Release 270

[Ana G]

Wow, I really like the fast forward and rewind! It's great to be able to listen to something a second time or to skip past material that sounds like blah-blah. It works really well, though it took me a few swipes to understand how diagonal the movement should be. this feature moves the player significantly closer to beta in my opinion.

 

Eventually, I would like for there to be a setting that allows users to choose the time increment of the swipe--maybe 30 sec & 1, 5, & 10 min (in case books are poorly marked).

 

As I'm using the DAISY Reader more often, I find myself wishing for feedback that confirms my horizontal swipe commands. In other words, When I swipe to change navigation level, I'd like to hear a soft click, feel a short vibrational burst, or hear the level announced (e.g., Level 1, Level 2 ...). this would be especially helpful now that there is also a diagonal swipe command.

 

Another request for future versions is for the app to put a DAISY book folder on the SD card (if one isn't there already) or to search for DAISY books there by default (if such a folder already exists). Being slow about the obvious, it took me a while to organize my books in a folder so as not to scroll through every item on my card in order to get to the books.

 

Ana is full of requests because she is very excited.

[Julian Harty]

Ana,

Thanks for more very helpful feedback on the software. I'm glad that even my simple implementation of rewind and forward are useful and I'll improve this feature soon. I'd been waiting for an answer from the Google development team for eyes-free about modifying one of their files in case they had some recommendations or suggestions. Since I've not seen a reply I'll assume all's well (Raman's one of the people on this list so he can shout if he disagrees :-) and I'll make some modifications and ask you to try them to see how well they work for you in practice.

I recognise the need to improve the feedback to you, especially as things like the auto-screensaver can kick-in which means you don't even know if you're still interacting with the DaisyReader :-( I'll see what I can do to get 'something' working and improve the interface, again based on your feedback and feedback from other users. This is an area that can take a lot of time and effort to implement well, especially as there's a wide variety of preferences for the various users and potential users of the software. 

For the 'daisy' folder, I'd originally decided to give the user the choice of where to store the DaisyBooks rather than mandating a location. Perhaps the sensible solution would be to add a feature that configures the folder if the software doesn't have one specified. I've created Issue 42 as a feature request http://code.google.com/p/android-daisy-epub-reader/issues/detail?id=42 which describes my proposed approach. You're welcome to comment on it, and if any of you would like to try writing the code even to implement it.

Good stuff. Thank you again.

Julian 

[T.V Raman]

You can grab a "wait lock" to make sure the screen doesn't turn
off while the thing is talking.

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