[DEV] XDA FaceBook App for WinMo

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Here is an article on what kinds of feedback we're looking for when helping test the public beta: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=9227274

[UPDATED 12/7/10]

BETA 4.1!

**update** If you were caught in the infinite automatic-update, things should be fixed now. Also, I forgot to disable the Compose button in the inbox. It will crash the app if clicked on. Hopefully by friday I can have another version that has this part working

• Photo Albums! Pictures can now be viewed in XDAFacebook.
  • Big pictures will open up in the default browser for the time being. Once I make a good photo viewer, I'll replace that.
  • Also, the settings menu has a whole section dedicated to photos. Feel free to play with the settings, but numerical values == 0 or <0 will cause the app to crash! There is no safty net for this!
  • There is a number for concurrent image downloads. This number should be between 6-10. Any more can cause slow down, and less and the effect seems non-existant. I've gone as high as 25 and felt pretty good about it. But I haven't dared push it to the limit!
  • New albums had a few bugs so I held back on this release. It will be coming soon!
• Older Posts! Feel free to browse the older posts I've successfully gone about a days worth of posts back w/o any lag.
• Searchable Friends List! I added a search box at the top of the friends search list
• Memory Management! Special Thanks goes out to Corwin9S. He helped me look at the memory usage. I reduced the CPU cycles by ~30%. It still takes up about 3-6 mbs of RAM. This is caused by Form Allocations, DLL imports, etc. Most of the space is just allocated space that I can't get rid of. I will try to find more ways to make the RAM usage go down, but from what I've been told by some people at MSFT, this numer isn't uncommon or bad. CPU cycles are what count and that's what I'm trying to optimize
• GUI fixes! I finished the drop-downs, so they look a little more professional. I also added the numerical counters. There are still more that can be done on them, so I will continue improving their apperance and performance.
• Rollup of bug fixes
• And finally SPEED!! This version should be the fastest yet. Rendering times are super quick and load times seem to be back to where they belong.

Instructions for Localization:

Please create a blank language file (instructions are above) and edit ONLY the text in between the quote marks "". The quotes need to remain!
Verify that your text doesn't fly off the screen. Anywhere that the text is too long for the graphic, try shortening the word or pick a different one (if that's possible) if not, let me know (via picture) and I'll make the necessary changes.
Once you have a translated file, save it as <Language>.txt and upload it to your device. Place it in the same directory where you got the Blank.txt.

Please share your translations!

ALSO! Since the app will be transforming and new features will be being added, the translation process will be ongoing.
If you click "Create Blank Language File" and you already had an alternate translation loaded and working, the Blank.txt will only have the new strings in english, so you will only need to translate the changes.

Unfortunately, after a couple of hours searching the web and looking at platform SDKs, I have learned that poking is not supported by the Graph or REST APIs (what I use to interact with facebook). I've been looking, and I might be able to hack something that might work, or I could have the option to support Pokes via SMS. I need your feedback. Which option (or both) sounds the best? Does anyone even Poke anymore?!

Wall posting is very basic at the moment. I will be making an advanced text editor that has more options for posting links, privacy settings, etc.

I also changed the road map a little. Let me know if that works for everyone!

Hope everyone likes the new updates!


I also wanted to make a road map of releases leading up to the final release of Version 1.0:


BETA 4.X

• This beta release will focus on posting data to Facebook and making sure everything works well.
• This beta release will also include newer GUI pieces, such as Inbox!

BETA 5.X

• This beta release will focus on Chat!

BETA 6.X

• This beta release will focus on App Completeness! Or making sure all the functionality of a full Mobile Client have been implemented

RC 1

• This release candidate will focus on Bullet-Proofing! All minor bugs should be worked out

RC 2

• This release candidate will only happen if major bugs are discovered in RC 1

Release 1.0

• Hopefully all is well!

That is the road map I have planned. I don't anticipate Beta 3 to be out very long (unless there are major bugs). I want to get to beta 4.X as soon as possible. I also might mix and match But that is the proposed roadmap to Release 1.0!


Devices that this beta has been tested on:

• HD2 WVGA

BUGS!!!

