CruiseMonkey 5
(Or should I call it: CruiseMonkey XP?)
I'm in the process of getting betas set up for the latest CruiseMonkey. Some things to note:
- Android support is now 4.0.3 or higher. There were too many troubles with keeping it compatible with 2.3.
- Android beta testing will be through the Google Play store, or direct installation of beta .apk files. I don't see a way to offer automatic betas through the Amazon Android store.
Instructions on how to become a beta tester, how to report issues, and other fun stuff are all at the CruiseMonkey GitHub page.
Comments
(1) create an unofficial event and save it
=> it gets created (so far so good!)
(2) EDIT the event description text and hit save
=> You now have TWO copies of the event.
Expected result: the original event is modified in place.
WORKAROUND: explicitly delete the duplicate after each edit.
Version 5.02, from the play store, on Android 4.4.4 (Galaxy S4 google play edition).
I'm seeing odd behavior when using the system's back button. Sometimes it goes back a screen in the app (as expected), sometimes it does nothing at all, sometimes it exits the app entirely. I haven't been able to figure out how exactly what's going on with it, but this is what I've observed:
- The twitarr screen is pretty reliable in that hitting back after starting a tweet, clicking a photo, viewing a profile card, or opening seamail will send you back to the list... but hitting it while viewing the list sometimes sends you back to the events screen, and sometimes just exits the app.
- After using the main menu navigation, it seems like the back button will usually exit the app.
- After exiting with the back button then re-launching using recent tasks or the app icon, it will start on whatever screen you were last viewing. Then, one press of back will then go to the events screen, and subsequent presses of back will do nothing at all.
Twitarr screen - If you like a tweet then refresh (either through a pull or the button), the tweet appears to no longer be liked. It is still marked as liked in the twitarr web site.Sometimes scrolling the twitarr screen causes tweets to all load with the text of a single tweet - right now, mine is showing everybody as saying "My face the entire cruise." This happens most often after viewing a photo, then scrolling further down the list, then refreshing using the button.
There are performance issues on the twitarr screen. Scrolling is very slow - the more I scroll down, the slower it gets. I'm guessing that it's something to do with how all the data is rendered or kept in memory, and I'm not sure if much can be done to improve this.
Probably the most worrying thing I found - my system info app is reporting that cruisemonkey is hovering around 50% cpu usage while the screen is on, even while the app is in the background. This might just be the sync, but it's been 5 min, and it's still showing high usage. The CPU cores are not clocking down/shutting off until I fully exit the app. Status check interval is set to 60s. My phone is getting quite warm. It looks like the CPU usage drops to 0% while the screen is off, which is good - but the constant background usage with screen on will result in a significant reduction in battery life.
Also, I've got a feature request: status check intervals longer than 60 seconds. Ideally, I'd like to also be able to set it in minutes.
This next bit... I tried setting up a dev environment of my own to test out these
suggestions, but I couldn't figure out the build process - I'm not
familiar with cordova/ionic at all (meaning I'm very dangerous and
probably have no idea what I'm talking about with most of it, sorry). Do you have (or know of, if CM is similar enough to other cordova/ionic apps) a guide for getting started with the build/dev environment somewhere? If not, no need to write one now, but it might be a nice thing to have if anyone else wants to contribute for next year's version. Anyway... on to the suggestions/research I've done...
Performance is generally better (on 5.0.8), but I'm still seeing CPU usage when the app is in the background. The good news is that it's now hovering around 30%-35%, instead of around 50%. I think it might be something related to this: http://forum.ionicframework.com/t/stopping-javascript-angular-watches-when-app-paused/4592 - It's something to consider, but I wonder if making that change to the KeepRunning setting would cause notifications of seamail and mentions to stop. Worst case, I'll just greenify it. So don't spend too much time here.
The twitarr list still gets laggy after a few scrolls to the bottom. It looks like this might be a framework issue - see http://forum.ionicframework.com/t/infinite-scroll-is-lag-in-android/6451 - In that thread, they suggest using collection-repeat instead of ng-repeat, but I don't know how much work that takes or what kind of impact that would have on the android or iOS versions.
Either way, I'm being enough of a pain here that I feel like I owe you a drink. Hopefully I'll run into you on board!
If so, is it known behavior that it doesn't include any of the schedules yet? I can't recall when that build came out vs. when schedules came out, but all my events screens are blank.
I've requested an expedited release (to the App Store, not beta) of 5.0.8 which has tons of fixes including one for the DB issue you're seeing, @villicious.
I'll write up a doc on how to build everything in the morning. It's not too hard, just a long list.
The problem is that collection-repeat requires knowing the height of your row before it's rendered, so it's difficult to implement with a variable-height thing like tweet text. The alternative is to always only show the first 2 lines of a tweet or something and requiring a tap to view details. Collection-repeat *is* way faster. I may experiment with it just to see if it works OK in practice.
@Pneumatic - Yeah, it's probably memory on the Nexus S. That device has 512MB of RAM, and 128MB of it is reserved for the GPU. On my phone (Galaxy S4), CruiseMonkey uses about 180MB of RAM... that's gonna be tough to fit into the Nexus S's 384MB of available memory. I haven't tried the app on my T-mobile G2 (HTC Desire Z)... but I bet I'd see similar issues, since it also is a 512MB RAM device.
Edited to add: I got curious, and dusted off the Desire Z. As expected, it's very very slow. To be functional at all, CruiseMonkey has to be the only app running. When exiting the app, android kills it immediately to free up the memory (unlike on my S4, where it keeps running in the background), and my home app (Nova Launcher) does a full redraw - meaning even that got pushed out of active memory while CM was in use!