I started working on the LFCHistory Android app 9 years ago. In that time for the reds there have been a number of finals, playing legends have come and gone and we've have had 4 managers. For me personally, during this time I have moved house, changed job twice and had three children meaning that the app has not had the attention it had in the early years. Whats made it worse is that over that time Android itself has moved on so much that what should in theory normally be simple and quick changes took far longer because each new release needed a load of rework to support the latest Android APIs . Lots of features that we take for granted now like pull to refresh etc had to be developed from scratch when the app was first released. Most of these are now baked into android and so work was needed to replace the original implementations with the new methods. . I have spent a lot of time recently trying to do this type of work to bring the app up to use the latest versions of the Android APIs so that I can begin to do more regular feature releases which take advantage of the new functionality. I pushed out a release last week which did not add anything noticeable but it laid the foundation to start adding these new features going forward. The first of which that i'm looking to release is automatic day and night theming. By default the theme will be applied automatically based on the sun cycles but can also be selected manually.
This is the first of what I hope to be many new updates coming to the app. At its peak the app had a great following but the lack of attention I have given it over the years has meant that the number of downloads has decreased. If you were or are a fan of the app, I would really appreciate it if you could share the app with your friends and family. YNWA
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Some of you may have noticed that the app is no longer available on Google play. The app was pulled by Google but we were not given a decent reason as to what within the app was breaking the rules.
We are working on getting it back up so please bear with us. If you have it on your phone at will work as normal. Just thought I'd mention it as I have started to receive a few queries. I'll keep this, Twitter and google ± up to date with the situation Its been a long time coming but the latest release of the LFCHistory app is finally out and available to download. The changes started off a while ago with some small bug fixes but with the announcement of Android L and material design I decided that more time should be spent on getting the app in a position to be able to take advantage of the new features that are coming when the next android version is released in November. New Main Menu The first thing that users will notice is the better use of graphics on the main menu. Now, instead of simply displaying a text list the menu is made up of images representing the various menu options. this looks great on a mobile device but even better on a tablet. The theme continues with the addition of profile images on the lists of players and managers.
Its typical that when we are about to win the league the data suppliers decide we should not be able to see this taking place in all its glory.
You may have noticed that the league table and fixtures for the current season have not been working over the last couple of weeks. The good news is that the league table is now fixed in the latest update that will be hitting Google Play today. We are still waiting on a solution to the fixture list issue but the next match view on the main menu is still working as always and as Brendan says, that is all we should be concerning ourselves with. One match (fix) at a time. Download the update from Google Play now The data supplier that I use to get the up to date results, fixtures and tables has lost the rights to the content and unfortunately as a result of this the applications that use this data are currently now unable to get updates. The applications that are affected by this are the Premier League Fan Centre and the LFCHistory android apps. Both apps are still stable and will not crash as a result of this but obviously this means that they are no longer able to update. A summary of the features affected by this can be seen below. I am currently looking at a number of replacement services so that this issue can be fixed. One of the options that has potential requires me to set up another server in the cloud in order to process the requests. If anyone can suggest any potential football data services that I could investigate or cheap hosting services that offer tomcat 7 hosting please let me know . Thank you and please bear with me whilst I try to find a solution for this issue. The data issue currently affects the following features.
All other features such as news, injuries and twitter feeds are currently working as normal. The data issue currently affects the current seasons league table and fixture. Luckily the seasons results are taken directly from the LFCHistory.net website and so they are unaffects. All of the other lfc history site features will continue to work as normal. Sorry for the inconvenience, please bear with me whilst I look for a solution. A new release of LFCHistory was released this evening. This contains a number of bug fixes and improvements to the way the ads are displayed which reduces the resources requirements on the device. You may notice a new permission requirement when installing the application, this is to make it possible to save, share and as wallpaper the images that are displayed in the twitter feeds. Some of you may have noticed that the current seasons fixtures and league table have stopped updating recently. This is a result of our data provider losing the rights to the football data. We are looking into a solution to this, for more information on the issue click here. Whilst we are unable to receive this data, I have hidden the fixtures tab from the current season page to avoid confusion. ![]() New Features in this release. The main new feature that is included in this release is the ability to sort the season stats. Previously this table was always sorted by the number of appearances. This is fine if you want to see Hendersons name at the top as an ever present in the team but if you want to follow Suarez, Sturridge or even Skrtels scoring great progress, it was not ideal. You can now click on the column header to sort by either goals or appearances. Another small change is that all of the margins on the screens have been updated so that the layouts appear better on all phone devices. Hope you enjoy the application, please bear with us on the fixtures issue, we are looking for a solution. ![]() Version 3.0.0 of the LFCHistory app contains major updates to the UI. Phone users will get updates to the new Holo UI, this amongst other things brings swipe-able tabs and software options button. The actionbar has been updated to use SherlockActionBar which enables older android devices to make use of the standard ICS/JellyBean functionality. Most of the work has gone into updating the application to be optimised tablet devices. All lists (Player,Manager,Seasons) now show the selected details on the same screen making better use of the available screen space. All details fragments have also been updated to use a separate layout which uses larger text sizes etc to make the information easier to read on a larger screen. The tablet optimisation is part of the standard app and is still available from Google Play for free. I would be keen to hear your feedback on the new tablet features, if you have any thoughts please get in touch via @lfchistandroid ![]() The latest version of the LFChistory Android app has been updated so that as well as having articles from the lfchistory.net website, it now also has the latest news from a number of different sources. Currently the sources are:
Download version 2.6.0 from Google Play now. Quick post to say that LFCHistory 2.5.4 has been released to google play.
It includes even more speed improvements and local timezone fixes. The speed improvements have been achieved by using completely new set of webservices which return the data in smaller packages and respond quicker. The local timezone fixes relate to the next match time which is used for the main menu, widget and match start notification. Download the update from Google Play now. LFC History 2.5.1 has now been released to google play.
This update includes a number of new features, improvements and bug fixes. REDUCED DATA USAGEFrom this version forward whenever a request is made to the web to download data such as a match report, the data is compressed on the server, downloaded and then decompressed on the mobile device. The result of this is a major reduction in data usage and a significant speed improvement. LATEST INJURIES (PRO)The pro version of the app now has a text ticker on the main menu screen which displays the latest injury news (great for Fantasy Football). OPPONENT PROFILEThe opponent profile feature is now available to all users in the free version of the app. MORE MATCH REPORT DATAThe match report screens now also have details of the substitutions and red cards that occurred in the game, Get over to google play to get the update now. |
MeI am a Liverpool supporting software developer originally from North Wales, now living and working in Manchester. Archives
May 2019
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