Feature Development- New Import Mechanism
Friday, January 16, 2009 at 11:58PM So I've started working on a new method for getting your comics to the iPhone/iPod. The idea I'm running with is to have the Mac/PC client to be constantly broadcasting what files it has available to share. Pull Lists on the iPhone would pick up on this when you hit the currently existing "Import" button. It would then present you with a list of available comics to upload, select a comic... hit upload... and voila upload starts.
considering also to remove all forms of interface blocking during the upload, so that it would just process in the backgroud while you are running the app(naturally the upload would be cancelled if you quit the app). Pending & current uploads would display in the interface as would comics already existing on the iPhone, but with some visual indication (font color, italics, icon) that they are either currently uploading or pending upload.
I'm currently working out all the details on just HOW i'm going to do this, but so far it seems very do-able. I'll keep you all posted on how this progresses.
Reader Comments (6)
I'm glad you're looking into alternative ways of transferring comics. I'm a PC user, and the way things work now, I don't use the app at all because I can'really be bothered exporting one comic book at the time. :) Also, it's really annoying that you have to view either .cbr files or .cbz; I have folders with both types, and would prefer to view them all when I brose. Are there any plans of developing a library application similar to the Mac version for the PC?
Also, I can't seem to install the library program on my 64 bit OS (neither Vista nor Windows 7 beta). Works fine on my Vista 32 bit laptop, though.
there's a fully featured PC app in development right now, I'm hoping to have something available in a week or two.
I'll see if i can compile a 64bit version, I run OSX 10.5.5 and Windows XP, so i've not tested on a Vista 64 machine.
Thanks for your reply, I'll keep checking back for that PC app!
Please, rather, fix the iPhone app... it crashes like crazy if the comic has more than 10 on iPhone... the performance is a big issue when it goes to the page contains thumbnails of each file. The reader needs quite some tweaks.
The clients on computer, on the other hand, is good enough and stable.
the version that i'm finishing testing now fixes some unfortunate memory leaks in the reader itself, so you should see improvements in performance there... Unfortunately a lot of that code was some of the original I had written for this app, back before the iPhone's SDK was out of its NDA. Fortunately tho, most of that original code has been completely rewritten.
I've yet to personally see the case where the issues table with the cover previews causes performance issues, but that might be that I just haven't had that many issues of a single title in the app since i've added that feature. I'm considering adding either a button or a preference to turn on/off issue previews, if you think thats a good idea please let me know :)
ouch, just uploaded a few issues of 100 Bullets and i see what you mean about the cover previews causing performance issues. That's just popped its way to the top of my To-Do list, i'll get a fix to the app store asap, thanks for the feedback!