Review of Minimalist for FireFox Mobile Beta

App review for Minimalist
App store: Firefox Marketplace
App URL: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/minimalist/
Platform: Firefox (Android/Linux/?)
Cost: $0.00
Source: (View source :p)
Developer: Kevin Ngo

The shiny new Firefox "Apps" button in the Firefox Beta Menu with the venerable Mozilla Rocket stepping up as the icon.

Pressing the Apps button takes you to the Firefox store. Here we see a few different views of the Minimalist app details in store.

 

After installing the app launcher icons appear in the FireFox app tab, on the Android home screen and can also be placed in folders/widgets/etc. Ignore the text being cut off on my home screen, this is because I cram a lot of icons onto my pages, you can even see the same happening to the play store.

Startup screen is quite pretty and then we see the process of adding a new list. The popup dialogue text reads "The page at http://[...] says:" which is a bit of an awkward way of saying "New list name:" :p

Adding to list is quite straight forward, select your list and start typing, return takes you to a new list item.

More adding to lists displayed here, unfortunately the list seemed to be quite light on first loading as displayed on the left above, but after adding or switching lists the text was much darker and more legible. It also seemed to handle all sorts of unusual characters admirably.

It is a bit of a draw back that the name of the list I am currently working on is not always visible, so the only way to view the list title is to swipe to another list and swipe back at which point the list name is displayed very briefly (I could only faintly catch it in the above-left screenshot).
It is also possible to swipe left when there is only one list and the effect looks a bit doge, but perhaps I'm being a bit too picky here.
When multitasking in Android the App preview in the task switcher only labels the app as "App" (a word my spell-checker still refuses to acknowledge), The preview looks fine, but I could imagine it being a drag trying to identify different programs if I was using a half dozen or so of the Firefox Apps. This one may also be a limitation of the Firefox App Platform, but have not investigated enough (yet) and not Minimalists fault at all.

Another issue I have that I'm sure is a limitation of the platform (but will mention none the less) is that if I try to remove the app using the Android technique of dragging and holding the icon over "remove" until it becomes "uninstall" and then dropping it. The result is not as you might expect. As you can see above the dialogue is a bit confusing, paraphrasing: "App is part of App... do you want to remove App"... to which I respond "Which one?" and just guess it means Minimalist and click "ok"... I was wrong, it uninstalled Firefox and all the apps I had loaded from the Firefox Market. So to uninstall just Minimalist (or any other app) we must enter the Firefox Market again and proceed to uninstall apps there.
I have not reviewed it here but there is also a desktop version available... Whilst Minimalist is functional and certainly fulfils the expectations set forth by its name I would like to see some syncing capabilities across devices, to have the notes I take on my mobile available on my desktop and vice versa. Additionally an option to export to disk would be essential for me to adopt this solution to my note taking requirements.

Other than that I'd have to give it about a seven out of ten for a simple note taking app that gets the job done. Have fun exploring the Firefox Marketplace peoples :D

Glow paint... Does what it says :)

Just a short one today... I'm busily trying to slap something together for the Ubuntu app showdown... hopefully there will be more about this on my development blog. Anyhow, on with the app review.

Check out "Glow Paint"

Fun little painting app with nice effects. Cool brushes and easy to use... the only shortcoming in my eyes is the lack of transparency support which seems to be a common amongst almost every Android image editor.
Were it not for this I was hoping to use it to create a "hand drawn neon" set of cursors for mou5e live wallpaper.
If any of my dear readers has come across an Android image editors _with_ transparency support be sure to let me know and I'll be sure to give it a review.

Onwards and appwars my friends!

Flight Radar 24 ... at super sonic speeds

Just recently knocked up a video screen capture of the free version of "Flight Radar 24" I wanted to share with you all.

The recording I've made has been speed up 100x and was made over several hours. In that sense it was literally "hours of fun" but that is stretching the meaning of fun.

To be perfectly Frank I don't do much plane spotting but I do live near a flight path so I may yet find some other uses for this app.

App: Flight Radar 24
Video: PuZZleDucK
Music: The Bud Flowers
Capture: ShootMe
Video Editor: Open Shot

AIDE ... Just mind blowing.

If you're into developing Android apps and you haven't tried out AIDE you really must give it a try, market link below:
Check out "AIDE - Android Java IDE"

I'll give you a moment...

I've imported a few of my own apps and they compile and run just perfectly (except that one signed with a different key... I.e. installed from the market).
 
So far features I have played with include renaming variables, auto implementing inherited methods, auto generating variable declarations, definition lookup, the all important copy/cut/paste and selection functions (with the star being the "expand selection" function worthy of being back ported to eclipse :p), and of course what ide would be complete without auto complete (again I want to pick on Eclipse...

I wish Eclipses auto complete was this fast, I'm guessing we all have sqlite to thank for that).

Being able to access logcat after a crash on the device is also great, but I wish the buffer size was configurable (or just larger) as I've got to be quick and switch back to aide to pause logcat before the dump scrolls off screen.

Unfortunately I haven't seen any signing options in aide but I haven't had time to play with everything yet. I've been too busy writing a simple crypto app, it's early days yet but after a couple of days hacking on my phone I've managed to create a demo Cesar cypher, now with atbash:

The code will be going up as soon as aide adds svn comparability (might be a work in progress now).














Oh, and I've been made painfully aware that "int" is not in my dictionary! Time to fix that before going back to coding :)


> int
Add "int" to dictionary?
> Fuck yeah!
Add "Fuck" to dictionary?
> Throw in "Dick" and "char" while your at it ;)

Not exactly a review...

I'm just about to buy it... I'll let you know if a half baked ics desire can pull it off asap.
Check out "GTA 3"
===================

Ok... It's been about a week now and I've had the opportunity to try out GTA 3 on a couple of Android devices. First on my desire running BCM ICS, and then on my huwei ideos s7.

On the desire the playability is pretty low, and any kind of multi touch causes the controls to vanish and the game effectively stops. This cold be the fault of bcm or running ics with pseudo multi touch instead of real multi touch. That being said, if the controls worked it would be quite playable and seemed to render quite well.

On the tablet the experience was considerably better, sort of. It renders quite well although it is still a bit laggy in some situations. The multi touch issue is also moot as the tablet only has a single point capacitive screen.

Having only one touch point means the controls are fiddly (lots of rocking between accelerating and turning) and it is impossible to run and shoot at the same time, there is some consolation to be had with auto-aim taking care of aiming for me. I think that even with the limitations if i pull out my best moves it will be possible to clock the game and I'm sure going to have fun trying.

What are you waiting for... Check out GTA III on the Android market now! And let me know how your device handles it below.