Apps

The official WPCentral app is back in black with v1.2--now available

Posted on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:43 pm EDT by Daniel Rubino

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Apps

We've had thousands of downloads, putting the WPCental app in the top five of News & Weather in the Marketplace. So we're glad to announce that v1.2 is now ready for download (see our video preview here) making the app that much better.

We listened to a lot of your feedback and we think you'll be pleased with the entire changelog, which brings greater control over the app to you:

Adjusted the UI layout to have consistent margins and font styling
Article text font sizes can now be adjusted through pinch-to-zoom gestures
Live tile consistency improved and added option to enable or disable the live tile
Optimizations to the animations to improve app speed
Fixed crash in adverts when the UI moved too fast for AdMob
Fixed crashes relating to “Parameter is incorrect” and “Argument out of range” exceptions
Fixed rare crash relating to feed caching
Fixed bug where feed refresh would sometimes fail, causing the app to never pick up new feeds

In addition, we've added a nice, swanky 'Settings' button near the top, to give you greater control over how the app behaves, including:

Feedback on refresh
Haptic feedback
Lock portrait view
All black theme
Simple text title

Over all, the experience should be much better now and hopefully it should address most of your concerns. You can grab the app right here in the Marketplace. Remember, the app is free (using the unlimited "Trial") with ads or $0.99 with no ads and some bonus features e.g. Live Tile, videos, etc. Let us know in comments what you think!

Some video after the break.

Comments

By mtg1974 on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:46 pm EDT

It looks good in black. I hadn't had any of the technical difficulties the update fixes (or I hadn't noticed them). I'm a little disappointed because I was hoping that being able to comment on the articles from the app was going to be in this update but I'm sure it is still being worked on. Thanks for the great app!By the way, I don't know how often the Marketplace app looks to see if you have any updates. I didn't want to wait so I found the WP Central app in there and clicked Update to get the new version.

By JayTBennett on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:49 pm EDT

I think it checks for updates overnight or if you hook up to your computer but I'm not certain. Thanks for your positive feedback, at present every effort is being made to bring commenting in the next update (v1.3) but we will of course keep everyone informed :)

By starblade876 on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 12:35 am EDT

Thanks for your work.One thing to also work on with the comments is making them thread correctly. Right now, it shows them all in chronological order, so replies don't show under the comments they reply to (e.g., my comment will show under The Wee Bear's, instead of yours).Also, don't forget the comment rating thing (+1/-1/spam), like on the site.

By The Wee Bear on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 3:15 pm EDT

Wow i think it looks much classier without the colour backgrounds and find it easier to read now. Well done with all the new settings additions Jay.

By kallemia on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 9:31 pm EDT

My live tile stopped updating. Actually I don't think I ever saw it update. I only ever saw one story featured. Have others noticed the live tile updating?

By erazor84 on Mon, 20 Jun 2011 7:36 am EDT

my live tile doesn*t work anymore with this version. i only have the wpcentral app logo. i reinstalled the app, but it doesnt work.