This problem has always been in the back of my mind but I’ve never tackled it head on and I’m sure it has cost me users and ratings. As they say, better late then never, so for the next version, during first run, AndChat will guide the user through a number of steps to make it easy to jump straight into chatting. (Of course, users already familiar with the app can skip the entire thing.)

The process consists of 1 welcome screen, 1 step to get the most basic information to use for a server profile: nicknames, a username, a realname and optionally, the default encoding and whether logs should be enabled, 1 step to optionally import a list of servers distributed with the app and 1 step to give a overview of basic use and commands available. Hopefully this will make it easier for new users to start chatting straight away and give me a higher retention rate of users.

Screenshots of the process are available here. As always, feedback is welcome.

Thankfully, I was able to develop for both phone and tablet from a single project, resulting in an app which would scale up and down and change its UI depending on the type of device the app runs on. (Screenshots at the end) Android offers a brilliant resource system, the true power of which I discovered when trying to make AndChat ready for Honeycomb.

• By creating menus from xml, on a phone, the menu shows when the menu button is pressed but on the tablet, the menu appears on the new Action Bar.
• By using resource qualifiers, the correct image, theme and style is automatically loaded for the device. AndChat’s various images, element styles and themes were changed slightly for Honeycomb to make it match the new Holo theme. This is most noticeable with the launcher icon. Other changes made were the notification icon and text colour in the ongoing notification.
• By again using the resource theme system, in the chat UI, the title bar is correctly hidden or made visible automatically without having to make API calls, resulting in cleaner code and a single attribute change in the manifest file.
• In various activities, there is a button bar (buttons such as ‘Save’ and ‘Cancel’ ). With Honeycomb, this became pointless as the Action Bar should display this information. The dynamic showing/hiding was done by performing a simple check of the API version, loading the menu from xml if it was Honeycomb and hiding the button bar completely. This was a bit awkward to do coding wise and I’m not sure it’s the best solution in the long term but it worked out very well so far.
• New APIs were introduced which I have to use but cater for Android versions where the API didn’t exist. This was safely done by making calls into a ‘Compatibility’ class which would deal with the real API method or ignore the call if the method didn’t exist. (99.99% of this was done without using Reflection).

While most of the changes introduced in Honeycomb were not hugely annoying or difficult to deal with, one huge issue stuck out almost immediately: the lack of search button. AndChat offers 2 ways to perform nick completion: using the search button or long pressing the input box. While the long press solution was fine for a cramped mobile UI, I didn’t like the idea of having to long press on a huge tablet screen to do the same. By leveraging the resource system, the chat screen in Honeycomb offers an extra search image next to the input area to perform nick completion but hides it in the mobile versions.

All this sounds like a lot of work right? Getting AndChat working nicely with Honeycomb took about 2 evenings and 1 weekends worth of work, so not too bad. Admittedly, this could have probably been done quicker if I’d stuck to things like creating menus from xml right from the beginning. Development was also sped up as I’d already started using the styling system in previous versions of AndChat to clean up the xml files.

So what does the future hold for AndChat? I’m working with the new Fragments API to add the user list to the side of the screen and experimenting with different ways to make the UI more tablet friendly. I’m not a UI designer in any sense so any ideas are more than welcome. I don’t have the Xoom so I haven’t forgotten about phone users either Work and various other personal matters take up a lot of time now but development is always ongoing.

(Click for larger images)

New Server:

Chat UI:

Passwords:

Notifications:

Dell Studio 1558
Intel i7-720QM(1.6GHz) Mobile CPU
15.6in High Definition (1366X768) WLED
Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera
Black Chainlink
4096MB (2×2048) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel
500GB Serial ATA (7200RPM)
8X DVD+/-RW Drive (slot loading)
1 GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
Europe Dell Bluetooth 365 Card
Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Backlit Keyboard
Windows 7 Home Premium

Luckily, I got a hefty discount because my employer is part of some Dell purchase program . The spec I was originally going to buy had an i5 CPU, no bluetooth and was more expensive so I’m glad I used the purchase program instead.

I didn’t even know the laptop included bluetooth, found I can control my Nexus One’s music and phone calls from the laptop which is pretty neat.

Formatted the laptop to get rid of all the crap that came installed with it and am going to use my new Technet subscription to get Windows 7 Ultimate on it (Anytime Update accepted my Technet key ). I can’t be arsed to find a copy of Ultimate via ‘other’ means but Windows 7 is so epic anyway, I don’t mind paying for it, not to mention I get access to Office and various other software, so it all works out in the end.

Now to get my docs and stuff copied over (hello Windows Easy Transfer!) and give this old laptop to my niece. Lets hope she doesn’t treat this laptop like her old one, the state of her old one is enough to make any geek techie cry.

The source code is available for those interested at the Google Code project page.

Special thanks to my mate Raf for the icon.

For anyone curious/worried, the free version is not a ‘lite’ or ‘trial’ version, the only difference between the 2 is the ‘About’ screen. AndChat will always be free but a contribution is always appreciated.

How Apple execs see the iPad:

They didn’t mention it, but you can do nick completion via the Search button. I’ll mention this in the app description with the next update

Note to users of AndroidIRC, you can install the new app and transfer your settings/server profiles over if you have root.. If you do, then see root.txt.

Edit: By request, it has been made available to download from the site. Visit the download page to get it.