xda-dev is one of the best forums ever and the people here are amazing i just can't seem to understand why no-one has worked out how to add desktop widgets, i mean i know were waiting for the sdk to allow us but with some of these great minds surely we can make do it i mean whats holding us back come on jesusfreke . Also i know its adding to launcher.apk i know its difficult but surely if we can add multi-touch we can add desktop widgets
excuse me btw for being a bit of a **** i just cant seem to get why we can work it out
all hail Jesusfreke lol
I think the problem is they haven't released the source for widgets yet. I could be wrong but i think that's what i read awhile back.
That is exactly it. Google / Android Devs haven't yet released the tools or code required to do so. Once it hits, I expect the widgets to blow up though. Tons will be released overnight if you ask me.
i suppose what he's saying is, although we don't have the source code for widgets, do we actually need it? could someone find a way to add 'hacked' widgets without it? there must be a way round the source code issue
If it could be done, it would have already been done.
First widget I make is going to be a flashlight, tip calculator right on the desktop, that way I can delete all 96 apps of both. (true reason I moved apps to SD)
hehe.... all i want is a weather widget..... seriously......
but i really do think there is a market for a tip calculator! esp. here in australia where you don't normally tip!
ive been thinking of a myfaves widget ....that way you dont have to go into the app itslef to see them ...that way you can actually just move the little cricle thingy right on the page
They'll get around to it when they do. If you want them that bad, why don't you make them yourself?
Thats what the whole response to this thread is, we can't make them yet. You typically can't open a lock without a key.
dom2684 said:
ive been thinking of a myfaves widget ....that way you dont have to go into the app itslef to see them ...that way you can actually just move the little cricle thingy right on the page
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is a very cool idea!
forceshield said:
Thats what the whole response to this thread is, we can't make them yet. You typically can't open a lock without a key.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unless you pick the lock. But I think its been made clear that's not possible or people would rather wait for the source code than waste so much of their time trying to crack it instead of building more apps!
Hope this comes soon. aHome is lame (its a G1 not an iPhone) and so is only 3 default widgets, only one of which I actually use..
Also if go like dxtop web page. Andorid peps said not to make anymore widgets becase to do so creats some kind of law that could leave ur phone open for attack. And also I don't the battery life on the g1 will suport widgets very well. But I could be wrong.
Theres are huge concerns from a security standpoint when it comes to opening up the ability to add 3rd party widgets, thats why it hasnt been released yet. The new cupcake branch added more secure widget support.
Per http://betterandroid.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/open-home-faqs-where-are-widgets/:
"Home runs with quite a few permissions, most notably the ability to
read contacts. With your implementation of widgets, any application
can offer a new widget that, once installed by the user, will silently
use Home’s permissions to achieve whatever it needs. For instance,
a widget could be easily modified to read all the
contacts and upload them silently to a website. At no point the user
will know that the widgets will make use of the “read contacts”
permission.
The second security hole is the ability you give the widgets to spoof
any other app. A widget could for instance find shortcuts on the Home
screen and change their Intent or attach a different click listener to
execute something entirely different. This way, a widget could for
instance execute a fake Email app and grab the user’s password and
emails. A widget could do much more too since they have access to all
the information stored in the Home screen UI.
These two very important issues are the reason why widgets were not
implemented in Android 1.0. We need to implement them correctly to
guarantee the privacy and safety or the user’s data.
As your application currently stand, I would strongly advise you to
disable the widgets support until you come up with a secure
implementation of widgets. You have customers who paid for your
applications and it would be really bad both for them, you and Android
if a malicious widgets started taking advantage of these security
holes"
Hey, I can't figure this out!
How can I mark more than one article read?
I've been grappling with this, too.
I don't think it can be done, bizarrely! I think it's the only RSS reader I've ever used that lacks this function.
I really like the widget for the HTC news app - looks better than anything else out there which is the only reason I've stuck with it so far...
What I've been doing it simply going into the top article, then repeatedly hitting the down button to pass through the remaining articles, which subsequently marks them as read - not ideal (especially when there are a lot of articles) but it kind of works.
