Planning for version 3.0

[bishopmatthew]

Here's a rough overview of what I'd like to see done in the app in the coming months. I've been very busy, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to work on this, but I'd love anyone who can help to jump in. I'm happy to help support / answer questions / get you familiar with the codebase, so just ask.

Dev Stuff -- make the app easier to develop

1. Move build process to Gradle and dev environment to Android Studio. This will have the added benefit of making it easier for people to get started with contributing.
2. Move to support 4.0+ only. There's only 7% of the users on 2.3 and below, and they should be able to continue using the current version. This means we'll eventually be able to get rid of the library project dependencies.
3. Undo some bad decision making / update to more recent versions of things. For example, instead of using sw-600dp folder for deciding which layout to give tablets, the app currently does it's own calculation. I'd also like to move from the custom ActionBarView implementation to the real thing, and use the Navigation Drawer instead of the old SidingMenu lib we're currently using. What is a fragment and what is an activity should also be rethought.
4. Use Square open source everywhere! Move to OkHttp for the HTTP client, and move to Retrofit for interacting with the Search API. Start using Otto to send events around, instead of implementing callbacks for inter-fragment communication. Use Dagger for dependency injection, and Butterknife for view injection
5. Unit testing -- use Espresso for UI testing, and probably use the built-in stuff for general testing

   Features

6. Support for opening links from other apps to news.ycombinator.com in the app.
7. Keep search on the back stack so user can return to their search results after viewing something.
8. Improve performance -- especially downloading, parsing, and possibly list scrolling performance
9. Update the design -- there are some things I would like to improve on
10. Gesture support -- I'd like to be able to return to the Story list with a gesture

    Community

I'd love to get more people involved in the development of the app. One idea is to put together a Google Plus community so we can do beta testing there. Any other ideas?

If anyone has any ideas or comments, I'd be happy to hear about them!

[pkillian]

All of this looks great! I'd be happy to help; I'll keep chugging along on the intent-filter and opening the app from external links.

[bishopmatthew]

Just wanted to give an update on my progress -- check out the v3-redesign branch if you want to see where this is at. I've got the build moved over to Gradle / Android Studio, and started removing support for API < 14. The Stories / Comments / Articles UI is in the middle of being updated, so you can see what I'm thinking (even though everything isn't working yet).

[pkillian]

There are a bunch of dependency libs missing from that branch because we've excluded them from the repo. Should we stop ignoring the libs folder for the time being, so we get the proper version of the libs between us? Rethinking my thought process on ignoring them; they won't ever have diffs, so it may be advisable that we just keep whatever version of the lib we're using in the repo and include them for ease of development.

[pkillian]

Tried to remove the project, and re-import it, and I'm getting this error; I think it has something to do with HoloTheme and DatabaseUtils not being in the properties anywhere.