It's been a long time coming, and we've given you all a few teasers along the way about what this update includes. The time has finally arrived for our new Windows Phone 8.1 update to LCARS Interface!
In many ways this is an update to the Windows Phone 8.0 app. It's also an entirely new app in a lot of ways as well! A lot of it appears the same on the outside, but underneath is an app that's been completely re-written from the ground up. Windows Phone 7.X and 8.0 apps used a version of the Microsoft Silverlight framework, while Windows 8 Store apps used the new Windows Runtime framework. Starting with Windows Phone 8.1, phone apps now have the option to be either Silverlight or Windows Runtime apps. Rather than simply upgrade to Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight, we chose to start over and convert it to a Windows Runtime app instead. There are many reasons for this. most of which I've covered in other blog entries. But there are many performance improvements and new features available now, in addition to this re-write allowing the Windows 8 store (Desktop/Laptop/Tablet) version of this app and the Windows Phone version to share a common code core which will speed up being able to bring new features to both simultaneously! Much of the same functionality will be available to both, and the layout you see will depend on which device is being used. As a result, many of the new features in this update will be making their way to the Windows 8.1 app very soon!
For the full list of changes that this update brings, see the Version History section of this blog.
A special Thank You to those who participated in Beta testing this version! Without your assistance this update would not have gotten to this point in either quality and would not have been completed yet!
Please let us know how you like the new features! We love to get feedback on what works, what doesn't work, or what you think is missing that we should add.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Monday, September 1, 2014
A few roadblocks, but still moving forward...
Development continues on the Windows Phone 8.1 version of LCARS Interface! We have been working a lot on the new camera module, but unfortunately there is an issue with the developer preview version of WP8.1 firmware on our Lumia 920 that denies access to the camera, and so that's made it a bit of a challenge to test anything. Our 520 does work but the camera is so limited on that device that we can't actually test most of the features. We will be receiving a new device in the next few days that will hopefully allow us to continue and be able to roll this out as soon as possible!
In the meantime we are adding a bit more to other things like the new Photos module, in order to pack in the kind of features you would expect in order to make it an acceptable replacement for the default photo gallery. After all, we are trying to make this app useful and not just fun to play with, even if we do want a lot of that too!
It's been a while since we last updated the Windows 8.1 version of LCARS Interface. There is a LOT we want to do with that one still. Many of the things being developed on the Windows Phone side will also become available there once we bring that app into sync with the new phone version. The two apps will eventually share most of their code. So far the "shared" code and most of the Windows Phone code are in place. Then we can tie in the Windows 8.1 app and we will be able to release the same new features on both at the same time going forward. There is still a lot of work to do for this, but it is coming along. There will be quite a bit of re-structuring of the Windows 8.1 app to make this happen, and we are hoping to wrap up this phone update in the next couple weeks so we can get started on that. There are also quite a few other things going on at the same time, but we don't have many details we can share about those just yet. Stay tuned! We appreciate your patience through this process. Microsoft has been changing their platforms (for the better) pretty rapidly and we are trying to make sure our apps take full advantage of everything they are doing, even if it means working and re-working several times.
In the meantime we are adding a bit more to other things like the new Photos module, in order to pack in the kind of features you would expect in order to make it an acceptable replacement for the default photo gallery. After all, we are trying to make this app useful and not just fun to play with, even if we do want a lot of that too!
It's been a while since we last updated the Windows 8.1 version of LCARS Interface. There is a LOT we want to do with that one still. Many of the things being developed on the Windows Phone side will also become available there once we bring that app into sync with the new phone version. The two apps will eventually share most of their code. So far the "shared" code and most of the Windows Phone code are in place. Then we can tie in the Windows 8.1 app and we will be able to release the same new features on both at the same time going forward. There is still a lot of work to do for this, but it is coming along. There will be quite a bit of re-structuring of the Windows 8.1 app to make this happen, and we are hoping to wrap up this phone update in the next couple weeks so we can get started on that. There are also quite a few other things going on at the same time, but we don't have many details we can share about those just yet. Stay tuned! We appreciate your patience through this process. Microsoft has been changing their platforms (for the better) pretty rapidly and we are trying to make sure our apps take full advantage of everything they are doing, even if it means working and re-working several times.
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