9GAG Metro Now Published in Windows Phone Marketplace
My first windows phone app, 9GAG Metro was recently approved and published in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Here’s the link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/927f98ac-ba6b-41ee-8673-eea59e7815f8 . Although there are already a lot of 9GAG client apps in the marketplace, most of them lack features that I want. That is why I decided to create an app. I’m not saying that my app currently has a lot of features. Actually, it is the opposite. But, I can work on new features during my spare time and continuously improve my app. I do have an update already submitted and is waiting for the certification results.
So what is the difference of this app compared to others? The main difference is the image quality of long posts. To ensure that Windows Phone apps perform well, one of the requirements Microsoft set is to have images displayed to at most 2000 by 2000 pixels. Other apps display long posts by scaling them to fit within the 2000 pixels requirement. Unfortunately, some long posts containing text tend to be unreadable after scaling. 9GAG Metro addresses this problem by breaking down the image into smaller images. The trade-off is that it consumes more memory.
Another feature I included is the ability to read comments. Sometimes, there are some posts that you don’t understand. Commenters usually explain the post so I decided it is quite necessary to be able to read comments. Unfortunately, this feature is currently broken and causes the app to crash. I will post a detailed blog post on what caused this. The fix is included in the new update I submitted.
It failed certification once, which I wrote about in a recent blog post: http://mdetras.com/2012/02/25/my-first-submission-to-the-windows-phone-marketplace/ .
Update: Version 1.1 was already published to the marketplace. This includes bug fix for viewing comments, image zoom, and viewing recent posts. Please check http://mdetras.com/9gagmetro/ for details and how-tos.
Great app, however what I imediatelly found out is that the app becomes very unresponsive when I click an image and it loads comments. Actually I just want to look at the picture fullscreen to zoom in and don’t necessary care for the comments. I’d actually appreaciate an additional button on the toolbar just to download comments right on the hot/trending/recent page instead of having to click an image twice just to view it in fullscreen while the app lags and struggles parsing comments inbetween. Also consider a $0.99 paid version because honestly I hate ads in apps and always buy paid versions instead just because. Thanks
Thanks for leaving a comment. That is a great idea, and I’ll see what I can do about it. For the meantime, you can tap on the X button to stop loading comments immediately. I am currently working on a login feature, and honestly taking quite a while so I’m not sure when I can do other improvements or new features. For the paid version, I am waiting for the App Hub to become available here in my country, Philippines, before I publish a paid version. Currently, the app was published via Yalla Apps, a global publisher.
I thought Philippines was already supported.
http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-marketplace-expanding-add-13-more-countries
Not yet, sadly the App Hub is different from the marketplace. It just means that consumers can also download paid apps. Devs in unsupported countries still need to go through the global publisher program.
Aha, got it.
Forgot something, the fullscreen viewer where you can zoom in really needs kinetic scrolling support and possibly “double-tap-to-zoom-in-and-out” feature. No app currently has this and being forced to use both hands to zoom in and out (one hand holding phone, other hand doing pinch-to-zoom) constantly is a bit annoying.
Really hoping for new versions as it seems “9GAG.com” app developer Miechu has stopped developing his app and pretty much just makes fun the users who still use it.
Haven’t thought of that. I’ll add this to my to-do list. Can’t promise on when this can be done, though. Thanks!