• Authorization should be working, but using the new URL is a lot cleaner (I think). Go here to authorize directly. Once you see the browser transfered to "Success" then try the application again
• Friend names that are really long hang off the edge.
• I've fixed this bug for the next release, long names will be clipped with Ellipsis

And the status of this beta is:


ENJOY!

Skinning instructions

Design instructions:

• Download screenshots.zip
• modifiy images in favorite image editor (that supports .psd and layers)
• post concept image in thread/send us the .psd file
• (OPTIONAL) Make skin with concept

Skin the XDAFacebook app instructions:

• Download zip file
• extract all images and place them in the \Program Files\XDAFacebook\Resources folder
• launch application
• enjoy!

Ok, instructions on how to skin the app are as follows:

• Find the image that you want to replace.
• Create new image and give it the specific name.
• Special "tags" at the end of the name give the image special features.
• copy the images to the \Program Files\XDAFacebook\Resources directory

list of tags:

• _alpha this will take the first pixel of the image and make it the images "Alpha Channel". Make sure that the image is solid in that color and that there are no artifacts!
• _trans_### where ### is a number (ie 200, 100, 10. Not 001). This number represents the total opacity for the image. The higher the number, the more opaque. Range 255-0.
• _trans_png. This only works with 24 bit PNG files!!!! This is also very resource intensive, so make this a last option. This will preserve the images alpha channel. It is the only way to make partial transparencies.

List of files: This list will increase and until final release is up for change!

• header 480x50
• house 50x50
• XFPanelHome 480x552
• alphabar 50x648

the dimensions are based on 800x480 res screen. If someone wants to experiment and give me dimensions for other resolutions, please do so!

If you have any questions about where these images are, let me know and I'll tell you

Good luck and send me the zip with your skins and I'll post the best ones here

One more expecting a decente facebook app
At this time I just use opera or skyfire cose the MS app is realy useless for me ....

Happy to see someone here. The worst in official facebook app is there is no event for video or apps.

This would be great. I'm really missing a good Facebook app on my lovely HD2.

+1 for a new Facebook app!

+1
im mortified when Blackberry users asked me about FB applications for WM

+1

Any word on developement?

+1 too

+1

new FB application for WM

New apps FB

+1
the current ms FB not worth to use

I could be a waste of time because the microsoft is developing the app too. If they manage to make the app more usable than the coding of the "new" app was useless.

Introduction to development

Hi,

I've start research on the net and found this.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile/
Actually there is no SDK for Windows Mobile provide by Facebook only for iphone and android.

But there is a lot of explication about how facebook work.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api

So the first thing is to wrote ourself a SDK we can use as a library for our program.

I'm going to search if we can exploit official Facebook library instead.

I ve download everything need to start development. Tomorow i ll take a look at this and post some comment.

i have a funny feeling the only reason they show the APIs for Iphone and Android is because the SDKs are open source.

but i would love a fully functional facebook app that would let me do everything, without the limitations of sense or the WM facebook app

Sopis said:

Guys

Didn't you read my post?

I am not the one developing the app. I am not a developer at all.
I jsut wrote appubator an email asking them to make a new FB app for WinMo (since there was a possibility like this). They have not replied ever since though Maybe they did not like the idea.

Maybe we could something to convince them do do the app OR!
Try to make our own application. This place is crowded with talented and awesome coders and graphics so I think we can definitely put something together. What do you people think?

I am graphic myself - If there are coders who decide to do go for it, I would like to help with visage of the app and the overall design and UI.

Who's in the NewFB_Boat? Any coders?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Hi;

I'm one of the founders of appubator.

I really appreciate your interest in our company. Sorry about not responding to your e-mail. We haven't see it come through - which address did you send it to?

We've been following this thread for a while. In short, a deep, detailed app like FB isn't something that we would do. First of all, we likely couldn't charge for it. If we did, its likely that FB or Microsoft would do one better than us and then we're out the time and money to develop it.

We're more about developing many apps (perhaps 100/year), that are smaller and easier to code, and selling them on multiple smartphone platforms.

If you have any ideas for apps you'd like to see - please visit the site at www.appubator.com. Register and submit your ideas. We're reviewing them more quickly and should be able to get back to you pretty quickly with a go/no-go.