All
I would like to give some news on the project status. Current and future.
It’s been a long time since the last stable version but it’s finally time to release an update. I just published V12.9 in the stable channel, and it introduces multi-selection which is a much anticipated feature. I sincerely hope it will live up to your expectations. Special thanks to Beta Tester for your feedback!
That’s for the good news, now some less good ones (but not that bad, please continue reading).
Five months between releases is a lot. As you may have read or hear from other independent developers, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to allocate time and efforts on apps with the Google Play revenue model. I am no exception to this and if someone was still wondering, yes, I had to slow down work on Lightning.
However, there are plenty of things to improve in the app and new features to add, ranging from simple usability improvements like recently used values in the color picker, to most advanced and geeky scripting features.
For this reason I would like to experiment with crowdfunding to give a “boost” to the project. I have heard of AppStretch for this, its goal is to help developers to fund development of new features for existing apps (not create new ones). I have already a set of features in mind if anybody is interested. Let’s see how it goes.
That’s not all. I am once again in a major rework of the project codebase, probably the biggest one since its inception. Over the time the app has grown with new capabilities but the internal architecture didn’t follow. It is now difficult to maintain the app, some new features are hard or impossible to implement, and worst, a few known bugs have no fix.
I intend to change this situation with an extended internal architecture change (almost 50% done!). On one hand it eats up a lot of my time and will cause many bugs and issues. On the other hand its a requirement for the project to keep moving.
And once again I will need a big help from you to test this new version, let’s call it V14. I will publish it as an alpha first, I expect in a few weeks, not before.
Enough speak! Your feedback is appreciated!
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D5 Creation
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Could you please post a link to the newest update. I have been following g+ but don’t follow all too closely. Maybe its high time.
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i would like to support your work.
we often suggest something like donation…
so i like the crowdfunding idea.
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I agree with gerd reuter I will be happy to help.
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Great news, thx! You have my full support!
One suggestion – pls. think about LL Lite without 90 % of features, for turbo speed on old phones. I did not know any other competitive home launcher.
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Thanks for the update and look forward to details on the crowdfunding
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Very glad to help you with any problem (which may also contribute financially, but not too much, take care of family members 4) 😉
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First and foremost, thank you for you working on the project. I think everyone here is very happy with what you have done and like me, are probably looking at what the future brings Lighting. I will help test it and if you think crowfunding will work, go for it.
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Let the bugs come, we will all crush them 😉.
Crowdfunding 👍👍
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I’d like to suggest another solution for the funds issue.
Freeze the functionality of the current version and publish a new paid app where new functionalities will get added from now on.
For example take the case of Action Launcher.
The developer freezed the functionality in Action Launcher 2 and created a new app Action Launcher 3 with added functionality.
BTW it’s just a suggestion. Please go ahead with whatever you have in mind.
Edit :
As per your post, you are working on a complete overhaul of the architecture.
Maybe you can publish that as a separate app.
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I am not a fan of a new app, although I perfectly understand the rational behind it.
This seems to me like a one shot and unpredictable way to find oxygen for the project. Lightning has not the same user base (a lot smaller one) and I believe that funding unitary features is a lot more clear: everybody see where the money goes, it goes to the feature X because it’s a useful thing, and also users can decides what to do with their money, or not!.Also freezing a version doesn’t seem to me like an equal treatment for everyone.
In addition I am fine with a single version to manage (life has become a lot less complex!). In spite of the on going overhaul, I’ll do my best to keep it fully compatible. That seems weird but my goal is that v14 replaces the previous version and nobody notice it!
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I went to AppStretch site and tried to understand how it works. I may be wrong but still I’d like to share what I think :
1. I’d be a bit apprehensive to pay money to any other third party (privacy concerns, sharing account/card details, etc.) rather than paying through Google.
2. AppStretch may not be available in all the countries, so may not be reachable to everyone.
3. I’m not sure if AppStretch will generate more money than an IAP within the current app, as people can easily donate via IAP than going to a new, hardly known site. For same number of donors, IAP will yield more than AppStretch IMO.
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That’s a good point but there’s no perfect solution. I understand your concern about payment system, I would have like that PayPal at least be supported. Of course not everybody use PayPal but it’s quite a good solution when it comes to security. Using IAP I can’t handle refunds if the campaign doesn’t reach its goal, and it’s also more work as it needs a new screen and code to manage all this stuff. Some other crowdfunding platforms are more famous, it just seems that AppStretch exactly fit the need.
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Another possibility through Google Play is subscriptions. You could have features that are only available to subscribers. I have a yearly subscription to one app and a monthly subscription to another. If you can get people to see the value in your subscription only features you could have a more steady income.
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Amit Patil You do not want to copy Action Launcher’s actions. The dev got a ton of bad publicity for it and although many people might swear by it, there are a lot of people who do not as they saw it as a cash grab.
