[chaley]

At this point we have what I expected: conflicting opinions, all valid and reasonable.

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Some of the reader apps have very nice Home screen widget options and I suppose they're sufficient for anyone who only ever uses a single reader app. I think CC may be even better, though, especially if CC could 'remember' which app was last used to open any particular book.

The default behavior would be to do exactly what CC does when you "read" a book. If you have set a default reader for that format then it would be launched. If you have not set a default format then you would be queried. Is it OK? Real question: is worth storing on a book basis what reader you last used for the book?

Finally, in answer to your actual questions:
1. Yes. No rush, take your time - next week would be fine

2. My vote is for auto-adding/positioning a book in the widget whenever you read it. I like widgets which are customisable when you first set them up, but once added can be left alone.

We are agreed that "read" means "read using CC's command"?

This concludes the voting of the UK judge

Given that you (and we as well) are now in election season, I am not sure that claiming a "vote" is a good idea. Labor, Tory, UKIP, Liberal Democrat, SNP, ???.

(Perhaps a bad attempt at humor)

I think that a widget that auto-updates with the top N (1? 5?) of last read books is a good idea. I need to spend some time determining whether and how this can be built. I am fairly sure that N=1 is easier than N>1, but I don't yet know how much easier it is.

Originally Posted by RichieTheK

2. Mantano has a widget that is listed under "widgets" in the app drawer. When dragged to the screen, it opens a list of books and the user selects the one that the widget will link to. Moon+ allows the creation of a destop shortcut from its shelf. I would prefer this method, either from the CC shelf directly or from the book details screen.

3. A small icon is OK with me. I do not need the be able to read information on the cover; I just need to be able to tell one book from another. Because I would be actively reading these books, I would be able to recognize the one that I want from a small picture of the cover. I rarely have more that 4 books active (1 fiction, 1 non-fiction, 1 magazine, 1 graphic novel)

4. I would not need to see multiple covers. Each shortcut would be to just one book, so just one cover.

It turns out that it is straightforward to create single book desktop shortcuts that don't change, with the proviso that for versions of android before 4.4 (Kitkat) it might not work because the API didn't become "official" until then. Given that, I can add a menu item to CC's book details that looks something like the following:


The result on the home screen looks like


This shortcut would live without changes until the user deletes it. Without further work, clicking the shortcut will launch CC, which will immediately launch the reader app. I don't yet know what the user will see during this process. The problem is that the user might be required to select a reader app (the original might have been uninstalled etc) so CC might be forced to show something during the transition. At this point I simply don't know.