Cupcakes and Widgets

Its been a while since Google started rolling out the 1.5 update and along with it came quite a few nifty new features, one of which was the ability to support homescreen widgets.  Though a sizeable chunk of Europe now seems to have update 1.5, in the US its still only a handfull of people that seem to have it yet. Widgets just seemed like such a brilliant idea we decided to create some of our own that would greatly improve the experience of using your brilliant G1.

Initially the plan was to create a 4 x 1 widget that would include the most common widgets. But after some careful discussions (namely getting everyone in the office to do a quick vote) it was unanimously decided that it would be far better to have individual widgets so users can pick and choose which ones they wanted. You’re not lumped with a widget taking up space that you would never use. You also have the ability to arrange the widgets onto the screen however you wish.

Ringer Toggle Widget

Wifi Toggle widget

Brightness Toggle Widget

Bluetooth Toggle Widget

GPS Toggle Widget

Google’s Restrictions
A few things which will really bug a lot of developers is the restrictions that Google has placed on some previously open API’s. For us this meant not having direct access to the GPS API directly to Toggle On/Off in the same way that we have for Wifi or Sound. GPS was the only one which didn’t have 1 click toggle and meant on click we launch the settings panel, thus giving the user an extra (uneccessary) step. Oh well, GPS Toggle was something a lot of you out there had asked for and after getting feedback that “2 clicks is still better than 4″ we decided it was still worth developing it. The feedback from you all seems to be that you love it and so we’re glad we did release it now

Tags: android widgets, marketplace

Thanks to all you droids

A few days ago we released our first set of Android Homescreen Widgets and as of writing there are ~6000 users who have downloaded them. We’ve had many of you email in to say how much you’ve enjoyed them and how you cant wait for the next widget, Thank you all for writing in and commenting, it really means a lot to the team here.

We really do enjoy you providing us your valuable feedback, letting us know what works, what doesn’t, what you’d like to see in the next widget…..or any ideas for awesome apps you’d like us to develop.

I’ll let zahid do a more in-depth Blog post on the four Toggle widgets and our reasons for choosing those, the various technical and UI considerations and more in his next post.

I thought I would just say a quick thank you

Tags: android widgets, marketplace, widgets