1.5 preview

[Jayesh Salvi]

Hi,

In the upcoming 1.5 release of ReaderScope, I am redoing some internal code to speed up the GUI. Here is the preview release of what is coming, if anyone would like to test and give feedback, the apk can be downloaded from here: http://www.altcanvas.com/downloads/apks/ReaderScope-1.5-preview.apk

The improvements are:

1. Progressive loading of news items (No longer blocking "Downloading news" progress dialogs)

2. Refresh works as it should. (Hitting refresh will download latest news and also update read/unread status of already cached feeds)

3. No more "More"  - the menu option is removed. Instead the additional items are downloaded automatically when you reach to the end of the list.

Please note: This  is still work in progress and certain functionality is broken (read/unread filter, expanded mode, twitter timeline, etc.) But if you want to taste and test the new features early, check it out.

Thanks,

--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 16:49, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

In the upcoming 1.5 release of ReaderScope, I am redoing some internal code to speed up the GUI. Here is the preview release of what is coming, if anyone would like to test and give feedback, the apk can be downloaded from here: http://www.altcanvas.com/downloads/apks/ReaderScope-1.5-preview.apk

Installing now

 

The improvements are:

2. Refresh works as it should. (Hitting refresh will download latest news and also update read/unread status of already cached feeds)

You finally did it, enh??

if it works, once it comes the market, u will get another donation from me :DDD

--
Fernando Pereira
(``-_-´´) -- BUGabundo :o)
Linux user #443786    GPG key 1024D/00967685
http://mi.BUGabundo.net   buga...@googlewave.com

[Jayesh Salvi]

preview2 

www.altcanvas.com/downloads/apks/ReaderScope-1.5-preview2.apk

has bunch of logic fixes and should be more stable. (Things that won't work - Twitter timeline, search, all items, mark all read)
--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 10:25, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

preview2 

www.altcanvas.com/downloads/apks/ReaderScope-1.5-preview2.apk

has bunch of logic fixes and should be more stable. (Things that won't work - Twitter timeline, search, all items, mark all read)

Fine by me, dont use any of those (well, i do use mark all, but not was u do it, only the current shown, like GReader mobile does)

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 10:25, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

preview2 

www.altcanvas.com/downloads/apks/ReaderScope-1.5-preview2.apk

has bunch of logic fixes and should be more stable. (Things that won't work - Twitter timeline, search, all items, mark all read)

When there are zero items it keeps spinning (no idea what it is doing).

When there are 1000 items it tries to download them ALL... and keeps going.

[Jayesh Salvi]

Have you tried hitting the 'refresh' button? Let me know what happens with refresh.
--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 10:49, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Have you tried hitting the 'refresh' button? Let me know what happens with refresh.

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 4:07 PM, <fern...@bugabundo.net> wrote:

When there are zero items it keeps spinning (no idea what it is doing).

Thats just it, when there are no items, there is nothing to update or download.

Still it keeps spinning.

pressing Refresh, will just make it try to download.... nothing

[Jayesh Salvi]

what's the status of your filter? (2nd screen, icon on top bar)
--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

black.

could it be trying to download already read items?

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 10:55, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

what's the status of your filter? (2nd screen, icon on top bar)
--
Jayesh

--

[Jayesh Salvi]

yeah, turn it off. Black means - show only new items. i need to optimize that case. it will take  very long if bunch of your recent items are read. for now, turn it off and you should see the items loading 3 at a time.

--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 11:01, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

yeah, turn it off. Black means - show only new items. i need to optimize that case. it will take  very long if bunch of your recent items are read. for now, turn it off and you should see the items loading 3 at a time.

I picked a feed that showed 3 unread, entered and found only one, put the filter to white (unfiltered), and pressed refresh.

It began downloading, and never ended nor showed again the unread item.

[Jayesh Salvi]

--
Jayesh

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 4:41 PM, <fern...@bugabundo.net> wrote:

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 11:01, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

yeah, turn it off. Black means - show only new items. i need to optimize that case. it will take  very long if bunch of your recent items are read. for now, turn it off and you should see the items loading 3 at a time.

I picked a feed that showed 3 unread, entered and found only one, put the filter to white (unfiltered), and pressed refresh.

It began downloading, and never ended nor showed again the unread item.

I see. I think I am seeing something similar too. Maybe my last change broke refresh. Let me dig in.

[Jayesh Salvi]

Yeah, preview 2 has some dumb mistakes (was in a hurry on that last changeset). please ignore it, if haven't already downloaded it. I will release another one soon.
--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 15:54, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah, preview 2 has some dumb mistakes (was in a hurry on that last changeset). please ignore it, if haven't already downloaded it. I will release another one soon.

We are testers for a reason :p
waiting for it soon.

