TimescapeCompatibility: Events shown up

The TimescapeCompatibility (TC) module is common a SharedSource designed to map the events provided by the Timescape extension to the format understood by Historify.

To showcase the current state of TC a simple Timescape Extension was implemented, which generates a single event for the first contact in the user's address book.

Here are some screenshot of the extension running on a Sony Ericcson device.

With the help of the TC, the extension could also work on non-SE devices. The following screenshots demonstrate how the extension and the generated event are integrated to the environment of Historify.

Current limitations of the Timescape Compatibility module:
- Since Historify does not support events not addressed to contacts, only the events associated with a particular contact are shown.
- Timescape supports status updates, which function currently does not have an equivalent in Historify.
- TC could not be installed to Xperia devices due to conflicting content provider names.
- On non-SE devices, extensions must set the
<uses-library android:name="com.sonyericsson.eventstream_1" android:required="false" />
in their manifest, if not, the extension could not be installed on the device.

Timescape Compatibility: SampleTimescapeExtension

To test the capabilities of the Timescape-compatible SharedSource, a simple Timescape extension has been implemented. The following screenshot shows the extension running on the Xperia emulator provided by Sony Ericsson.

Historify alpha screenshots

The first alpha version of Historify containing core functionality is now ready for testing. The following screenshots guide you through the different views. You might compare them to the ones experienced on your device. As demo client apps you could use the also available LendMe and HelloSharedSource.

INTERACT_INTENT

A new Intent has been added for Sources and QuickPostSources to increase Historify's usability: with the INTERACT_INTENT, external applications could register their customized shortcuts to the timeline's 'Interact' menu. The showcase app LendMe uses this function to launch an Activity for adding new borrowed / lent items (see figure).

New layout for the Timeline

The Activity displaying the flow of events is intended to be the most frequently used view of the application, so it is top priority to make it user-friendly and well usable. To facilitate dealing with the events, a new layout has been developed (see figure 1). The aim of this post is to introduce the new functions. Note that the Timeline Activity is under development, so several elements described here are not fully implemented yet.

Fig.1. New timeline

As you might observe, the layout is divided into several regions. On the top is the action bar displaying the name of the contact and an easily accessible "..." menu, which contains shortcuts to the main functions of the application.

The next region, the "top panel" displays the avatars of the user and the contact as well as a button titled "h?". This button is for opening the timeline options popup window. By accessing this feature the user could configure source filters for a particular contact. In the previous version these filters were configurable in the Sources Activity. This Activity titled "my sources" has also been redesigned, and now is for configuring sources only (see figure 2).

Fig.2. Configure sources

The avatars on the panel are also touchable. Clicking the user's avatar launches the "my preferences" Activity where the user can provide a custom image as her avatar. Clicking the contact's avatar opens a menu where will be shortcuts for creating new events for the different sources (e.g. call the contact, create a new entry in LendMe, write a message on Facebook). External applications could provide an Intent to launch their customized activity for that purpose (e.g LendMe could launch an activity for adding a new entry where the contact field is already filled with the selected contact's name).

Since the top panel occupies relatively large portion of the screen, the timeline options window also contains a button for hiding the panel. If the panel is not shown, the h! symbol on the actionbar becames touchable. Clicking on it opens the so called h-menu, where the functions of the top panel are accessible via menu elements. The h-menu also provides an option for restoring the top panel to its original state. When hiding the panel, a tooltip message informs the user about this feature (see figure 3).

Fig.3. Message about restoring the top panel

Finally, the last region is for displaying the events, similar to the previous version of the application. Since the bubbles are not always the best way to display large ammount of information, the style of the timeline will be configurable in the "my preferences": the user could choose between the "Bubbles" and the "Rows" theme.

New layout for Contacts

The new layout of the ContactsActivity includes the action bar with the search function, which could help the user find a particular Contact she's looking for.

New welcome screen

As part of the UI improvements of Historify, a new welcome screen has been added (see Figure). This view includes the first version of the action bar (temporary without any functionality), a list of recently contacted people as well as links to the "Contacts", "Favorites", "Sources" options available in the previous version. The next task is to rewrite the UI of these screens, too.