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I totally agree with Mauricio Alas , Pierre Hébert would get totally hammered by the ignorant people who are improperly educated on how all this works and know no better, then the straight assholes that think they shouldn’t pay for anything even though they are more well off by luck and dont know real work, and being lightning has a smaller user base and not known or understood to be the powerful machine it is, new users will hear all those dumb ignorant rants and automatically assume and pass judgment. Its sad, but I watched first hand how bad Lacy got crucified by a bunch of people who were clueless… so, yeah I dont see much good coming from that. The trust issue with the payment is simple, not everyone has a paypal or Similar or wanna trust their credit card to a third party, I simply walk into any convenience store and by a pre paid card for whatever amout needed and after that no can jack money off a card you threw away lol I will not use credit cards so thats my solution😂
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Pierre Hébert Another off topic suggestion is to improve the visibility of the app in the Android scene. Of course you might have already thought of this but suggested anyway just in case. Promotional blogs, paid reviews, tools like Dripler, etc might be helpful.
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Wow! I’ve been on holiday in the mountains with no connectivity for a week and come back to a new release.
I like the crowd funding idea, but worry that we don’t have a big enough “crowd” to help much.
It’s worth a try.
I’m also happy to hear that you are reworking the codebase! A lot of work, I’m sure, but great news for the future of Lightning.
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I agree with crowdfunding idea. I LOVE Lightning, so I would like to support your developing the app.
By the way, although PayPal payment is good solution,it is not very popular payment system in some country (like Japan). At least Jeremy Harris’s way should be taken account of because we ALL use Google 😉
(Sorry for my bad English…)
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Nice idea you could also let us pay you to implement the features we really want.Over the years i asked quite a lot of devs if i can do this but so far only 1 has ever been interested :/
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Have you considered in-app purchases to allow users to donate to the app? Off the top of my head I can come up with a list of advantages (there are probably more): no need to figure out yet another website; no need to leave the app to make the donation; users already trust Google play with their money; anyone who’s played a game is used to seeing this kind of mechanism and is comfortable using it.
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Carolyn Boyle Yes, I considered using in-app purchases.
What I would like is actually quite simple:
– let users vote and choose which feature to add
– target funds to a specific feature
– cancel a feature and refund if the goal has not been reached.
IAP is only a mean to receive funds and there still need to be a way to manage the other parts of the whole process. In other words I need to implement a screen with a list of crowfunded features, with their current level of funding, IAP itself and a server to store these data. It seems I can refund IAP, but only manually. That’s quite a lot of work and I am a bit reluctant to spend valuable time on something that may not even work at all.
That said, I discovered that AppStretch had some important limitations and I suspended my plan. At the moment I am stuck.
I believe I will try to finish the version on which I am working on first, then I’ll come back to crowdfunding, maybe with a custom IAP based approach.
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I paid for this application a long time ago but then I stopped using my android phone an started using my iPhone now that I just went back to my android phone and download this application everything is completely different what’s up with the letters and numbers before it was not like that?
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There has been tons of improvements for sure.
No idea what you mean about letters and numbers though.
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I have no idea what hes talking about either.
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I think he is using a custom font that overrides the icon font used in Lightning, preventing him to see icons.
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Ah yeah could be.
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Chris Chastain when I long press I am getting number and letters i will take a screen shot and post it an Kustom Live Wallpaper has nothing to do with it
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Mik lalo are you using a custom font and/or a custom Rom?
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Chris Chastain no i update to 6.0.1
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I have a low end phone it’s the Honor 5x
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I am having the same problem with Kustom Live Wallpaper as well as letters and numbers so it could be a bad software update from Marshmallow
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Here’s my theory…
I think that your Rom is overwriting the font used in individual apps. It shouldn’t, but it doesn’t usually cause much issues if it does.
The thing is that LL uses font based icons (not sure about klwp) and if they get overwritten, the results are really ugly.
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Tried a factory reset?
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I remember another Huawei user with the same issue. The bug is that the ROM overwrite all fonts, including those which have been specifically set by the app, and not only those which are at the default value.
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i had this issue with my oppo find 7 last year and the OEM ROM, not with CM.
It is definitely the rom.
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Mik lalo could you post/send me one or more screenshots? As this issue cannot be fixed in the launcher I’d like to document it in the wiki. (Just don’t post multiple single pictures, so the spamfilter doesn’t pick them up again.)
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Lukas Morawietz I fixed it it was the software i have a honor 5x an the Marshmallow software is not out for updates yet but a xda member put up a YouTube video showing how to update early so I did and this update is full of bugs I’m sorry for blaming you guys but now the launcher is running great after I reinstall the software all over again.
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Pierre Hébert Have you considered Patreon for getting extra financial support? (Just an idea….)
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No, because I wasn’t aware of it before you mentioned it. One thing is sure, I am no artist although I would love to play music.
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Pierre Hébert Programming can certainly be artful. The lead developer of DokuWiki is on Patreon. Why not you too?
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