Saturday, April 2, 2011

PhoneMarks Development Notes 11/04

First of all, thank you for everyone who is supporting my little application. After a couple of glitches with the latest update, the new versions are working well and with the Pro version you can now synchronise back to Chrome.

I have started on the background synchronisation and have a working version of the Chrome extension running on my computer. I may release this before I update the Android component to include background synchronisation (Pro Version only) or wait a release both.

While background synchronisation is easy to implement in both components, the problem occurs when both Chrome and Android synchronise at the same time - I need to check/develop/test this as the last thing you want is for PhoneMarks to wipe your bookmarks as it is in the middle of a synchronisation and thinks there are no bookmarks! This is probably why I will wait to release both at once so I have the complete solution figured out.

As well as the background synchronisation, I will try and work on the Samsung issue. I have made changes to the bookmark addition/deletion methods in Android and they look like they work better. I had a colleague with a Sony X10 that did not synchronise (and looks like the standard Samsung issue), which after the latest update now works! My brother has a Samsung Galaxy, which when I get a chance I'll test and check.

If you experience problems synchronising or the Samsung issue, please contact me and let me know the make, model and Android OS version. Hopefully then I can work out why it works for some users and doesn't for others.

While using PhoneMarks Pro myself, I have noticed that if you create a new bookmark within a new folder (i.e. create a bookmark with a '-' separator) within your Android browser, the extension doesn't create the new folder when synchronised and hence the bookmark! I'll try and figure out why the extension doesn't add the folder. In the meantime, add the bookmark to the root and create the folder once synchronised in Chrome.

And Finally! I am thinking of allowing the separator to be customised in the Android application. While this is sort of a simple fix, I'll need to test and handle the 'upgrade' from old style to new style. This will not be an issue for Free users as I remove ALL bookmarks before a synchronise. Pro users will probably have an option to 'reload' their bookmarks with the new separator style. I'll try and add this, but each additional feature adds more time before I can release.

I'll keep you posted on these developments and hope you all like the improvements when they are released.

Further Info