Working on release

[dougblack]

@keveleigh @darkzeroman Sorry for the massive delays. I've pulled down the latest source and am running it through final test before I push it. I'll try to have the new build pushed by this evening at the latest.

[dougblack]

Making some slight UI changes. The new ActionBarSherlock defaults to a Black/Light Blue color scheme that's out of place with the rest of the app. I'm also going to look into replacing the back button with the old back arrow. I don't think we need the app logo on every activity. Few apps do that.

[dougblack]

Okay first off:

• The app seems way more robust than it was. Thanks @darkzeroman! I think the back-end stuff that you switched up really, really helped out.
• I love the new Favorites view. It's basically exactly how I would have done it. No complaints.
• I love the new rows for the OTHER ROUTES view, great job @keveleigh!

There are a few (mainly UI-based) things I'd like to fix. Feel free to help.

• ActionBarSherlock has overwritten the styling on the title bar, adding colors that don't fit the app and putting a logo on every activity in place of the more user-friendly back icon.
• ActionBarSherlock has removed the bold styling on the text in the title.
• The favorites logo in the title bar is currently light blue. It should be gray, to match the rest of the un-colored title bar.
• The "Favorite A Stop" icon gets in the way. See below.
• The "Arr." and "Dep." messages are probably way too big and look out-of-place. Are there objections to just displaying a "0"?
• The bus icons for the map view need to have their colors darkened so they stick out more. I've gotten tons of complaints about this one, the trolley icon is really hard to see against the route color.

Sorry to stall the release for a bit longer, but I'd really like to get these things fixed so that we push out the best update we can!

Last thing:

• How would you like to be featured in the credits? I was planning on adding your names, and when you click on them it either opens up your website or a twitter account or github or email etc.,...up to you.

[darkzeroman]

@dougblack

NextBus Icon

So, I'm kind of unsure of how to proceed. ActionBarSherlock is meant to copy the stylings that Google wants to be standard. I'm not sure how to remove the icon off the top of my head. But I'm sure it's a setting somewhere.

Departing/Arriving

If you want the API to return 0, I can implement that change quite quickly. But. I'm not sure if changing dep. and arr. to 0 is a good idea. I'd have to first look at how they are used.

Favorites Icon

My friend recommended that we use a favorite icon with a plus for the "add-to-favorites." I heard that suggestion last Thursday and will probably work on making the icon soon.

Maybe we should move it down closer to the prediction time.

Stylings

Styling the ActionBarSherlock was a pain for me. I'm going to have to spend a little time exploring how to do it right.

[dougblack]

@darkzeroman

Actually I think I agree with you on the icon. I'm used to an older version of Android and haven't been exposed much to the new styling. We'll go with the way you had it.

I think the star icon works, but agree we should move it down next to the prediction time so that it doesn't overlap the title.

I've messed with the stylings a bit already, you can grab the latest changes from the main repo and it should have the colors fixed.

[darkzeroman]

If we wanted to move the Favorites icon, we should also move the Progress Bar View below too, right?

[dougblack]

Just saw your response.

That's tricky. I'm not sure where I'd like to put it.

Maybe we should replace the refresh button with the progress bar view when the user hits refresh? Once the view is done refreshing, the refresh button would be enabled again and the progress bar view would disappear. As I see it, there are two benefits to this approach:

• The refresh button and the progress bar, two things that are part of the exact same action, would now take up the exact same space.
• The user is now discouraged from spamming the refresh button. I don't think this was ever a problem, but it's good to reinforce the concept.

I suppose this would imply that the "Add to Favorites" icon gets moved to the top left of the prediction text view, directly across from the refresh button.

Let me know what you think.

[dougblack]

@darkzeroman We are so close.

I just have three more tiny things I'd like to fix before we push.

• The colored line on the StopView activity anchors to just under the refresh button while the view is loading. Once everything is loaded, it pops down to its correct location underneath the TextView displaying the nearest prediction.
• The favorites icon looks a little low resolution in my emulator. Is there any way to get a higher res version of it?
• I know we already talked about it, but I really dislike how large the "Arr." and "Dep." messages are displayed on the StopView. We either need to switch to using "0" (my preference) or find someway to dynamically change the font size for those two messages while still maintaining the correct layout for elements that are aligned based on that TextView's size.

