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Language Flashcards reviewed in Droid Idol

Android  |  April 25, 2012  |  10 responses  

The language flashcards app was recently reviewed by Droid Idol! What is this, you ask. Droid Idol is a website that reviews apps and declares a weekly winner. Although my app wasn’t this week’s winner, I was able to take home some good suggestions on how to improve it, and I even learned something new regarding Android development!

The review

You can read the full review here. The best score was obtained in the “Is it easy to use” category (19/20), while the worst score was from the “Does it fill it’s purpose” category (12/20). I kinda feel it should have gotten a better score in this category, since some of the findings he suggests are for improvements, not because the basic purpose isn’t accomplished, but in general the reviewer points out some valuable suggestions for improving the app, and all comments are welcome.

Install to SD card

One of the points the reviewer makes is regarding the ability to store the app in the SD card. I previously thought that this was set in the Developer Console, using the “Copy Protection” setting as shown below… setting it Off means that the app can be copied from internal storage (or so I thought):

Copy Protection

However after reading this I investigated some and found out that this is done using the android:installLocation manifest attribute. This is declared in the <manifest> element, and can be equal to “preferExternal” or “auto” (not including it will mean you only want it installed in internal storage). So the next update will include some vocabulary word fixes, and the ability to install in the removable SD card! More about the installLocation attribute here.

Submit your app

In general I think submitting your app to Droid Idol is a win-win situation for developers and for Droid Idol. As a developer, you’re getting free exposure of your app to all of Droid Idol’s readers and some valuable and impartial feedback regarding your app. Droid Idol on the other hand gets more readers as more apps are reviewed, and as developers tell their friends.

Although there are paid options, I went with the “Normal Review” and only had to wait a few days until it was reviewed. I imagine that as the site becomes more popular the wait time will increase, so if you have an app I would recommend you submit early!



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The Numa Group

Multilingual WordPress

  • Stevenson

    If you have to specify the permission to copy to an sd card in the manifest, what is the purpose of the publishing options then? :

    • http://softwareasaliving.com/ Rob

      From what I now understand, these two are different in the following way:

      1. The Copy Protection section of the Publishing Options was the way Google initially planned on protecting apps from piracy. Any app that had this option On would be installed into a “secure” folder in the internal storage, unviewable by the user and thus impossible to copy. However as people started to root their devices (which means they can run processes as the Linux root user) they were able to access this folder and copy the apks. Google’s security method was based on hiding the apks from the user, but this proved to be a bad idea.

      Since then Google has changed their method of protecting apps to using a Licensing service, so the previous method is now deprecated. More on this here: http://developer.android.com/guide/market/licensing/overview.html#CopyProtection

      2. The android:installLocation element of the manifest file indicates if your app can be moved to the external SD card. Why is this important? It’s important because whenever a user unmounts his SD card either to remove it or by accessing it via USB, any app that was installed on the SD card is inmediately killed. This is fine for most apps, but if your app is a service, an input method engine, etc. you want it to be available always, and thus should not allow it to be moved to the external SD card. More on this here: http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/install-location.html

      I hope this clears it up!

      • Steve

        Oh thank you so much for such detailed answer :)

  • Steve

    By the way i am also starting developing an android app but i found very hard to change the backgroud color of the android tab widget and for what i searched it doesnt seem an easy task. How did you manage to change the colors in your tab calculator pro app?

    Thank you

    • http://softwareasaliving.com/ Rob

      Hi Steve. The latest (2.0) version of the Electrician Calculator doesn’t use tabs :-P .  However you can create a different png file for the selected and unselected states of each tab. More on that here, on point #3:   http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/views/hello-tabwidget.html

      • Steve

        Oh, but for what i understand that only changes the icon not the whole background color of the selected/unselected tab or am i wrong? :

        • http://softwareasaliving.com/ Rob

          Yes, this changes the icon. The background is changed automatically when a tab is selected/unselected. Have you read about styles and themes? I’ve never used them myself so I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but from the first paragraph I think it might be:  http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html

          • Steve

            Oh thanks :) but i am even more puzzled then, how did customized so well the interface for electrician calculator and language flashcards without using styles and themes? :O Cause i now remember using this about 2 years ago for an college android project and dont recall another way to customize layout. Thank you for answering

          • http://softwareasaliving.com/ Rob

            Actually I just read that page I linked and found I am using styles… I just didn’t know they were called “Styles and Themes”  =p

          • Steve

            LOL :D