CC Beta V3.6.3a-e/V3.6.4 have been published.

[chaley]

CC beta releases V3.6.3a-e and the candidate production release V3.6.4 have been published and will be available to people in the beta test program.

Changes between V3.6.3 and V3.6.4:

• Active resizable home screen widgets that show the last 6 books opened in a reader app. Four different formats. Tapping a book in a widget asks CC to open the book in the appropriate reader app.
• A menu item in book details to create a shortcut on the home screen. Tapping a shortcut asks CC to open that book in a reader.
• Option to auto-connect to calibre as a wireless device at a given time of day. Used to auto-fetch news etc.
• Option to choose tap and long-press behavior in book list/grid
• Add separate options to show/not show the Read dropdown and the Date Read picker in Book Details.
• Give option to disconnect when deleting a book in Book Details while connected
• Ask for confirmation if in the content server the use of "download all" will download more than 10 books.
• When using Mantano, open the book in its "special way" to avoid its "import" dialog
• Add Format as a field in book details
• Allow Series to be hierarchical
• Updated languages: Italian
• [BUG FIX]Fix "download all" possibly downloading a book more than once
• [BUG FIX]Fix rare ANR when the content server disappears
• New permissions: RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED & SET_ALARM for autoConnect, INSTALL_SHORTCUT

Changes V3.6.3a to V3.6.3b:

• Make home screen widgets transparent.
• Make thumbnails transparent square, displaying the "real" thumbnail inside.
• Fix creating shortcuts on lollipop.
• Option to disconnect when deleting a book in Book Details while connected.
• Updated language: Italian

Changes V3.6.3b to V3.6.3c:

• Use a bigger thumb in the widgets so that the larger sizes such as 3x3 look better.
• Attempt to account for bigger icons on higher-res tablets when creating shortcuts
• Separate the list of books sent to a reading app from the "last read" date. The new list is in settings, not in the database, so there won't be a database upgrade.
• Handle "portrait - expand to fill" cover mode when creating thumbs.
• Increase the number of thumbs from 5 to 6

Changes V3.6.3c to V3,6,3d:

• Option to choose tap and long-press behavior in book list/grid
• [BUG FIX]Handle fallback to automatic in time-of-day connections
• [Bug Fix]Turn off the automatic connection when the option checkbox is unchecked

Changes V3.6.3d to V3.6.3e:

• Add a dedicated log facility for auto-connect. You can see the log by tapping a line in Settings
• Reset the auto-connect time when the device is booted. This required adding a permission.
• Add a fourth widget that is similar to CC's list view.
• Set larger default sizes for some widgets
• [Bug Fix]Don't download the same book multiple times in the Content Server when using "download all" multiple times.

Changes from V3.6.3e to V3.6.4:

• Scaled thumb and text for the booklist widget. This makes it more usable on tablets.
• Add menu line to Book Details to remove a book from the widgets.
• Change the grid widget to 4 across, not scrollable in either direction.
• Change the booklist and cover list widgets to show 10 books. The stack widget remains at 6.
• [Bug Fix]Don't crash when clearing the auto-connect log twice with no intervening log message written to the log.

CC offers 4 different active home screen widgets: a cover list, a stack (like a rolodex), a grid, and one like CC's book list. The cover list view is best if you want 1-wide widgets. The stack is best in 2x2 and if you usually tap the last read book. The grid is best on e-ink devices in 2x2 form.

The home screen shortcuts are not active. Once you create one it stays with that book until you delete it. Tapping the shortcut will as CC to open the book in the appropriate reader app.

The connect-at-time feature connects once per day at the specified time. The device can be sleeping, etc. If you are already connected then the auto-connect silently fails, as it does when calibre is not available. The Auto-connect log is available in settings. If that doesn't tell you what you need to know, there is more information in CC's debug log and (if enabled) calibre's debug log.

[jackie_w]

[1]Active home screen widgets that show the last 5 books read. Three different formats. Tapping a book will ask CC to open the book in the appropriate reader.

[2]A menu item in book details to create a shortcut on the home screen that asks CC to open a book in a reader.

[3]When using Mantano, open the book in its "special way" to avoid its "import" dialog

I've done some quick initial testing on 2 devices - Galaxy Note 3 phone and Galaxy TabPro tablet - both Android 4.4.2

Re: [3]- Thanks, that extra Mantano 'import dialog' has always been mildly annoying.

Re: [1] & [2] widgets and shortcut:

Shortcuts have captions and fit in a fixed 1x1 square. No options possible. I can make the cover icon preserve its aspect ratio inside that 1x1 square.

