This is the development blog for all the official WordPress apps, including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry.
The best place to start is the Mobile Handbook (draft). It gives you all the instructions on how to get set up with any app environment.
GitHub
WordPress for iOS
WordPress for Android
Of course feel free to ping the Team Rep on duty or anyone in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode to get started as well!
Get in touch with one of the team reps on duty if you have a question, some feedback, or anything else. We're very friendly.
Getting ready to submit WordPress for iOS 3.6, just waiting for some translations to be approved.
Here’s what’s new:
Did I miss something?
Here’s the belated dev chat summary from last Wednesday (sorry about the delay!)
The beta was delayed a week since some parts of the apps were not done. New submit/announce date should be June 3.
iOS NUX is almost done (again!), translations are synced back up and most are complete. Looks like we’ll be able to submit soon. [editor's note: as of Friday the plan is to submit by EOD or Monday]
iOS Accounts release will most likely be bundled with the new WordPress.com Reader update which should be the next one to be released after NUX.
The next dev chat will be on May 29, 2013 at 1500 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.
Looking for something to do this weekend? Version 2.4 of WordPress for Android is ready for testing. This release adds an all-new notifications view as well as integration with Google Cloud Messaging so that you can get notified as soon as something happens on your blog.
We’re looking for a few brave folks to try this out. Keep in mind that it is beta software. To take advantage of the new notifications feature, you’ll need to have a site at WordPress.com or be running the Jetpack plugin on your self-hosted site. You can find the WordPress.com sign in on the Settings page of the app.
We’ve also added some smaller new features as well:
After you install the update and are signed in to WordPress.com you should start receiving notifications when stuff happens on your site. You can leave an anonymous comment on your blog to test it out if you aren’t getting much traffic at the moment 
Please give it a try and comment here if you have any issues or suggestions!
2.4 Beta APK: http://bit.ly/172QxOy
Lastly, GLaDOS approves of this effort:
Several of the team were out at Google IO this week so we filled in the gaps as we were able. Chat log.
The notifications release is currently in beta and very close to releasing. We haven’t decided what’s next but NUX is high on the list.
BlackBerry is currently reviewing an update sent Monday, May 13th, and we expect it to be live in the store this week. This is basically version 2.3.3 of the Android app with some minor changes. The code is in the BlackBerry branch of the Android repository.
A Windows Phone update was submitted Tuesday. This update addresses an issue with the sharing feature. We expect it to be live later today or tomorrow.
We’ve been having some trouble with the git repository at ios.git.wordpress.org getting out of sync with our git checkouts and the mirror on github.com. The repositories have had trouble staying in sync and most recently the commit authors have been reset and no longer match. We suspect the culprit is the subgit software that manages syncing between the svn and git repositories hosted on wordpress.org.
We discussed possible options:
A) Give subgit one last try.
B) Drop svn and make ios.git.wordpress.org the official repository, mirrored to github.
C) Make the repository on github the official repo.
We talked it over and decided the best course of action is to sunset the svn repo in favor of git. We will correct the repository at ios.git.wordpress.org and it will become the official repo for WPiOS with a two way mirror to github.
The next dev chat will be on May 22, 2013 at 1500 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.
NUX (new welcome guide, improved WordPress.com sign up) is almost complete, need to look over copy and polish a few things, then should be ready to get it translated and tested.
WordPress.com native reader project: picking up momentum again, currently working on threaded comments which is complicated.
Accounts migration: need to write the actual core data migration but very close to completion. Should simplify the way WordPress.com accounts act under the hood in the iOS app.
A bug fix update is going out today that fixes a bug with featured images.
The WordPress.com Notifications project is very close to beta, no word on when just yet but should be very soon.
We decided to close the dev blogs and (if possible) migrate their data to this blog instead and keep all discussions/announcements/etc in one place. The filtering on this p2 should make it easy to only see discussions about specific platforms if you only contribute to one. @mrroundhill took it on himself to investigate what’s needed for migrating the data. @isaackeyet (me) will look into a way to display sticky messages on the dev blogs once migrations are complete. The platform leads for each platform will also post a last post on each one of the dev blogs letting subscribed readers know that the blog has been merged with make/mobile (this would be @mrroundhill, @koke, and @daniloercoli for BlackBerry and Windows Phone).
After the chat @nacin jumped in and let us know he will assist with the migrations as well.
@aerych reminded himself and all others that the Handbook is still in need of looking over and updating – please refer to the separate todo post for details on what’s left and who’s responsible for what.
@daniloercoli let everybody know that there’s a new bug fix update live for Windows Phone. It has bug fixes as well as a small new feature that lets users share permalinks to other apps on the device (such as Email, Facebook, Twitter, etc).
The next dev chat will be on May 15, 2013 at 15:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.
We had a short chat this week as several of the team were out due to travel, etc. Chat log.
Continuing to make progress on our main fronts but there is still lots to do before we’re ready to ship new features — at least a couple more weeks.
