OnTrack 2.5.6 Released

Thursday, July 29, 2010

I have uploaded OnTrack 2.5.6 to the market, this is primarily a bug fix release with the following issues corrected:

The dashboard has been adjusted to fit properly on small screens like the HTC Tattoo
Fixed a problem where the backup file could be truncated in rare cases.
Added an option to e-mail the backup file.
Fixed problem with re-ordering categories and subtypes on larger screens where list entries would shrink when drag was completed.
Increased the font size under the buttons on the dashboard on medium and large screens
Fixed problem where dashboard wallpaper looked squeezed when viewed in landscape
If you changed the date/time when adding an entry and then changed the phone orientation the date and time changed to now. This has been fixed.
The calculation used for the auto-selection of a category based on time was off resulting in the wrong category being picked in some circumstances, this has been fixed.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:42 AM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack and HTC Sense UI Startup Problems

Sunday, July 11, 2010

As most of you know the lastest version of OnTrack introduced a new start screen for OnTrack, unfortunately it appears that there is a bug in the HTC customized home screen Sense UI that is causing OnTrack not to start correctly. The issue is I changed the class name of the launch activity and once you update the application the HTC home screen has issues because it tries to use the class name it previously cached.

Unfortunately this is not something I can fix as it is a problem in HTC's code, stock Android phones have no issue with the change. Changing the launch activity back to the old one will just cause the same issue for everyone that has already worked around this problem or new users who installed it for the first time.

Fortunately there are a few ways you can try to correct the issue and I have had reports that at least one of these will work:

Upgrade to 2.5.4. I have attempted to fix the issue by creating a new activity with the old class name that forwards to the right OnTrack home screen. Try upgrading to this version to see if it corrects the issue.
Replace icon on home screen. The easiest thing to try first is to replace the icon on the home screen. To do this, hold you finger down on the OnTrack icon on the home screen and drag it to the trash. Then open the sliding drawer and replace the icon on the home screen again If this doesn't work move on to the next item.
Reboot phone. In this workaround first remove the OnTrack icon from the home screen, turn your phone off and on (reboot) to clear the HTC internal cache and then add the icon back to the home screen.
Re-install OnTrack. In this step we uninstall and re-install OnTrack from the Android market. To do this in a way you don't lose data please follow the steps below.

Here are the steps for re-installing OnTrack without losing any data:

Open the OnTrack application from the Market application and select the Tools icon on the new home screen. Select the Backup tool and press the Backup button. You should see a progress bar go from left to right backing up your data.
Validate your data is present by connecting the phone to a computer and checking that the file backup.xml is in the OnTrack folder on your SD Card. Copy the file backup.xml to your computer to make an additional backup.
Disconnect your phone from the computer, very important otherwise restore step will not work.
Uninstall the OnTrack application from your phone.
Re-install the OnTrack application to your phone from the Market.
Go into the Tools menu again and select the Restore option, this will restore your data from the backup.xml file.

If none of these work please send me an e-mail at Gerald Nunn and I will try to assist you further.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:26 AM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack Updated to 2.5.3 in Market

Friday, July 09, 2010

Just a quick note to say I updated OnTrack to 2.5.3 in the Android market. Apparently the Android home screen caches the application activity to start when the application is launched. This means the new screen was bypassed along with some important initialization causing an error. I've moved the initialization to an Application object, which I should have done in the first place, and hopefully that will correct the problem. Another way to workaround it is to simply remove the OnTrack icon from your home screen and then add it back.

Finally there was a small issue where the backup progress bar wasn't working correctly, that has been fixed as well.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:38 AM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 2.5.1 release in the market

Thursday, July 08, 2010

OnTrack 2.5.1 has been released to the market, the new features are listed in my previous post. Unfortunately the new log book didn't quite make it into this release, I hope to have it ready and available later next week.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:04 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 2.5.0 coming soon

Sunday, July 04, 2010

Work on OnTrack 2.5.0 is progressing and it should be released in the next week or two. In this release the major emphasis was on improving useability, particularly for new users, The following changes were made in this version:

A dashboard screen as the new OnTrack home screen has been added, however an option to use the old home screen as the default is available.
In line with the new dashboard screen, the navigation to features which were buried in menus or settings has been improved.
Added a new scatter graph that shows Glucose by Time of Day, allows user to better discern when low and high scores typically occur.
The backup feature now backs up OnTrack settings in addition to data.
Added disclosure indicator to menu like screens to better indicate to click to move to next option.
Added 'Delete' option to pop-up menu when viewing an individual entry, category or subtype.
Force blood pressure to use 'Phone' keyboard type.
Made 'Phone' the default keyboard for new users.
Fixed problems with entering HbA1C.
Added support for Body Fat type.
Allow two decimals in medication entry.

I'm also hoping to have a new logbook feature in this version as well, this will create an HTML document that mimics the format of a logbook.