[Jayesh Salvi]

Ok. try preview 3.

http://groups.google.com/group/readerscope/web/ReaderScope-1.5-preview3.apk

Still, keep the filter off. I haven't optimized that yet.
--
Jayesh

[Jayesh Salvi]

Here's v1.5 preview4. Everything should work, except the Twitter timeline.

http://readerscope.googlegroups.com/web/ReaderScope-1.5-preview4.apk?gda=0fCB6U8AAABJM3UbC8hOOr7LcskP5jFjgC2Hm-3E1_pezKCcbWLe2UQw4cg3WzEKe_1IS4yBgRowx9Zs6Gf9o5D1BmTuFEidnHMhSp_qzSgvndaTPyHVdA

Please give it a try. You should see a final release in market within next couple of days.
--
Jayesh

[Jayesh Salvi]

also forgot to metion, expanded mode also won't work, just yet.
--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 03:28, ReaderScope <reade...@altcanvas.com> wrote:

that's strange. I tested filtering in different ways and it works for me. Also it is now optimized so it should load quickly.

Could you tell the exact steps you took from launching the app till you see the problem? Does the feed you are browsing already has any locally downloaded news items?
--
Jayesh

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:25 PM, <fern...@bugabundo.net> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 17:20, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's v1.5 preview4. Everything should work, except the Twitter timeline.

filtering to unread never shows nothing even though i know i have unread items, and the counter shows items

Refreshed home screen with Quick option (not so quick on my huge list).

Pick a feed from teh Favorite label that had 3 unread items, entered, and it showed nothing. I hit refresh and it apperenlty finished download, but no items.

returned to home screen and picked another, also from favorite and the same.

Pick one for another label and it worked OK.

A funky thing i noticed (but may very well be the way its meant to work), i let it download a few items and started browsing them, and all of the sudden I was reading 6 day old post. I guess this were cached unread items.

I pulled back to second menu, let it download a few more items and got it again. 

No big problem AFAICS, i guess its working as u intended, just letting u know.

One other thing, some items showed with a strange sorting.

i was reading some with less then one hour, then some from 3h ago appeared, and then i got some with less then two hours.

Not knowing what sorting u are using, either its showing the original posting date, and not the date it was "found by google reader bots", but sorting by the last one.

In this subject, are u sorting any feeds, or applying the one provided by user setting in greader?

[Jayesh Salvi]

--
Jayesh

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 2:41 PM, <fern...@bugabundo.net> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 03:28, ReaderScope <reade...@altcanvas.com> wrote:

that's strange. I tested filtering in different ways and it works for me. Also it is now optimized so it should load quickly.

Could you tell the exact steps you took from launching the app till you see the problem? Does the feed you are browsing already has any locally downloaded news items?
--
Jayesh

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:25 PM, <fern...@bugabundo.net> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 17:20, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's v1.5 preview4. Everything should work, except the Twitter timeline.

filtering to unread never shows nothing even though i know i have unread items, and the counter shows items

Refreshed home screen with Quick option (not so quick on my huge list).

Pick a feed from teh Favorite label that had 3 unread items, entered, and it showed nothing. I hit refresh and it apperenlty finished download, but no items.

returned to home screen and picked another, also from favorite and the same.

Pick one for another label and it worked OK.

At this point, if you go back to the feeds that showed no news items before, do you see the news items now? Also is filter on or off?

Because of this new non-blocking UI users can go back and start browsing other feeds. While they do that the old feed is still downloading items. So although the non-blocking UI is more responsive, you may end up with lot of background threads if you do lot of back-n-forth.

 

A funky thing i noticed (but may very well be the way its meant to work), i let it download a few items and started browsing them, and all of the sudden I was reading 6 day old post. I guess this were cached unread items.

I pulled back to second menu, let it download a few more items and got it again. 

No big problem AFAICS, i guess its working as u intended, just letting u know.

To refresh all the cached items, the refresh algorithm now keeps pulling items, until it has downloaded the oldest cached item.  That way it knows the latest state of all the cached items.

One other thing, some items showed with a strange sorting.

i was reading some with less then one hour, then some from 3h ago appeared, and then i got some with less then two hours.

Not knowing what sorting u are using, either its showing the original posting date, and not the date it was "found by google reader bots", but sorting by the last one.

In this subject, are u sorting any feeds, or applying the one provided by user setting in greader?

The posts are always sorted in chronological order (latest at the top). In earlier preview releases, there was a bug that led to the behavior that you described above. However in latest preview4 I have fixed that one. If you still see  the problem with a specific feed of yours, do the tests as follows:

1. Turn the filter off (2nd screen) so that all items are visible. Quit ReaderScope, wait for couple of minutes. (Even if you quit the app old background threads might take time to finish)

2. Open ReaderScope. Tap on the feed you are seeing the problem with.

3. Assuming that  the feed has cached news items; let them load completely. Wait. After it has loaded all the items (you will see the scrollbar height has stopped descreasing), scroll slowly down the list. Do NOT hit the end, otherwise you will trigger downloading of older items. While scrolling down, check the chronological order. If you see them out of order, report.

