Last beta (if all goes well). It merely fixes a few bugs and add a LL.startActivity script method. One thing I couldn’t resolve is the zero size at load, sorry.

In details:

– add LL.startActivity

– fix a bug where opening a folder from a load event (or maybe pause/resume) produces a crash

– fix a bug where deleting all desktops and creating a new one could lead to a dead launcher

Oh, and don’t use btrfs as a production filesystem yet…

Bug fixes and minor improvements only. I hope this will be the last beta in  this round.

Edit 10.4b4 is following

Well, not progressing too much on multi selection but instead extending script capabilities (because I like that…)

A couple of funny additions are impatiently waiting to be used in this third beta:

– (experimental) ability to directly handle touch events (albeit single finger yet). A sample code here: http://www.pierrox.net/android/applications/lightning_launcher/wiki/doku.php?id=script_paint_free_hand

– a new Script object to manipulate scripts through… scripts. A notable use is Script.getText() with eval, but I see a few other very special use cases for this new class…

And several important fixes as usual.

An update to the previous beta and almost exclusively dealing with script. This version mostly enhances features  introduced in b1: more item type creation, better image handling (create from packages, support nine patch) and a few other miscellaneous improvements.

As usual, full changelog here: http://www.pierrox.net/cmsms/applications/lightning-launcher/change-log.html

This is a beta for script lovers. It will dramatically enhance scripting capabilities with two new features.

The first is the possibility to create shortcuts (and remove them). The good thing is that you can specify custom intents for more dynamic interactions with other apps. New items are currently limited to shortcuts, more to come if needed

The second (and best) feature is the ability to manipulate images through scripts. This includes creating images, drawing on them using a subset of the Android Canvas APIs and setting these images as icons, item background or folder window background. I hope that performance will be enough for animations.

There are also a couple of bug fixes. I am sorry for peoples on the stable version, you will need to wait for the release to benefit from these bugfixes 🙁

A few hints on drawing with script: http://www.pierrox.net/android/applications/lightning_launcher/wiki/doku.php?id=drawing_with_script

As usual make a backup before to play with these new things, I will be mostly offline during a few days…

The new image picker is now available in the stable version!

There is now a builtin image picker in this beta. It will improve/fix a few things:  faster image picking from icon packs, increased compatibility with some packs, allow background color selection for better viewing, allow picking of nine patches from other packages.

Still no direct compatibility for icon pack other than ADW compatible ones, but since it is possible to pick resources from any app, this option might be a good enough workaround.

Because at that time I was worried about other personal stuff, I failed to give a full explanation. I am sorry about.

A few minutes ago someone asked on Facebook where the LL app was. I replied quickly, and since the answer might shed some more light on this decision, I am quoting the post here. Ok, maybe I should have done this earlier here, but hey such is life!

So here is an excerpt in case someone is interested:

I don’t want paid users, I want to be able to develop the app further, this is as simple as that. Please understand the gap between user expectations and the energy needed to fulfil them. On one hand building an app, even a small app, requires a lot of time, not only to make the software, but also maintain it, publish updates, answer users questions, and so on (I am sure you already know that). On the other hand the time spent on building an app is time that cannot be spent on other things. As a standard developer, I have the same activities as any other standard person: work, family and spare time. And as a standard developer I need to work to pay my bills. When I don’t work I don’t get money, so the equation is simple: if I want to do something other than the usual work (without losing too much time for my family and spare time…), then this thing need to bring some money to pay the bills. FYI when an app is priced $1, a french developer like me will receive $0.46, or 0.33€ (one liter of petrol is 1.5€). I am sure I speak for a lot of mobile apps developers, not only for myself. This is said with no animosity, but so that things are clear and can be understood. Regarding the freemium model, it does not work with LL, because the old version was already a full version.

Link to the FB post: https://www.facebook.com/LightningLauncher/posts/768270299884260

“Ok Google, add hotwords detection to the launcher”

Thanks to MohammadAG and others.

(Edit: 10.1.1)

A few more fixes and improvements compared with the previous version, the most visible modification being the way borders corners are drawn. When using transparency adjacent borders don’t overlap any more.

Full list of changes:

– fix unlocking when requested from an event run in the context of the home screen (https://plus.google.com/105066926163073195690/posts/AfKnJ8SYpXq)

– when drawing item borders, draw corners using a triangle shape when they overlap, but keep a rectangular shape when a single segment is drawn in a corner (adjacent segment size is zero, not transparent color)

– in paused/resumed events, script Event.getContainer() will now return the container being paused/resumed

– add script Event.getSource()