[darkzeroman]

• I don't see it. More details needed.
• The reason it looks low quality is because the other icons have either many horizontal/vertical pixels. The aliasing is making it look bad. So then we should change icons, I guess?
• After thinking about it, I'm not against making it 0 anymore. And the changes are already made on the server. So 0 should show up now. So, done.

[darkzeroman]

So I either don't understand the colored line/StopView activity/refresh button issue or I can't recreate it. I'm using someone's phone and it seems to load fine.

[dougblack]

• Here's what I'm seeing.
• The poor aliasing is because the dimensions of the icon are stretched to fit a larger box. If we had a higher res icon it wouldn't need to be stretched to fit the box. Just find a higher res, flat star icon and we should be good to go!
• Sweet.

I think we can plan on releasing this update tomorrow.

Since you guys seems unwilling to give yourselves credit in the AboutView, I'll make sure to do it before we release!

Hit me with pull request when you're comfortable with how everything looks and I'll try to get it out the door as soon as possible. I have a project due tomorrow night that I'm spending a lot of time on, but I'll probably have time to tidy everything up, give you guys credit, put the new APK on the store, take new screenshots, and write the new release notes.

I can't wait to show off the new updates and all the work you've done! A little motivation for the home stretch:

Current user stats: 602 active users, 1,183 total installs

[darkzeroman]

Does the layout mess up

• for a split second? If so, this might be an emulator issue?
• until the prediction is loaded?

[dougblack]

• Yep it's just for a split second. Probably 300-500ms.
• Once the prediction is loaded it goes to the correct spot. Basically, until the prediction TextView had data in it, the bar is pretending it's not there at all and it anchors itself just below the refresh button as shown above.

[darkzeroman]

I think this is an emulator issue. I've tried it on three devices and I don't see it.

[dougblack]

Good to hear. We'll ignore it then.

[dougblack]

@darkzeroman I should be able to release tonight.

Just one more question: Do you want your name in the credits as Vidhur Vohra and what do you want it to link to, e.g. your site, twitter, email, or nothing?

@keveleigh same for you!

[dougblack]

Okay I'm choosing @darkzeroman's website and @keveleigh's twitter.

Reply if you hate that idea. :)

[darkzeroman]

Hey, my details are:

Vidhur Vohra (yeah, leave the H in there) vvohra@gatech.edu vvohra.com

But not yet please, I've noticed an issue with the times. Stops are active when they shouldn't be and vice versa. About to finish checking the logic.

[darkzeroman]

And...

Maps is crashing the app after being open for a few minutes.

[dougblack]

My bad with the H. I thought I had checked.

Okay, send a PR when you fix the times. I was just about to push to the store. Any idea what the Maps error is?

[dougblack]

I think I can fix the Maps issue. Send a PR when you fix times.

[keveleigh]

Sorry I haven't been responding for a few days. Yep, I'm all good with using my Twitter (@supertrombone) in the credits section! This update's looking really good!

[dougblack]

Uh oh. I think Maps might be dead.

We had been relying on http://m.gatech.edu/proxy/walkpath.cip.gatech.edu/bus_position.php to provide our bus locations. From what I can tell http://m.gatech.edu is completely dead. If this is permanent, then I don't know how we'll manage to get location data at all. If it's temporary, we might be okay.

Now I vote we wait to release until tomorrow so we can find out if this is a permanent outage. If so, we'll be forced to just pull Maps from the app. That would be a shame and would make a lot of users unhappy, even though we can't do anything about it.

[keveleigh]

I certainly don't know for sure, but I think this should be temporary. I doubt they'd take the entire GaTech mobile site down permanently, but, again, I don't know for sure unfortunately.

[dougblack]

It's back up. Waiting on @darkzeroman to fix that times issue.

[darkzeroman]

So it's up now. But will the app crash if the site were to go down again?

[dougblack]

Not anymore. I added some error checks on the location API calls.

[darkzeroman]

I really dislike long threads so let's move our conversation to another one.