Hey knoxcoder, I LOVE your widget, but as Poodlemastah points out, there's this
major drawback of not being able to launch our app of choice when tapping it. This is a must have for all clock widgets.
Most of us like to set our alarms by just tapping on the clock widget, and right now I find myself using TWO clock widgets because of this... yours because it's the best looking, and another one in the adjacent home screen just to launch the alarms app... lol.
Even if it means having to re-add the widget once you add this feature, I still think it will be worth it in the long term... it's just a must-have for most people.
As Poodlemastah has suggested, I think the behaviour most of us would expect is:
Both the "add -> widget" option from the home screen and the icon in the app drawer will take us to the config screen. There, we can set all the parameters as we want them (including which app to launch).
Now, as you've said, there can be multiple instances of the widget, so maybe the ideal setup would be being able to "save" different clock configs from the settings menu (without necessarily applying them to any instance), then choosing which one of them to apply at the moment we add the widget to a homescreen. That way, it wouldn't be such a hassle to re-add them everytime, because the config would be saved.
It would be a matter of making the user conscious of this change by just re-arranging the settings menu: when we open it, it shows the options "Create new clock...", "Edit existing clock...", etc. That way, they would realize each clock is saved independently, and they would be asked for a name first of all, so that they would actually remember what it was called when they want to load it up.
Example:
· I open mClock settings
· I'm presented with 3 options: "Add existing clock to home screen"; "Create new clock..."; "Edit/delete existing clocks...".
· I choose "Create new clock..."
· I'm asked for a name, I name it "My clock".
· I'm then presented with the clock settings screen, which I procceed to adjust to my liking.
· At the bottom, I see 2 buttons: "Save" and "Cancel". I click "Save".
· After that, I'm taken back to the settings screen.
· I now choose "Add existing clock to home screen".
· I'm presented with a list of the existing clocks already created.
· I choose "My clock".
· The clock is added to a home screen (the central one, I guess?), and I'm automatically taken there to see it.
Another way to add a clock would be to go to a home screen, choose the "add widget" option in the launcher, and choose "mClock", in which case I would be taken to the same settings menu as before. The only difference would be that the clock would get added to the same screen from which I called the "add widget" option.
I don't know if this would be such a big hassle to make, or if it's impossible at all, since I haven't done any Android development yet. I'm only talking from a usual programmer and UI designer point of view
Let me know what you think.