Pierre Hébert , good to see you finally made it in here.
I just promoted you to a moderator, and in two weeks Ill make you the owner of the page. Id do it now, but its a limitation of Google+.
Its been a while since I emailed you, and thought maybe you were not interested in the G+ idea at all. So I went ahead and made the page, didnt make mention of it at all in any of the theme communities and people just started joining. You should expect quite a crowd, once we start spreading the word.
So Fabrice Fournier made mention of some news you have coming. Can we expect to hear anything soon?
Ill tell you one thing I would love to hear. LL is going to get some method of packaging its layouts for distribution in the market.
Another thing I would love to see is for you to partner up with Zooper, much in the same way the Media Utilities did. What this means is adding custom variables that pertain to LL into Zooper.
]]>
D5 Creation
< ![CDATA[
Many thanks !
I was interested in the G+ idea but did not reply immediately. I then simply forgot your email… I am a bit overloaded at the moment, with other things in mind.
At the moment I am just starting to find a bit more time for the project. I am carrying out two heavy modifications.
First I am going to publish two versions of LL: the classic one, and another one merging almost all existing plugins and addons. This bigger (and paid) version will be called “Lightning Launcher eXtreme” and will be designed for peoples who want a full bundle, without having to select and install components separately.
The second thing in progress is a major rework of the internal architecture. In the current version there is a number of latencies that I intend to remove.
These two tasks are nearing completion. There is still quite a lot of things to finish before a beta but overall it is starting to look good. If all goes well the v8 should be available before the end of the next week.
Regarding the packaging of layouts, this was in my plans but I would like to find a solution for widgets and there is a number of technical problems to solve first. However most of the work has been done in the theme manager app.
I am not familiar with Zooper, I need to install it first !
]]>
< ![CDATA[
Pierre Hébert Well thats great to hear.
Zooper is quickly starting to replace UCCW as the go-to WYSIWYG widget builder.
The big difference in Zooper over UCCW is the ability to actually write custom scripts in the editor to make the widget do pretty much what ever you want. Zooper does have the ability to use variables from other apps, Im not sure of the how on this, but Im pretty sure it works through the same method of importing tasker variables. I can get you in touch with the dev for Zooper if you would like to discuss it.
As for packaging layouts, specifically the widgets, I would suggest downloading Buzz Launcher (free) and dissecting how it manages to do it. I believe SSLauncher does it as well.
BTW – Are you interesting in a new Icon for your launcher. My personal opinion is that its in dire need of a refresh. If you want Ill see what I can come up with, no charge.
]]>
< ![CDATA[
Bill Surowiecki indeed I noticed that Zooper is gaining traction. Yes please, it would be nice to speak with Zooper’s dev about what kind of variable the launcher could expose. Probably the current screen number, label and icon would be useful, I don’t know what other data could be of interest.
The main problem with LL layouts is when free mode is used: items coordinates are absolute values, and hence tightly linked with the current device screen resolution. The theme manager actually offers the possibility to filter on the screen size, device, version but I think packaging needs a better solution, otherwise this will lead to a mess because of multiple versions of the same layout.
I would love a new icon but there is more than the icon launcher: the current icon was kindly designed by another LL user a long long time ago, because mine sucked too much (seriously I am bad at designing graphics!). Then I made variations of this icon for other topics and the whole project is in a need of a refresh (launcher icon, menu icons, screenshots, default setup, tutorials, and so on). At the moment I prefer to stabilize things (because in my opinion the project has still to evolve, and will). Refreshing the appearance cannot be done before because there is more than the icon to refresh, IMHO.
]]>
< ![CDATA[
Pierre Hébert First off I would be happy to refresh the other art assets in the app. I am responsible for about 90% of the iconography in the current builds of Zooper. Let me know what you need and Ill start work on it. Since its not needed for a bit, that gives me some time to work on it.
As for Variables,
Current Screen #
Zoom Percentage (0-100%)
Zoom in use ( if zoomed in at any % =1, if not 0)
Thats just off the top of my head, Im sure other users can think of other things as well.
]]>
< ![CDATA[
Bill Surowiecki Thank you for your offer, I appreciate it! The Zooper icon looks great, it is simple yet effective.
What do you think about LL screenshots ? They didn’t changed since 2 years and they don’t really reflect what the launcher can do now. Maybe this would be a good start to replace some of them ?
]]>
< ![CDATA[
Pierre Hébert
Im not responsable for the Zooper Icon itself, but for all of the iconography inside of the apps menus.
Yes, it would be a good idea to start replacing the Screenshots with some up-to-date themes people have created.
Ill start spreading the word in the theme communities here, that this page is open and to post a picture of their work with LL for a chance to have it shown off in the market with the app.
]]>
< ![CDATA[
Ah ok, you mean the slick icons, like the color palette or the rocket for instance ? LL uses a weird thing for this kind of icon : instead of bitmaps, menu icons are defined as vectorial shapes. This is much more compact and memory efficient for simple artwork but for anything more complex it will need to be replaced with bitmaps though.
]]>
< ![CDATA[
Those icons were build as vectors in AI, but then converted to PNG… If you need vectors, thats what I will provide you with.
]]>