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Release Notes 1.0
Dubsar for Android is a lightweight web client for Android devices.
August 29, 2011
Dubsar for Android provides full access to the WordNet(R) content hosted at http://dubsar-dictionary.com. Dubsar includes a content provider built on a JSON web service. The application has a searchable activity, allowing users to get live suggestions from the server as they type and search for matching words. Dubsar content can be included in global searches. It also provides full support for voice search.
Users can retrieve data about all words, senses and synsets in Dubsar's database. Dubsar for Android provides a custom navigation interface, allowing support for forward navigation to return after going back. The application permits the user to navigate using a scroll gesture, by dragging the view to the left or right. Dubsar for Android displays a word of the day on its main view. This information is supplied by a service. By default, the service runs when the device boots and whenever the app runs. It caches the word of the day response from the server, expiring it at an appropriate time each day and refreshing from the server whenever necessary. The service will always publish a sticky broadcast using com.dubsar_dictionary.DubsarService.ACTION_WOTD, which includes the relevant data, including error state. The main activity receives these broadcasts and uses them to render its view, live if one is received while the main activity is displayed. The service also publishes a status bar notification whenever a new word of the day is received from the server.
A Preferences option is available from the main activity option menu to allow users to influence the service in two ways. Status bar notifications can be disabled. They are enabled by default. This setting only suppresses status bar notifications. Broadcasts are always transmitted, regardless. In addition, the service honors the system Background Data setting. If enabled, the service will be started when the device boots, and whenever it is started (by the app, for instance) it will keep running in the background and update the word of the day promptly. If background data usage is disabled, the service will not be started when the device boots, and it will exit promptly after satisfying and received request. It will run whenever the application displays an activity, and if the word of the day is out of date, it will update it then and publish a status bar notification if so configured. Any time the user enables background data usage, the service is started by a broadcast receiver.
Users can use the SQL wildcard characters _ and % (standing, respectively, for any single character and anything at all, including nothing, like the regular expressions . and .*, respectively). So for example, to return everything beginning with R, search for r%. Large search results are paginated using a spinner and custom navigation buttons.
See Dubsar's full current list of open issues at https://github.com/jdee/dubsar_android/issues.
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WOTD timer frequently does not fire Issue 5 If the application has been asleep for some time, the WOTD timer often doesn't go off at all.
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FAQ view does not show loading... after initial view Issue 7 The first time a user visits the FAQ view, it shows a message, "loading...," while the web view loads the page. If the user goes back and then forward or otherwise goes away and returns to the FAQ view, the "loading..." message does not appear while the web page loads. If the application is killed and restarted, the "loading..." message will appear again the first time the FAQ view is visited.
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FAQ view state becomes confused after rotation Issue 8 Sometimes after a link in the FAQ view is tapped, the requested AJAX page is momentarily displayed, then the main FAQ view is displayed over it. This may be due to handling AJAX responses in the Android web view.
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Poor handling of bad requests Issue 9 Search for "S(." The view will report an error. A toast will indicate that the network connection is down. The main issue is a server fix. The toast should not report the network connection being down, however. See also https://github.com/jdee/dubsar/issues/44.
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Improve performance of JSON parsing Issue 10 A profile indicates that in a large result, a tremendous amount of time is spent in the JSON tokener. Surely this can be improved.
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Scrolling navigation can seem inconsistent Issue 11 Anything that already scrolls, in particular a ListView, will already intercept scroll events. They simply are never delivered to the GesturedDetector that watches for scroll events in the view as a whole. So on the main activity, for example, the user can drag the screen from any point. In most content views, this only works in the navigation header and static labels immediately below it, above any ListView.
Dubsar requires Android 2.2 or higher. Dubsar has been primarily tested on a Samsung Galaxy S with Android 2.2.1 (FROYO.EC05). It has also been tested in the emulator with Android 3.2 and on some other devices, including a tablet.