Where’s my update?! :D

Sorry it’s been a whiles guys – University life has been busy. Aiming for a First is no pushover job. Anyway, as luck would have it, I’m stuck in an examination / revision period, so not a lot of time to work on Springy right now.

But, fear not – progress on Springy! 1.7 is well underway!

The current list if updates and fixes include:

• Entire backend rewritten for faster downloads and upto 40% less data downloads (typically between 5-15%), saving you time and money!
• Automatic Login
• Haptic Feedback now works on all devices
• Fixed URL parsing crashes
• You can now block users & report spam from the inbox
• Performance improvements to “my profile” loading
• Ability to delete from inbox overview using context menus
• Fixed random crashes with malformed profile images
• Lots of other small things.

Before the update hits, I’m also planning on adding in the following:

• Improved readability of questions & answers with full screen-width reading area
• Image uploading
• Inline image viewing
• Block users from inbox context menu
• “Answer this question” feature, to send any question your friends have answered to your inbox
• Show date on full Question / Answer view.

There’s also the possibility of

Unfortunately, as my examination period creeps into the month of May slightly, be on the lookout update to be hitting your phones some time in early May.

See ya round guys, and enjoy the app!

Johnny.

A sneak peak at Springy! 1.6

Well, the 1.6 update is taking a bit more work than I’d expected, but it’ll be a more substantial update than 1.5. Take a quick gander at it if you will… and expect the update sometime this month (:

Live Test of Springy 1.6, running on an HTC Trophy, filmed by a Samsung Omnia 7.

Changes you ask? Well, you’ll notice off the bat that the animations for your profile pages and inbox are now consistent and smooth after loading – no more animation skipping & freezing for long lists. The followers list has also been updated visually, and should have smoother scrolling as well.

Other than that, there are various other performance tweaks and changes underneath, and maybe a nice little surprise extra…

 

P.S. Ah, by the way. Letting you click on hyperlinks in questions and answers? That’s coming in 1.7, if that’s something you’re looking forward too!

Coming up–Springy! 1.4, 1.5, & 1.6

It’s been a little while right guys? Well don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you all! Christmas is here, and I’ve had some free time to polish up Springy! at bit.

First up is Springy! 1.4, which includes bug fixes, performance improvements, new features and a new basic theme, improved touch targets, and improved touch aware responses. You’ll love it (: It’s currently in testing now at Microsoft, and should be on the marketplace in a couple of days.

Next up is Springy! 1.5 – this is actually done – complete, ready to go. It features only 3 changes from 1.4, but they’re still worth a release. First up is to a fix a colouring bug with the new feature introduced in 1.4, when using light theme on the phone. Slipped past me in testing, and unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t let you cancel submissions that have already gone into testing, sooo it’s coming up in the next build.
But there’s more to 1.5 than that, there’s also a nice UI change to improve usability and readability on the profile pages, and a new basic theme, based on one of the old rejected designs. This’ll be put up for testing straight after 1.4 gets approved, so should be pushed to you sometime this week.

And that just leaves Springy! 1.6. What’s going to change in that you ask? Performance. Springy! is already considered one of the smoothest, and fastest Windows Phone 7 apps on the marketplace, but for me as a developer all I can see is massive performance pit holes, and skipping animations. The goal of Springy! 1.6 is to get much improved performance, especially when downloading additional questions/answers and when reloading the inbox after deleting/answering a question. Animation will also be worked on to be perfectly, consistently smooth through the application, no matter how visually complex a page gets. It’s going to be awesome
And what else? Improved themes. At the moment, I call themes “Basic Themes”. They're simple, and sparsely animated. New themes will be greatly animated and dynamic, and far more gorgeous looking, without being distracting. It’s going to be a big update. When can you expect it? No idea. Anytime between now and next year maybe (:

A peak at Springy! 1.0

As I write this, I’m just about to put the final touches on Springy 1.0 – which happens to be adding correct behaviour  for and handling of protected users (something some other Formspring clients don’t take special measures for), and finishing the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace artwork for submission, hopefully later tonight.

Whilst I’m working away on that, here’s a quick screen capture video of Springy! 1.0, which you’ll all hopefully get to play with with a few short weeks. Enjoy

Watch in HD on YouTube