What’s new?

The most visible change is the support for “plugins”: it consists in allowing the user to click on “Add item” and select either a built-in object, or a plugin loaded from an APK. You can try it with the sample clock APK (download it here : http://www.lightninglauncher.com/scripting/samples/Clock-2.1.apk) and watch the video to see how it works.

In fact the feature is currently pretty basic. At the moment, it is mostly the same as loading a script from a package, except that the APK is shown in the “Add item” dialog. More documentation and sample source code can be found here: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/scripting/.

This sample clock plugin also demonstrates new features found in V14b3:

– support for customizing the item popup menu, meaning that you can now remove, or add items to create your own menu content, through script. Pretty much everything can be done, from easily adding a new menu item, to fully replace the whole popup content. There’s one limitation though: this is available for items, not for the container menu. This official hook replaces the smart but fragile implementation based on ViewTreeObserver.

– support for using Lightning preference controls (the ones used in the app’s settings screen). This can be used to easily create preference screens.

Naturally, that version also comes with a few bug fixes, but not that much. Good!

But there’s something bigger to come… stay tuned!

Full ChangeLog: http://www.lightninglauncher.com/wordpress/change-log/