What is also irritating is that each feed still displays the number of articles in brackets at the end even when read, whilst the "News" tab right at the bottom will have a green circle with the number of un-read available. You don't necessarily know which feed they're in.
I've been playing with BlueRss which seems to work well but unfortunately lacks a widget that is as nice to use as the HTC News app.
Anyone else with any ideas?
Thanks, too bad...
Anyone else have any ideas?
I just searched the forum looking for an answer to this very question, I guess it cant be done?
Unfortunately I haven't found a way. Such a shame, since the rest of the interface is nice - its widget is the best one I've used. Aside from the fact that the only way to import your Reader feeds is to export an OPML file from Reader, copy to the phone and import it's quite a nice program.
I'm flitting between BlueRSS the mobile version of Google Reader and NewsRob at the mo.
BlueRSS really is very nice to use - it's fast and nicely laid out and uses the Android browser automatically for full webpage article views but doesn't offer full offline browsing of the full HTML article (I don't think) - plus it doesn't sync with Google Reader Its other downside is the fact that its widget is extremely poor.
Google Reader Mobile is quite nice, and obviously uses the Android browser for everything, although i don't think there is any offline capability at all, so it becomes quite useless when away from an Internet connection.
I've tried NewsRob since it gets so much praise, and I really like the Reader-sync and offline browsing, and I'm leaning towards it being the best of the bunch so far, but the one thing that stops me from giving it total praise is the fact that it uses its own (quite frankly ****e) browser for navigating the basic articles rather than passing it to the excellent Android one automatically - you can choose to do this per article so that's not really a major problem, but it would be nice to have some multitouch support and do away with the poor zooming. If they offered this as an option, it would be great. It also has no widget to speak of
Anyone know of a good news app? I used the stock one for awhile and liked it's simplicity but as of new years it will not update any more. I've been trying out pulse but it just doesn't seem to work as well.
Hi, I use an app called Pulse. It works great and has a great viewing ability, unlike the stock news app which you have to go to the articles link to read the whole aticle, this brings you the whole article and works smooth when changing articles and such. Enjoy!!!
I use Nubinews , gives you feeds from nyt, bbc, cnn, latimes, lots of newspapers, also feeds from phandroid, engadget, gizmodo, kotaku, linuxdevices, wired a bunch more too, its my one stop bored time wasting shop
It's been well over a year since MyColorScreen acquired Zooper, and Zooper's online presence is STILL a hideous mess. The official links at the Google Play store are broken, and even some of the reference links on this forum's sticky are dead. I can't even find an official blog post that isn't less than a year old. Zooper's documentation wasn't that good to begin with, and it looks like MyColorScreen has done absolutely nothing to improve it.
Here's my fear:
MyColorScreen is going to mothball Zooper so it won't compete with one of its future pet products (themer maybe). Zooper requires a huge time investment to use properly, and I don't want to lose that investment. I've been burned by this exact scenario with other successful apps.
PROVE ME WRONG, MYCOLORSCREEN... PLEASE! Get your support and reference material in one place and make it available. Communicate your plans for Zooper. If you're just "parking" the app until you figure out a business plan, then say so. We're on your side, so please don't screw us over.
Yeah.... You are so true.
But I have to add that they don't do anything to improve the App. Even their Promises regarding Zooper are just empty words. They promised to add multiple Timezone support, but nothing happens.... Still only possible for text....
brownblack said:
It's been well over a year since MyColorScreen acquired Zooper, and Zooper's online presence is STILL a hideous mess. The official links at the Google Play store are broken, and even some of the reference links on this forum's sticky are dead. I can't even find an official blog post that isn't less than a year old. Zooper's documentation wasn't that good to begin with, and it looks like MyColorScreen has done absolutely nothing to improve it.
Here's my fear:
MyColorScreen is going to mothball Zooper so it won't compete with one of its future pet products (themer maybe). Zooper requires a huge time investment to use properly, and I don't want to lose that investment. I've been burned by this exact scenario with other successful apps.
