Ever since we decided to support Windows Phone 7 for our LCARS style apps, we have been able to keep the features and functionality very close to our Windows Phone 8 app, short of a few features that are just not supported by the platform. We hope to continue this trend as much as possible, but it's going to be a little more difficult going forward.
It seems with Windows 8.1, Microsoft decided to give the hard axe to Windows Phone 7 support for its portable class libraries, and that means if we want to be able to support the newest functions in Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 going forward, we will have to remove support for Windows Phone 7 when it comes to a lot of our code. This is a bit of a tough pill for us to swallow, since we just spent several weeks a couple months ago setting everything up to work across all Windows platforms including WP7!
So, what does this actually mean for our WP7 users? Well, it means things will go back to the way they were previously where WP7 may get updates a little slower than the rest. We don't intend to completely drop support for it in the short term. We are going to have to make some changes to our back end code once again to have one code base for Windows 8(.1), Windows Phone 8(.1), Windows Desktop (when we get there...) and possibly XBox One (If we ever get there...) and a separate code base again for WP7. Rest assured, if it's possible to add the new features to the WP7 app that we add to the WP8 app, we will just as we always have. It's just going to take a bit longer in come cases. It's a shame that we only had the luxury of our current setup for a couple of updates...it really did make things nicer!
But Microsoft, for what it's worth, is doing a lot of great things to improve the Windows Phone platform overall, and so we intend to take full advantage of that as they bring the Windows 8 and Windows Phone platforms closer together, our LCARS apps will grow closer together and more tightly integrated as well.
We will also have a bit of good news coming up later this week. We can't say what it is just yet, but those of you who lurk on this blog but haven't yet gotten our Windows 8 app will want to stay tuned for our next post...
Any plans for Android or iOS?
ReplyDeleteNot in the short term, as it pretty much would require starting of scratch and we have limited resources available for these apps. We do have some plans for later this year to possibly get Android and iOS users something though if we have the time to do it....
DeleteI've actually been wondering about if there was an LCARS app for the Windows 8 phone, as that will be my next purchase (bought a Windows 8 laptop and a Surface RT - which, for the record, is a cool little tablet). Sorry to see that WIN7 is such a hard row to how, but good to see I can get it for my pending new phone.
ReplyDeleteYes, we do have a version of LCARS Interface for Windows Phone! We also have the Simulator portion available but as a separate app for resource reasons.
DeleteWe also have a free Windows Phone app called LCARS Personnel which acts as an alternative to the People app.
Currently our Windows Phone apps (besides the simulator) focus more on the functional parts and less on the entertainment part, but we do have plans to change that after we finish our major overhaul of that portion on the Windows 8 side.