resulted in a cropped image that was not of the highest quality, because the scaling method was not so good. This was particuarly noticeable when using an image smaller than the crop size, which is more likely on backgrounds.

In addition, I was using the same method when scaling the images so that they fit inside the photo frame the user has chosen, leading to obvious artifacts and what appears like crosshatching on same frames.

Had time to look at this now, and figured out a better scaling method which is a little slower, but results in a much higher quality image. The performance hit is only noticeable when changing photos, so the Cube still spins a fluidly as ever, but now the images look far better.

Compare before on the left and the improved version on the right. See the difference in the background quality, and compare the edges of the face of the photo:

And here when a frame is used, again the old on the left and the new on the right, see how the face within the frame had a funny checkered effect on the left image which has now vanished from the improved version on the right:

This means that Photo Cube gets higher quality images with no extra memory used. This will be released next week along with a minor bug fix after I have done a lot of testing to ensure it will work on all devices.

Finally, the Samsung Tab really shows off the quality of some of the frames, for example, I didn't realise how nice the Antique frame style was until I saw it in all its glory on the tablet... love it!

Photo Cube now supports Honeycomb and ICS!

Well, I'm very happy to announce this maintenance release of Photo Cube version 1.22, which now fully supports Android 3.x and 4.0, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich respectively.

The main issues were that the Settings with icons were not appearing correctly under these latest versions of Android, turns out that the custom Setting preferences were being hidden by default, so a very simple switch turned them back on.

There was also a few annoying issues where the settings were not being updated correctly when returning from choosing a new image for a cube side. All sorted now.

And voila! Under 3.2, on my Galaxy Tab 7 Plus:

So all good now, Version 1.22 is on the Market as I write this.

On to the long awaited enhancements now!

Well, happy to say I treated myself to a Galaxy Tab 7Plus, the 7" update to the original. With a wireless router thrown in, came to a very reasonable 4200HK$.

Not necessarily convinved about Honeycomb, it seems as I guessed before overly complicated, really I didnt see anything wrong with the usability of Android 2.x, it was only the UI which needed an update. Anyway, its all very smooth, and Photo Cube runs very well indeed, smooth as the proverbial silk.

However, it did throw up some issues, the thumbnails of the various settings for pictures, background and effects are not appearing, and it doesnt seem to be correctly notifying that the settings have changed, so you have to choose a picture and then change something else in order for the picture to get displayed. So more work to do there... to make sure even the existing functionality works...

Spinning madly, out of control...

Well, it has been a while. So busy with my other project, but in testing that out on other phones discovered that Photo Cube still behaves strangely on with regard to the spinning when you swipe left and right.

On the Go Home Launcher and on the Galaxy S2 Touchwiz launcher, things are not quite right when you pan over the far left or far right of the available home screens, it results in the cube still going into a constant spin. On the Desire HD latest update, the cube doesn't do any extra spin at all when you pan left or right.

Turns out this is due to the way different phones interpret the wallpaper offsets and what they end up sending to the Android WallpaperEngine "onOffsetsChanged". In short, I can no longer rely on the scroll position of the current home screen to work out how much extra to spin the cube when panning left and right. HTC latest Sense 3.0 uses a carousel idea which completely ignores that, so you can't pan your wallpaper at all, you are left with a fixed background. That is frankly, stupid, but it is what it is.

So I have changed the extra horizontal spinning of the cube to be completely controlled by the user touch commands. This gives me great control, and has completely done away with occaisonal situations where the cube suddenly freaks out due to odd numbers being sent to "onOffsetsChanged", and has allowed me to control how much it spins and even give it a nice deceleration. I might even turn it into a Setting.

Other upsides, you can now definitely see the "Back" picture a lot more often, this used to be pretty hard to get to appear, because the extra rotation was linked to the home screen. Now it is controlled by the user, so the appearance of the pictures are a lot more random.

Will just do a bit more testing on my friend's S2 to make sure all is well there, then will be off to the Market!

New Version 1.20

New version 1.20 is live on the Android Market now. 

Just two things new in this version, a fix for a very rare bug when choosing a background colour, and a fix for a more common issue on some 3rd party Home Screen launchers, such as the Go Launcher, where changing device orientation would on occasion cause the cube to "freak out", as one user delightfully put it, spinning madly fast until you swiped the screen to stop it.

After some investigation I really cant see why Go Launcher is causing it to freak out to start with, but at least I can treat the symptom and simply stop the mad spin as soon as it is about to start, before the user will notice anything untoward.

In other news, working hard on my next project, it is coming on so well I really wanted to get that out by the end of the year then I can concentrate back on Photo Cube and finally get to all the new features I have been planning. The new Widget really is a thing of beauty... and the top secret killer feature works wonderfully...

Photo Cube Version 1.19 Released

Due to the usual Market incompetency, I had to skip some version numbers. Anyway, version 1.19 is on the Market now. It fixes a couple of minor yet annoying issues, and paves the way for some forthcoming goodness.

Firstly, there was an annoying situation where when you double tap on the Wallpaper to launch the Quick Size and Position screen, it would instead bring up the main Photo Cube Settings screen. That is now fixed, it always brings up the Quick Size and Position.

I added a bit of animation to that screen also, the top and bottom control bars now slide in nicely.

More importantly, there had been a number of reports of users who couldnt get the Background Colour Picker to work because they didnt see how to select the final colour. In some cases that was because it was just a bad design, it uses two coloured rectangles showing the old and new colours, which you had to tap on, which was not obvious. In other cases, it was because in Landscape more, those rectangles didnt appear at all, they were hidden off screen.

So now I changed it to use proper OK and Cancel buttons, and made sure they are visible in both Portrait and Landscape mode:

So what is in Development?

I had a nice request for a screenshot capability and being able to upload the image to Facebook. This is now working, it can capture and share the image to Facebook, WhatsApp, Email, MMS, in fact anything on your phone which handles an image. But I need a better interface to be able to launch the capture, so I want to add more features to the Quick Settings, instead of just having Size and Position I want to add options for Screenshot, Frames, Effects and Rotation, all shown as an overlay above the wallpaper so you can see the changes in real time. Working on that at the moment.

After that: 

• Maybe a new rotation mode, perhaps something more random.
• Then the long awaited Presets enhancement.
• Finally the Album mode, where you choose an album and it will automatically show pictures from that directory with no further action required from the user. A bit of clever cropping and maybe face detection will be required for that.
• The ability to browse a picture in your Gallery or anywhere and then automatically add it to a Photocube side, via a Send To long press command. Very slick..

And of course I am still doing work on the Weather Widget, which is coming on well.. maybe early next year for an initial release.

Photo Cube 1.16 Released

New version finally released. Just a few bug fixes, there was a very annoying issue for some users when the pictures selected didnt cover the entire face of the cubes, just sat in the corner.

I changed the method of selecting and cropping the pictures to that used by the Background Image selector, which is less pretty but a lot more reliable. That seems to have fixed the issue for the users reporting the issue.

I also changed the boring default abstract background to a nice natural scene, a bit more restful on the eyes. 

Then need to do some promo images for launching Photo Cube on the Vodafone App Shop in Europe.

I'm still working hard on the Weather Widget which will be totally unique, literally like nothing else on the market. Watch this space..