PROVE ME WRONG, MYCOLORSCREEN... PLEASE! Get your support and reference material in one place and make it available. Communicate your plans for Zooper. If you're just "parking" the app until you figure out a business plan, then say so. We're on your side, so please don't screw us over.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, they have apparently fixed their broken links. But their web presence is still awkward. Every link at the Play store points you to a support page which has a feedback forum, yet doesn't even mention these XDA forums. So is XDA still relevant? And one of the top hits from a google search takes you to the old zooper.org page which indeed directs you to these XDA forums. But a few people are still trying to post on the defunct zooper.org archives!
So as far as I can tell, there are 3 separate zooper forums that are unaware of each other. It's this kind of disjointed mess that makes me worry about the future of the product line.
I wouldn't of upgraded to pro had I known it was going to be abandonware myself. It was the first, and one of the few, apps I've upgraded to pro. Even if an update was months away it would be nice to know there's something going on.
bterrill said:
I wouldn't of upgraded to pro had I known it was going to be abandonware myself. It was the first, and one of the few, apps I've upgraded to pro. Even if an update was months away it would be nice to know there's something going on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Update just released. So far it looks to be just a ui update but at least its something.
jr67 said:
Update just released. So far it looks to be just a ui update but at least its something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Google Play store is showing version 2.58 (Nov 2014) as the latest. Do you know of something more recent?
brownblack said:
The Google Play store is showing version 2.58 (Nov 2014) as the latest. Do you know of something more recent?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, it must be a beta update. You can join the beta google+ group to get access. As far as I can tell its just a UI update nothing more.
Well it's something I guess. I never digged too deep and didn't even know someone bought this out a while back or whatever. Damn shame there's not more work being done though. I'm not on zooper beta but not even sure what ui would need updated unless there's finally support for better weather location things.
I guess I'll join the bandwagon on hoping work that matters to most of us is done .... eg variables and what not. I would even pay 4.99 or 5.99 for a diff version that had 3 updates a year to stuff that's fun to mess with. I must of spent the first 2 months straight on my galaxy playing with zooper... like hours on end
Thanks for the info jr67
Zooper is awesome!
While I agree that updates are great and there are things that would be nice to have added, I think the app is pretty awesome as is. I rarely feel like I run out of opportunities for new ways to customize my phone and tablet because it lends itself to so many possibilities. Now if they would only update their app Media Utilities to work correctly with Android Lollipop (Zooper can't display cover art and music information at the same time with Lollipop), I'd be all smiles!!
MyColorScreen kinda died
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but according to my sources, MyColorScreen is dead and it's likely that they won't be coming back. I talked to a former MyColorScreen employee, about how to get a human response from MyColorScreen, and here was the interaction (Via Twitter)
@MarcoJHB I need a little help. How can I get in contact with mycolorscreen and get a human response?"
"@burner_studios sad to say but MCS is pretty much dead. Anything I can help with though?"
@MarcoJHB not really, but thanks for the info!"
Here is a link to the conversation.
https://twitter.com/burner_studios/status/631000884072349696
Why do I believe this?
1. MyColorScreen's last tweet was "All good things must come to an end. Follow @MarcoJHB to stay updated with his new ventures! https://youtu.be/kxFyq1I-g-I #dontstopcustomizing" and proves that the source is trustworthy.
2. The last update to Zooper Widget (free and pro) was 11/3/2015, Media Utilities was last updated 18/12/15, and Themer, MyColorScreen's main product, is no longer avalible on the Play Store.
3. The Zooper Widget beta community has a very old icon
4. The official MyColorScreen community had it's last "Screen of the day" post 19/3/2015.
5. The last "Question of the day" post in the aforementioned community was 19/3/2014.
6. Again with the aforementioned community, Marcos Agas is still a co-owner, despite him no longer being employed with MyColorScreen.