4. Now hit "Refresh". Again let it download all the new items, wait until scrollbar stops reducing in height. Again slowly scroll down, checking the chronological order. Don't hit the bottom. If you see any chronological order problem, report.

5. Now, continue scrolling down and hit the end. Let it download more items. Don't disturb while it does that. After it appears that it is done downloading the older items (it downloads 20 items at a time), scroll down slowly checking the chronology along the way. If there is problem, report.

6. Press Back. Now browse the same feed the way you would naturally. Reading items, scrolling up/down/till bottom, going back, etc. Do you see any chronological anomaly now? If so report.

The new non blocking UI had to be very multi threaded, so it is difficult to troubleshoot. By following the above procedure, you will help isolate the problem by testing one task at a time.

[Jayesh Salvi]

Just uploaded preview5

http://groups.google.com/group/readerscope/web/ReaderScope-1.5-preview5.apk

The expanded mode should work now. Also Twitter timeline (under "Social" tab) now loads in new progressive fashion.

With this, all the features are now ready with the new progressive loading scheme. Because it was such a huge change, there are still some crashes that you and me are seeing that need work. Also some code cleanup is necessary. So I will still take 1 or 2 days to stabilize the app before releasing it to market. Certainly it will be available by Christmas.

Give it a try.
--
Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 17:39, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just uploaded preview5

http://groups.google.com/group/readerscope/web/ReaderScope-1.5-preview5.apk

The expanded mode should work now. Also Twitter timeline (under "Social" tab) now loads in new progressive fashion.

With this, all the features are now ready with the new progressive loading scheme. Because it was such a huge change, there are still some crashes that you and me are seeing that need work. Also some code cleanup is necessary. So I will still take 1 or 2 days to stabilize the app before releasing it to market. Certainly it will be available by Christmas.

Give it a try.
--
Jayesh

What a nice xtmas gift :D

thanks, and Merry Christmas everyone :DD

[Jayesh Salvi]

One other thing, some items showed with a strange sorting.

i was reading some with less then one hour, then some from 3h ago appeared, and then i got some with less then two hours.

Not knowing what sorting u are using, either its showing the original posting date, and not the date it was "found by google reader bots", but sorting by the last one.

In this subject, are u sorting any feeds, or applying the one provided by user setting in greader?

I answered to this one before, but with some recent testing I figured when exactly will this happen.

You have a label which has a bunch of feeds. Now you browse by label, read the news items for some time and leave. Let's say the oldest items under this label is 5 months old.

Now you come back, but now read by feed. While reading by feed, let's say you scroll down and down and make it download older and older items. Let's say you end up fetching an item that is 1 year old.

Next time when you use the app, you again browse by label. It will now load all items under that label, the oldest item being 1 year old. Now you scroll to the end of the list, making it fetch older items 'by label'. It will download those items, and they will be more than 5 months old, but might be newer than 1 year old. But because the list is built in one direction, those items will get appended to the end. So now you will end up with a list that has 7 month old items listed later than 1 year old items.

Fixing this behavior will be very tricky at this point. But note that this anachronic list will only be temporary. If you go back and again browse by label, all the items will be listed in proper chronological order.

I am leaving this as it is. In future sometime if it turns out to be too annoying I will work on fixing it.

--

Jayesh

[fern...@bugabundo.net]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 12:06, Jayesh Salvi <jayes...@gmail.com> wrote:

You have a label which has a bunch of feeds.

I do

 

Now you browse by label,

I do, yes

 

read the news items for some time and leave. Let's say the oldest items under this label is 5 months old.

Dont anything that old unread :D

 

Now you come back, but now read by feed. While reading by feed, let's say you scroll down and down and make it download older and older items. Let's say you end up fetching an item that is 1 year old.

For example purpose, sure 

Next time when you use the app, you again browse by label. It will now load all items under that label, the oldest item being 1 year old. Now you scroll to the end of the list, making it fetch older items 'by label'. It will download those items, and they will be more than 5 months old, but might be newer than 1 year old. But because the list is built in one direction, those items will get appended to the end. So now you will end up with a list that has 7 month old items listed later than 1 year old items.

Yes, I can this happening

 

Fixing this behavior will be very tricky at this point. But note that this anachronic list will only be temporary. If you go back and again browse by label, all the items will be listed in proper chronological order.

I am leaving this as it is. In future sometime if it turns out to be too annoying I will work on fixing it.

No need. its minor, UI only, doesnt affect me much either.

I only reported it, cause it could be something else