Finally I have received a few requests from people with regards to how to donate to the development of OnTrack, as a result I added donations link to the OnTrack pages.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 9:00 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 2.1.0 Released

Sunday, April 04, 2010

The next version of OnTrack, 2.1.0, has been released to the Android Market. The following changes were made:

Added support for pulse and HbA1c types.
Added ability to switch graph colors to black on white for better printing.
Added ability to specify keyboard preference type for numeric keyboard. This keyboard allows the user to switch between phone and numeric and was required because some handsets had issues with the phone style keyboard being used for entering numbers.
Fixed bug where HTML export should specify UTF-8 character set and it did not.
Fixed various bugs that were sent by remote stack trace reporter.
Made graphs more resilient to orientation changes.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 7:51 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 2.0.0 Released

Friday, March 12, 2010

OnTrack 2.0.0 has been released and is on the Android market. This release features a re-working of the applications look and feel plus some other changes as follows:

Added support for entering blood pressure and viewing a graph of blood pressure over time
Added the option in the settings screen to hide types. For example, if you never enter weight values you can turn off the weight type and it won't be included as an option in the add entry screens.
Fixed bug where global default category was not working
Fixed bug in Quick Add screen where glucose had 'carbs' instead of mmo/l or mg/dl as the measurement unit
Added a error message if you try to launch Quick Add without selecting at least one type
Fixed issue where graph would hang if there was no data.
Added global exception handler that will e-mail unexpected errors to a gexperts server.
Fixed issues with backup, export and restore activities on smaller screens.
Added support for QVGA devices like the HTC Tatoo.

The German and Spanish localizations are up to date in this release, there will be a point update in the next few days for other languages.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:17 AM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

Android Paid Apps in Canada Coming Soon?

Friday, February 26, 2010

There is a rumour that Google will announce support for paid applications for Canadians in the Android next week. Keeping my fingers crossed for this one and hope the announcement also includes letting developers in Canada sell applications as well. More info on the rumour from Android In Canada.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 2:00 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack Work Continuining

Monday, February 22, 2010

Work on OnTrack is progressing well and I'm opening to have a new version on the market in the next few weeks. The new version will have some new features, such as support for blood pressure, but will also have a change in the look and feel of the application. Here is a screen shot of the home screen of the forthcoming version of OnTrack.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:09 AM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

It is hard to love Google/Android as a Canadian

Sunday, January 31, 2010

As a Canadian I have to wonder what Google as against my country when it comes to Android? First off, Canadian Android users still cannot buy paid applications from the Google market even after Android has been available from Rogers for more then six months now. Second, Canadian developers cannot sell applications on the Market either, thereby causing developers like myself to forgo working on Android applications since there is no possibility of making a buck. Google refuses to comment on the issue however I cannot believe it is insurmountable, after all Apple has no problem fully supporting paid applications on the iPhone in Canada.

Another nail in the coffin, Google has just released the Nexus One and of course you cannot buy it in Canada from the Google website. Unlike Europe, Canada has a carrier, Wind Mobile, that is capable of using the 3G frequencies that the Nexus supports. Alternatively it could be used on the Rogers network with 2G (EDGE) support. As it stands, all the Android phones available for sale in Canada are dated with Android 1.5 being the latest version available.

Google if you want Canadian developers like myself to support you with applications how about showing a little love to us Canucks?

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 6:59 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 1.9.0 Released

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

OnTrack 1.9.0 has been released to the Android market, the following changes have been made:

Users can now backup and restore data to and from the SD Card
Purge feature allows for deleting old records from the database
Users can control the default category (Breakfest, Lunch, etc...) for new records based on the time of day
Added the ability to e-mail an export file
Switched to using the phone keypad for number entry to improve useability
Fixed a bug where changes to date or time were not detected for automatic saving

I'll be working on the next version over the course of February and plan to include support for blood pressure as well as some additional graphs.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:23 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack Featured in Local Paper

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Sorry I haven't been blogging much, busy with a few projects, however I wanted to drop a quick note to the blog to mention that OnTrack was recently featured in my local paper the Era-Banner. You can read the article at the Era-Banner website.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:43 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 1.8.3 Released

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I have uploaded OnTrack 1.8.3 to the Android market, this is a minor release that widens the home screen on devices with larger screens like the Archos internet tablet.

The other thing it hopefully addresses is an issue a handful of users are reporting with respect to OnTrack duplicating records and deleting certain records. I suspect this issue is related to the Quick Add feature as it is the only spot where records are deleted. The issue is potentially occurring when an error occurs with saving multiple entries in the Quick Add screen, the error will cause OnTrack to roll back the already added records by deleting them based on their identifiers. I've tested this feature backwards and forwards and have not been able to reproduce the issue, I suspect these users might be using one of the newer devices or Android versions which may be causing an unexpected issue. Considering there are over a thousand people using OnTrack I believe this issue is not widespread since some of the regulars who stay in contact with me would have experienced the problem and dropped me a line.