Shipping version 2.3.2 today. Details.
Continuing to make progress on Notifications. Pushing the beta out to next week as there is more work to do.
The next dev chat will be on May 8, 2013 at 1500 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.
To make it even more inviting to contribute and kick-start great patches I added two buttons in the sidebar that are direct links to the GitHub repos for the iOS and Android projects. Hopefully this, with some updates to the mobile handbook should make it a lot less intimidating to actually start contributing.
Nice! Great idea
Today I did some fixes for exporting the resx format and after that I played with a bash script for updating pre defined languages per repo. The script can be found here: https://gist.github.com/markoheijnen/5468925. Curious if this is something that is useful to play further with and if so if we need to create a repo for it on Github.
Nice work Marko, I like that script!
I think we can create a new repo under the WordPress Mobile organization, and put your script and other useful resources there.
It we can do that it would be awesome. I can then also create files for the other projects.
Sayak (a GSoC candidate) has been looking at the webOS app and taking notes on how to port it, and just generally how it works. This could potentially be used as a part of the mobile handbook. Starting a thread here that we can comment and give feedback on Sayak’s notes. Sayak can you add a comment with a link to your notes?
Here’s the link to first plain-text draft of the guide:-
https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public/A%20Guide%20to%20WordPress%20for%20WebOS
Please find the directory consisting of the plain text files for the first draft of the WordPress for WebOS app here:-
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzFzGtkABcNJcFJta09QUzYyVVk&usp=sharing
Hi Sayak,
I took some time to read through the guide so far. Nice work! Here are a few thoughts:
Intro: I think there is a little word-smithing that could really nail the opening tone. For example: you might consider avoiding strong phrases like “practically abandoned”. Also, if the goal of the guide is to help folks create new apps based off of the webOS codebase the intro should probably focus on that goal a bit more. Right now it seems weighted a little too much toward the history of the project.
Getting Started: I think this does a great job explaining how to get the existing codebase up and running in a browser.
Sections 3 and 4: I think the level of detail here is very nice. It provides a great map for someone unfamiliar with the project and webOS apps. Looks like Section 4 is still a work in progress?
What else do you have planned?
@beaucollins Do you think you might have some time to look over these as well?
Hi Eric,
Thanks for going through the guide and for your valuable feedback. I’ll try to improve the document based upon this.
I agree about the intro. Even I somehow had a bit of reservation about that part. Will improve this section. Also, when I started with the write up I wasn’t quite sure what would be the perfect introduction, hence the emphasis on the history. I will try and modify it to put more weight on the porting part.
Also, you are correct about section 4 being a work in progress. At this point I’m a bit confused about how to make the transition from the Architecture to the actual part on where to focus for porting the application to other platforms.
Currently I’m planning to do some more research about the architechtural similarities and differences of a web-app based upon WebOS and that of one built upon Firefox OS. Based on these I plan to arrive upon a conclusion on how best to go about the transition. This would help me in writing my GSoC application as well as extending the documentation. Once I’ve my application ready, it should be easier to follow the points and append to the guide.
From what I can see at the moment, writing this guide is a gonna be a pretty long term affair. The reason behind this is, we can only write about the Porting mechanism once we have tried and tested it out on atleast one platform transition to maintain a good quality of documentation. This means that I would need to carry on with this documentation process during the actual coding period and write my observations as facts rather than a strong guesswork.
Regards,
Sayak
Hey Eric,
I have just updated the Introduction as per your suggestions. Please do let me know if further modifications are required once you go thrugh it.
Regards,
Sayak
Crafting a good intro can be tough. Its much nicer now.
The latest version of the app was released on Monday April 23, and has fixed even more crashes and bugs. Unfortunately there’s still a crash occurring with featured images.
Now working on some improvements to the WPcom Notifications screen and looking into ways the app can better handle accounts (from both WPcom and multisite installs).
NUX project: wrapped up (*crosses fingers*) some of the stuff that will improve the signup flow and have shifted toward the wizard walkthrough features.
Native WPcom reader project: implementation is progressing. Basic views are implemented and being iterated on. Currently working on the best way to handle video in posts.
A bug fix update for version 2.3 (Holo update) of the Android app was released. This took care of a handful of crashes and a multitasking issue.
Another bug fix release with some fixes to the ActionBarSherlock library and James Hu’s comment editing patch.
The next major version is 2.4 (WPcom Notifications). This release is progressing, push notifications are working and the UI is being wired up.
Nothing big in the pipeline, although there’s now a milestone with tickets for the next update.
There are quite a few items left to do, both assigned and open — you know who you are! Let’s wrap this up. Eric said he’s started to look into the remaining items for Windows Phone.
Rachel got in touch (yay!) so we’ll bring her up to speed on the status of the handbook as well.
The next dev chat will be on July 1, 2013 at 1500 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.
Isaac Keyet (isaackeyet)
Eric is discussing. 
John Saddington 2:24 pm on May 28, 2013 Permalink |
sweet!