7. Again with the MyColorScreen Google+ community, there is essentially no moderation whatsoever.
8. MyColorScreen CEO Ashvin Dhingra last posted on Google+ 30/4/2014.
9. Ashvin's LinkedIn profile says "Co-Founder & CEO at Themer by MyColorScreen (acquired by IAC)"
10. On the Zooper Widget uservoice website, under "Report a Problem" you will find an item with 111 votes (As of this post) named "Editing interface HUGE lag" which is a bug that appears to be occurring on devices primarily running lollipop. It was reported on 5/5/2015, however I can testify that this has occurred on devices running 4.4 as early as 2014.
Based on that, I'd say that the information is fairly trustworthy.
So I suppose, the real question is, "What is OUR future with Zooper Widget?"
Are we going to decompile and update it ourselves, just like with steam?
Are we going to look for a new design tool to use?
Are we all just going to switch to using KLWP?
because I may know what the future of Zooper Widget is from the perspective of MyColorScreen, but we have great developers in this community that could keep the app going now that MCS stopped doing so.
That sad news, I dont like KWLP I stay with Zooper Widget I made like 200+ widgets. I hope someone acquire ZW and gonna develop it further
I tried kwlp but I hate ui and everything is unorganized.. In Zooper is nice and simple organised. What alternatives do we have? Can't find anything that match zooper customization and easy to use.
Gesendet von meinem GT-I9295 mit Tapatalk
I'm not a fan of KLWP. Looks like the people who did Themer and Zooper just moved on to another app and abandoned the others.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Has anybody tried Make Your Own Clock Widget? It seems to do a lot more than just clocks
ewa12321 said:
That sad news, I dont like KWLP I stay with Zooper Widget I made like 200+ widgets. I hope someone acquire ZW and gonna develop it further
I tried kwlp but I hate ui and everything is unorganized.. In Zooper is nice and simple organised. What alternatives do we have? Can't find anything that match zooper customization and easy to use.
Gesendet von meinem GT-I9295 mit Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely agree with you on that front. I already have invested so much into zooper widget development that I'm willing to push it to, and far past its limits. Although I don't expect IAC to let someone else acquire zooper widget until the profits from it begin to decrease.
But yeah zooper hasn't hit the end of its lifespan just yet. In the end it's developers that decide when that happens.
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
What other widget maker I can recommend is Buzz Widget. Easy to use some functions are really cool wish to have some in Zooper Widget: bigger preview, tap hold and move object with your finger (optional), filter widgets by show only clocks, weather widgets, music widgets etc only disadvantage is that to share download stuff from other people it's recommend to download Buzz Launcher and idk if it works with Tasker and no support with Kolorette . Worth trying.
Maybe UCCW lots of skins similar to Zooper
That's not fair, Themer got update and Zooper Widget nothing since March
Gesendet von meinem GT-I9295 mit Tapatalk
Another update, KWGT by the team of KLWP is now in development.
Yeah... Bye bye zooper.
Further information found here: https://plus.google.com/+FrankMonzas/posts/9PpjCce44PL
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
firebirdfilms said:
Another update, KWGT by the team of KLWP is now in development.
Yeah... Bye bye zooper.
Further information found here: https://plus.google.com/+FrankMonzas/posts/9PpjCce44PL
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the death blow to Zooper. They walked away from Themer and Zooper do they really think that they won't walk away from this?
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
KLWP and KWGT are developed by "Kustom industries" hailing from Italy. MCS is from California, and has had no known interaction with kustom industries. Also KI only has 4 apps they are working on including pro keys, and KWGT reuses a lot of code from KLWP. So I'm not really worried.
Yet.
Just found this thread, so, for anyone trying to understand what's the difference between KWGT and the other widgets around i have filled up a list of Kustom advantages over Zooper / UCCW on the main thread, i will list them here just for clarity:
How is KWGT better than Zooper, Buzz, Mycw or UCCW??