Having said that, this release adds much better exception handling and notification around this area and corrects some issues I noted when an unexpected error does occur on saving. However, since I cannot reproduce the issue I can only be hopeful this will address the problem, thus if you are experiencing this issue please drop me a line so I can better understand where the issue is occurring. The annoying thing with comments in the Android market is that you cannot contact the user to ask follow up questions which makes tracking this issue down difficult, having someone who is experiencing the issue contact me would be immensely helpful.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 9:09 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack Developer Statistics

Monday, October 05, 2009

I thought it would be interesting to share some statistics with respect to how well OnTrack is doing in the developer market. For those of you not familiar with the Android market, when you release an application on the market you get access to a developer console that shows how many downloads and active installs there are for the application at the current time.

OnTrack was released a couple of months ago around mid-July and the initial uptake was somewhat slow. I think some of this was due to the fact that I initially released it as just 'OnTrack' without the word diabetes in the title. I believe this was a mistake, even though I used the word diabetes in the description and OnTrack would appear in searches for diabetes I think the fact that diabetes was not in the title caused people to ignore it. I added Diabates to the title so it became 'OnTrack Diabetes' and since then the rate of adoption has been markedly better.

At the moment OnTrack has had 2134 downloads with 961 active installs, given the overall size of the Android market and the niche area that OnTrack serves I'm pretty happy with those numbers. There are currently 39 ratings for OnTrack with the majority of them very positive (4-5) and only a handful of poor to fair ratings (2-3). With regards to the poor ratings, one thing I dislike about the Android market is an inability to exchange information with commenters. This is annoying because often when someone leaves you a comment with a poor rating it is often difficult to understand exactly what issues the user had with the application and correct it in a future release.

I expect the number of active installs to increase substantially over the next few months as Sprint and Verizon add Android based phones to their portfolios. I'll try to remember to write an update post at the end of the year to see how things have changed.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 1:59 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

Looking for Help in Localizing OnTrack

OnTrack is currently localized for English and German and I would like to expand the number of supported languages, unfortunately a bit of a challenge to that goal is the fact that I really only speak and write English well. Thus I'm looking for help from native speakers who would be interested in seeing OnTrack in their language.

If you are interested in assisting with localizing OnTrack please drop me a line at gnunn@gexperts.com and let me know what language you can translate. In response I will send you a couple of text files for translation along with some basic instructions on how to perform the translation. Ideally you should be able to commit to keeping translations up to date in the sense that as OnTrack is developed and features added new strings that need to be translated will also be added. As new translations are required I'll forward you the text strings to translate and you should be able to turn this around in a few days.

Having said that, even if you only have the time for a one-off translation feel free to let me know and we can use that to kick-off support for that language.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 1:41 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 1.8.2 Released

Friday, October 02, 2009

OnTrack has been updated to 1.8.2 in the Android market. This version is a minor update with the following changes:

Changed the handling of the back button in the edit screen, now if after making changes you press the back button and the changes are not valid the application will warn you before discarding the changes.
In some locales the comma is used as the decimal separator instead of the period. Unfortunately there is a bug in Android 1.5 that doesn't allow users to enter a comma in these locales for decimal fields. The problem that arose is when editing an entry, OnTrack would copy the value into the edit field with a comma making it an invalid number. OnTrack now automatically changes the comma to a period to workaround this Android issue. In all all other places in OnTrack a comma should be displayed if this is what your locale uses as the decimal separator.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 1:56 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 1.8.1 Released

Sunday, September 27, 2009

OnTrack 1.8.1 is now available on the market, this release addresses a bug in the export feature that prevented it from working correctly. As well it makes some minor changes to the German localization.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 12:44 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 1.8 Released

Friday, September 25, 2009

Version 1.8 of OnTrack has been released, the following changes have been made:

Added a Quick Add feature
Records can now be exported in HTML
Added a graph for Weight records
Fixed a problem with the Today filter on graphs being one day in the future
Now localized for German thanks to Andreas Heilek

As usual you can get the update from the Android Market.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 9:20 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 1.8 Coming Soon

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The next version of OnTrack will be released this weekend on the Android market. It will have a couple of new features of which the biggest being the new Quick Add feature. For diabetics that take insulin like myself we typically have to enter three records with every meal: Carbs, Glucose and Medication. Entering these records one at a time in OnTrack is a bit of pain at the moment since you have to do each record individually.

The Quick Add feature in the next version of OnTrack will allow users to enter multiple records simultaneously from a single screen. The way it works is that when you select the Quick Add option a dialog will appear showing all of the types that can be entered (Glucose, Food, etc) along with a checkbox next to each one. Check the boxes for the desired records and then press OK and a new screen will appear. On this new screen, the date/time and category are at the top, however under that are individual input boxes for each record type that was checked. Set all the values, as well as subtypes, and press save, one record for each type selected will be saved with the same date/time, category and note.

The other cool feature is the ability to export to the HTML format, this will give you a nice logbook style output that can be easily printed and shared with your doctor. You can view a sample of this export here export_sample.html. I'm hoping in a future version to expand this further and include some of the graphs and reports in the export as well to give your doctor a really good overview of how things are progressing.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 10:22 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

OnTrack 1.7 Released

Monday, September 07, 2009

OnTrack 1.7 has been released and is now available on the Market. This version is an incremental improvement but well worth upgrading to, see my previous blog post for details on what has changed.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 1:26 PM | Categories: Android | Permalink |

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