Cover images for all widgets and shortcut are distorted to square (I can add a screenshot if it would be helpful). My understanding, based on your above statement was that at least some of them could have their aspect ratio preserved. Of course this is aesthetic, I have no problem selecting the correct book and opening it in my app of choice

Interestly, when I go to the standard Android add-a-widget screen the sample widgets appear to have their cover aspect ratios preserved.

An oddity - on my TabPro tablet the add-a-widget screen shows 6 CC widgets - each of the 3 is duplicated (w1, w2, w3, w1, w2, w3). All 6 work OK. On my Note3 phone the 3 CC widgets aren't duplicated.

The stacked widget is only displaying 4 books, not 5, no matter how big I resize the widget.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Cover images for all widgets and shortcut are distorted to square (I can add a screenshot if it would be helpful). My understanding, based on your above statement was that at least some of them could have their aspect ratio preserved. Of course this is aesthetic, I have no problem selecting the correct book and opening it in my app of choice

They aren't square for me.

Interestly, when I go to the standard Android add-a-widget screen the sample widgets appear to have their cover aspect ratios preserved.

Those are actual screen shots on my device.

An oddity - on my TabPro tablet the add-a-widget screen shows 6 CC widgets - each of the 3 is duplicated (w1, w2, w3, w1, w2, w3). All 6 work OK. On my Note3 phone the 3 CC widgets aren't duplicated.

Yet another mystery. Sigh.

The stacked widget is only displaying 4 books, not 5, no matter how big I resize the widget.

The size should not matter.

Sorry for asking such a question, but are you sure that there are only 4 books? You will have only 4 swipes, which gives you 5 books.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

An oddity - on my TabPro tablet the add-a-widget screen shows 6 CC widgets - each of the 3 is duplicated (w1, w2, w3, w1, w2, w3). All 6 work OK. On my Note3 phone the 3 CC widgets aren't duplicated.

There is some chatter on the web that this happens on some Samsung devices. Some people say that rebooting the phone makes them go away. Does that work for you?

BTW: I just discovered that home screen shortcuts don't work on lollipop. I have fixed it.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

They aren't square for me.

Here's a (much reduced) screenshot from the Samsung Galaxy TabPro.

Originally Posted by chaley

Sorry for asking such a question, but are you sure that there are only 4 books? You will have only 4 swipes, which gives you 5 books.

Ah-ha. It wasn't obvious that the stacked widget needed to be swiped (see screenshot), but yes, swiping reveals the hidden 5th book. The other 2 widgets were more intuitive.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Here's a (much reduced) screenshot from the Samsung Galaxy TabPro.

That is very interesting. It is totally different from what I see on my devices. It seems that Samsung is ignoring the specifications of the bitmap aspect ratio and size!

Here is what mine looks like.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

That is very interesting. It is totally different from what I see on my devices. It seems that Samsung is ignoring the specifications of the bitmap aspect ratio and size!

Here is what mine looks like.

Boo-hoo! We demand equal rights for innocent Samsung owners!

Seriously, though, as per my screenshots in the other thread, there must be a way ... but that's easy for me to say

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by chaley

There is some chatter on the web that this happens on some Samsung devices. Some people say that rebooting the phone makes them go away. Does that work for you?

Ah, yes, indeed it does. Thank you

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Boo-hoo! We demand equal rights for innocent Samsung owners!

I have made some changes that should fix this. I now create a transparent square icon then paint the cover into it. That way the device thinks it is a square image and won't mess with it but the human sees it with the appropriate aspect ratio. Takes a bit of computing, but it doesn't happen very often.

[jackie_w]

Excellent news Android development - everyday a voyage of discovery. Are there some days when you wish you'd started with IOS where, apparently, "everything just works"? BTW I'm very glad you didn't!

[Dhevi]

I'm not having issues with Samsung Note 4 concerning aspect ratios for the widgets.

I am ever so grateful for the change concerning the use of Mantano.

[DoctorOhh]

On the widget a nice touch would be to eliminate the border and title bar and make the background transparent.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

On the widget a nice touch would be to eliminate the border and title bar and make the background transparent.

This makes me a bit nervous, because it seems that things could get lost. For example, the backgrounds of my home screen are photos, so there isn't any real "background".

I will try it and post some screen shots for comments.

[chaley]

Here is the promised screen shot. It shows two shortcuts, a stack widget and a list widget.

[jackie_w]

I like these transparent versions.