Categories
London Bus Pal

London Bus Pal v19.8.1

  • This is a required update to ensure that the app keeps working after Transport for London (TfL) changes the way in which some of their data feeds work. 📰
  • Updates: Library updates to ensure the app is always as fast as possible and using your phone as efficiently as possible. 📚

Note that I have changed the way in which I version the app now – with the first two parts indicating the year and the month. This is mostly because it became too difficult to determine which version number I should update – it makes more sense to tie it to a date.

Categories
Development London Bus Pal

Connecting to the cloud

I have some grand ideas which need users to be less anonymous than they are now. People need the ability to sign into the app in order to do certain things (I don’t want to give away too much, but it will be personalised to them) – but some things needs them to be identified, especially if they use multiple devices.

Not being able to log in so far has always been fine and it makes things like GDPR compliance a whole lot easier. There are some difficulties however and I have had those suggestions made: being able to transfer settings from one phone to another for example.

So currently the idea is fairly simple – give users the ability to sign into the app and then they will be able to backup their favourites to the cloud and restore them when they wish. Of course, this can be more seamless than described here, but that’s the first pass at connecting the app into the cloud.

As it stands, I have built functionality to allow signing in with Google and Facebook details, as well as signing up for an account with username and password combinations. This all works and I just needs to make sure that everything is also fully GDPR compliant. (This is not yet in version 4.5.0 which is published at the time of writing, but it will probably be in the next version, unless I decide to do some quick bug fixes).

After doing the log in screen, the first bit of functionality I will enable is a simple “backup to cloud” and “restore from cloud” facility. This should make it loads easier for people to continue to use the app on different devices.

I am hoping for the functionality to connect to the app to the cloud to be released in September…

Categories
London Bus Pal

London Bus Pal v4.5.0

  • New: Introduced a new landing page with links to other parts of the app 📰
  • Improved: Moved the loading indicator to be inside the app bar to stop the contents from jumping during loading 📡
  • Improved: Errors are now dismissable 🎾
  • Updates: Library updates to ensure the app is always as fast as possible and using your phone as efficiently as possible. 📚
  • Updates: A few minor bug fixes. 🐛

I have finally made a landing page for the app – this doesn’t generally affect existing users, but for new users, it should mean not being greeted by a blank screen. Working hard in the background for small improvements like these.

Categories
London Bus Pal

London Bus Pal v.4.4.5

Consolidated notes for 4.4.4 and 4.4.5:

• Dynamic updates of bus route info and bus stop info – all of the latest bus route changes should hopefully now reflect in the app. 🚍

• Route sequences will still load, even if no data is available from TfL (for example, on route 301). ▶️

• Library updates to ensure the app is always as fast as possible and using your phone as efficiently as possible. 📚

• A few minor bug fixes. 🐛