You have Komponents which are like widgets inside widgets or reusable items inside the editor. So for example you can create a clock and redistribute it as a module for KWGT, users will just add your clock and change the options you expose (like colors and font), there are many examples online on the store already or you can check the dedicated thread above
You can download content directly from HTTP, so you can have a Google Map with the city you are in directly in the widget background if you want, or use Street View, or you can have a Komponent that does that for you like this, you can add it with one click
You have global variables, so you can set a color once and then use it whenever you like, so, when you want to change it you just change the global and it will change the color everywhere in one click, this allows users of your theme to change color easily
You can create touch actions that will hide / show elements based on touch, so you can show full weather data when someone clicks on a weather icon and then hide it automatically after X seconds
You have containers, so you can group items inside an object, move them together, apply effects and rotation to the entire group
You have built in music support, so music will work without any additional tool, no music utilities needed, it just works
You have more effects, like long shadows, morphable text, blur images and so on
You can extract colors from images, cover art or anything downloaded from the internet (like kolorette does, but builtin)
You can use formulas on any property you like, no need to use "advanced parameters", you just turn a property into a formula and then you can do anything you like
You have full support for different location, so you can apply a location to any group and make a world clock in seconds, locations are then easily accessible from the settings
You have much more functions, you can download text from HTTP, use regular expressions, parse RSS, XML and JSON, do math with dates, create timers
Much better resizing, the widget will resize automatically and touch will always work on any module regardless of the orientation
A wizard to create APK skins in seconds without any Android development knowledge or additional tool except the JDK
Last but not least from my measurement battery usage difference between KWGT and the others is like 1/100th (not kidding, you can try yourself with a good battery monitor like better battery stats plus, Kustom has 2 processes so you can clearly see the difference between the editor and the real widget/wallpaper service)
@Katt50 / @ewa12321 what's wrong with KWGT UI? anything i can improve? BTW i have absolutely no intention of stopping the development anytime soon, it might slow down at a certain point (i am now releasing a new version every 3 weeks because i have a HUGE todo list) but i will always try to do my best to add new stuff, so if you have any suggestion glad to help
frankmonza said:
@Katt50 / @ewa12321 what's wrong with KWGT UI? anything i can improve? BTW i have absolutely no intention of stopping the development anytime soon, it might slow down at a certain point (i am now releasing a new version every 3 weeks because i have a HUGE todo list) but i will always try to do my best to add new stuff, so if you have any suggestion glad to help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's my problem...
Most of the people involved were the same people that abandoned Themer. And abandoned Zooper. I was active in the Themer G+ Community and see many names that were active there
How do I know that in a year that you decide to move on to a different app and just abandoned KWLP? Personally, I have not played around with KWLP much but I didn't find it easy to use for a beginner at all.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
I'm over the artificial intelligence of the news feed in Google Assistant or search. It gives me the same five stories from three different sources and I go to delete some of the sources to never show again and poof they reappear.
Are there any awesome alternatives for general news that are neutral between Fox News or HuffPost?
I have noticed the occasional duplicate in my reading through the news feed, but my interests are varied enough that it doesn't happen to an annoying degree. With the AI, the more information you give it about your interests and your hobbies, the more it has to work with. For example, in my case Google knows my favorite teams and always throws up the scorecards. It knows I like geek things like role playing and science-fiction. It knows I'm into technology. All of this information I gave it - of my own free will - because I simply do not care what Google chooses to do with it.
To actually answer your question, if you want a balanced alternative for general news, you want to look outside the country. I personally get my news from Canada, via the CBC website. Unfortunately, that doesn't show up on the feed.
Scottay5150 said:
I'm over the artificial intelligence of the news feed in Google Assistant or search. It gives me the same five stories from three different sources and I go to delete some of the sources to never show again and poof they reappear. Are there any awesome alternatives for general news that are neutral between Fox News or HuffPost?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have also come to the conclusion that it is not possible to "train" the Google News feed. No matter how many hundreds of inputs you provide, there is a never ending stream of the same articles or like-minded sources. Try using Feedly. I use it on my PC, tablet and phone. You have a lot more control by choosing only the feeds you want to see and there are tons of choices. There is an initial time investment to browse through all the feeds and get things set up, (you have to opt in to everything you want to see) but then maintenance is effortless. I found it easier to do the initial setup on PC, and then use the app on my phone to view. I've got enough feeds where I usually cannot get to everything. Feedly is one of the better newsreaders out there and I have always been happy with the free version.