What’s New in Neighborhood Cats 1.1

Speaking of usability…

There have been a lot of things I’ve wanted to fix or improve upon in Neighborhood Cats since version 1.0. I’ve made some fixes since, but it’s admittedly still confusing and empty at its core. I’m setting out to change that, bit by bit, until it’s more polished with more advanced features and is situated in a way that it can do some good for the people who may use it.

One usability issue that’s bugged me is it’s been unclear that you can upload a photo from your phone instead of only taking new photos. In update 1.1 the paw button is being revised to split off into “upload” and “camera” icons.

Not only is this more practical, logical, and clear, it was also fun to build since I got to play with simple animations like making the buttons pop out of the paw button and give a little shimmy, and then disappear back into the paw button. I’m not completely sold on the upload icon since it indicates, well, uploading, and I’m concerned it will be confused for an upload-to-a-public-map button that everyone assumes is already available (it is not). I’m thinking about what might be better and am leaning toward some sort of SD card icon or something. (I think that’s the universal image for phone storage.)

Also new in 1.1: If you have a photo that is already on your phone and you add it as a new cat entry, that photo’s location data (if it has any) will be used to map your cat instead of the app’s previous behavior of grabbing your current location in all situations.

I’ve also rewritten the permissions calls (in some previous versions, actually) so that if you’re using Neighborhood Cats on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the app will ask you for permissions as needed instead of all at once when you load the app. If you’re not taking a photo yet, why should I ask you if the app can use the camera? Chill out, permissions request, right? These actually gave me way more trouble than I’d expected, and I admittedly spent entirely too much time trying to debug it (but hopefully the 10.1% Marshmallow user base appreciates it).

I also fixed a bunch of bugs I introduced, so I’m giving myself a high five for that.

Version 1.1 is available now. Please let me know if you run into any problems, and if a crash report prompt pops up please hit send so I can track what’s going wrong and fix it after briefly crying in the corner over device fragmentation. Cheers!