1.4 has been submitted

Posted on by TheJoeFin
Version 1.4 settings

I have submitted update 1.4.3.0 to the Windows Dev Center. The update should roll out in over the next few days. This update brings two external changes.

  1. Adjusted app icon
  2. Choose the first day of the week

There are many fixes and adjustments under the hood where I made improvements to the organization of my project and code efficiency. I also fixed the bug which was preventing the app from sharing the calendar.

The adjustments to the app icon was subtle and simply turned the pen and pen stroke from blue to white with a 50% transparency. Originally I had thought I would use the blue color more in the design and UI of the application, but that ended up not being the case. Since the only place the color was used was in the icon I decided to change it. Now the user’s accent color will show through and the icon should blend in with other Windows 10 icons.

One of the code improvements I made with this update was in the  calendar generation code. My first attempt at writing code to draw the calendar was bulky, length, and does not scale well. I rewrote how the app generates a calendar and this method made it easy to add the first-day-of-week setting. This setting would have been extremely painful to do with my old code. The new code made it quick and easy!

One little oddity of the first-day-of-week setting is that the ink on each day does not move. I decided this would be acceptable because there would be no good way to shift the ink around in a way that makes sense for everyone. I thought it would be easier to not move the ink and the user can shift days around if they want to. I may revisit this in the future if there is a desire for the app to cut and move the days when this setting is changed. Ideally this setting will be set once and not changed.

Part of this update involved breaking the settings and about dialogs off onto their own pages. This involved me changing the way the pages behave when those dialogs were opened. Now that the dialogs have been separated it will be easier for me to add more dialogs for features down the road.

Thanks and happy inking!!

-Joe

 

Update 1.4 Moving along nicely

Posted on by TheJoeFin

I have finished the majority of the work on update 1.4. While I first thought this would be simply a behind the scenes update there have been a few improvements to the UI and one new setting which was easy to add thanks to the improved code.

I am testing 1.4 now on my devices. Hopefully I will publish it to the Windows store this weekend and the update will arrive next week.

 

Joe

Plans for 1.4

Posted on by TheJoeFin

I am currently working on version 1.4 of Ink Calendar. This version will include many under the hood code improvements and make future features easy to implement. I want to get this update out before the end of the month and hopefully begin working on some awesome new features for September!

Since I am a novice developer a lot of these improvements are me learning how I should have properly written the app from the start. If you’re an experienced UWP dev and would be happy to field some questions, tweet at me @TheJoeFin.

Stay tuned!

– Joe

Ink Calendar 1.3 Update is submitted

Posted on by TheJoeFin

Update 1.3 has been submitted to the Windows Store for approval. The primary feature of this update is ink selection and the ability to cut, copy, and paste the ink. I made some tweaks to the way the calendar gets centered in the frame which should make the app look and feel better as the window gets resized.

There are some issues with pasting the ink on mobile. I do not know if the APIs are supported on Windows 10 mobile because it is a small amount of code to copy the ink but for some reason the app will not paste. For now I have disabled the cut, copy, and paste buttons on mobile because of this issue.

I hope you are enjoying the app!

– Joe