BETA Closed

The BETA phase of Metro UI is closed.  The two apps, currently BETA & Stable, will be changed to Free & Pro.  I will still be supporting the Free/Beta version but any major new features (drag n drop, folders, animated tiles, etc.) will be only added to the Pro version.  In simpler terms here is a break down of what updates to expect depending on the version you currently have:

BETA/Free

• Bug Fixes
• Live Tile Updates (Facebook Count, Twitter Count, etc.)

Stable/Pro

• Bug Fixes
• New features 
• Folders
• More live tile options (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Animated Tiles (People, Pictures, Calendar, etc.)
• Drag n Drop (if I ever figure out how to allow a GridView to do this)
• Custom Tile sizes (2x1, 1x2, etc.)  (again...if I ever figure out how to allow a GridView to do this)

As always I appreciate your patience.  I do work full time and I do have a life outside of work.  So even if updates slow down, rest assured I am not giving up on development.  I will post here once I feel all major development is done on the Pro version (v 1.*).

NOTE:

Drag n Drop and 2x1/1x2 Tiles may not get into METRO UI until v2.0.  Again please have patience.  I do plan on adding these features.  The constraints of my current design seem to make it impossible at the moment.  So it may take a major development effort (hence v 2.0).  In the mean time I may try to add a "priority" property of each tile that I can sort on.  That way you can at least re-order just not via Drag n Drop.

Digital Clock

While I was figuring out all of Android's preference framework, I developed a simple digital clock widget.  It has a simple background that can be turned off.  You can also enter a format string for both the time and date.  Here are a few common format strings:

• 24 Hour: HH:mm
• 24 Hour (no colon): HHmm
• 12 Hour: hh:mm a
• Date Options: 
• E: Numeric day of week
• EEE: Shortened day of week (Wed, Thur, etc.)
• EEEE: Full day of week (Wednesday, Thursday, etc)
• d: Day of month
• M: Numeric month
• MMM: Shortened month (Jan, Feb, etc.)
• MMMM: Full month (January, February, etc.)

Other format options are available at http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

asdf

Signal Strength Widget v0.1.4

I was surprised to find out that there were no decent widgets for showing signal strength in the Android market. I was not able to find any widgets that provided all the functionality I was looking for so I created my own. Here is what I created:

Feature List:

• 10-bar visual signal strength
• Numeric signal strength (dBm)
• Network Operator
• Data activity indicator
• Network Type indicator
• Supports Android 1.6 - 2.2 (hopefully...I have 1.6 so I have only been able to do much testing on that platform).

Update:  Updates are mostly to the UI.  Everything was moved to a more portable UI layout.