Feedback on my first personal Android app - Flight Check Ireland

Atomic Pineapple

Firstly thanks to The Corinthian for allowing me to post this.

I've just published my first Android application today, I've been working on Android for awhile but in a more low level manner that doesn't allow me to create apps as such.

So I've started some personal apps to build up my portfolio for potential future work/employment.

I was wondering if people could take a short bit of their time to download the app, give it a bit of use and give me some constructive feedback on the application.

The app is a flight checker for the major Irish airports that displays the arrivals and departure times for the major airports on the island of Ireland.

I'm interested in peoples feedback on the app and any improvements they think might be a good idea.

Heres the link - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mammothtooth.flightinfo

Thanks

bandit197

Nice app. I tried it on phone and tablet, both running 4.0.3. It displays well on both, good choice of colours, fonts and images. It has a good clean interface, I like that.
Navigation through the app is intuitive. One feature I would like would be logo's for each airline but not sure if that's possible. Also an option to toggle expected time of
arrival with expected mins left to landing would be useful. I know its almost the same thing but it would be a nice feature.
Cheers for the app.

Kavrocks

I love the UI, its very nice and easy on the eyes. The green, white and black work very well together. The only problem I have is where the icons at the bottom display on some pages but not all, it feels like its breaking the norm.

The feature set is very comprehensive and impressive, I can't think of anything else I would need in an app like this at the moment.

I'm flying out shortly so I can check it then and see if there is anything missing.

Well done.

killbillvol2

It looks good, it works well and it makes it easier for me to find information I often look for. That's my definition of a useful app. Well done!

rebeve

Nice app

Zaph

Before I get to the app itself, a small point on the reviews. When the first 5 star review is from draffo3, and hovering over the e-mail developer link also shows draffo3 it really doesn't present a good impression imo. I'd ban someone for shilling here if they did something like that.

That minor point aside, it's a nice app, well done. There does seem to be a small glitch on the Dublin arrivals page, AF1078 from yesterday is still displaying as not yet landed. As bandit197 pointed out, a display of the airline's logo would be nice, but I'd even settle for the airline name just so people aren't presented with a list of flight numbers. If I'm being really picky I'd say I don't like the font for the T1/T2 indicators, but that's just personal preference. I also noticed a lack of consistency in the date formats. Dublin shows 21 Jan, Shannon and Cork show 21/01 and Knock and the two Belfast airports show nothing at all.

Overall it's a very good app, clear, easy to use and it looks good. I can see myself using it in the future. This was on a tablet running 3.2.56 btw.

Atomic Pineapple

Zaph wrote: »

Before I get to the app itself, a small point on the reviews. When the first 5 star review is from draffo3, and hovering over the e-mail developer link also shows draffo3 it really doesn't present a good impression imo. I'd ban someone for shilling here if they did something like that.

That minor point aside, it's a nice app, well done. There does seem to be a small glitch on the Dublin arrivals page, AF1078 from yesterday is still displaying as not yet landed. As bandit197 pointed out, a display of the airline's logo would be nice, but I'd even settle for the airline name just so people aren't presented with a list of flight numbers. If I'm being really picky I'd say I don't like the font for the T1/T2 indicators, but that's just personal preference. I also noticed a lack of consistency in the date formats. Dublin shows 21 Jan, Shannon and Cork show 21/01 and Knock and the two Belfast airports show nothing at all.

Overall it's a very good app, clear, easy to use and it looks good. I can see myself using it in the future. This was on a tablet running 3.2.56 btw.

Good point on the review I was testing the app as it didn't seem to be live after an hour despite suppose to being instant I will delete that if I can.

The data is parsed from different sites so some of the data I retrieve contains more info than others.

Same with the flight not being landed yet it's seems to be bad data from the Dublin website but I'll look into it.

The terminal graphics were the first i done so I'll definitely decide them.

jgbyr

Just got the app & it looks useful & easy to navigate. I often fly from Kerry airport,is any information available from there?

Atomic Pineapple

Thanks for the feedback so far, I'm currently looking at adding the Airline name to the list screen but it pushes the size of each cell up to 5 lines in some cases, this to me looks like its overloading each cell a bit.

So would people mind that or would there be information there that you would swap out in place of the airline name?

I'm going to add the airline logo if retrievable to the details page of a flight and also improve the terminal graphics.

I've had a look at the flight information is available for Kerry airport but weather conditions aren't so I'll look at adding the flight information when I get a chance.

canvas.

It says my Galaxy S II is incompatible with the app for some strange reason?: confused:

Atomic Pineapple

canvas. wrote: »

It says my Galaxy S II is incompatible with the app for some strange reason?: confused:

What country are you in? It's limited by country only.

Slaanesh

Damn you draffodx, I've had this on my 'list of apps' idea, and you've basically robbed it. Since I'm probably not going to get around to my version, here was an idea I had planned on implementing.

For a paid version of the app, you could set up to monitor a flight and then notify the person via email or via the app if the status of the flight changes (delayed etc). I think this would be a really handy feature instead of having to go check the info periodically yourself.

All in all, looks like a good job!

jobless

very nice app....

have you been learning android development long?.... i'm interested in learning myself.... just wondering if you have any preferred books/websites?

Slaanesh

I'm not sure how draffodx learned Android development but the andoid site itself has a wealth of information to get you on the right track.

http://developer.android.com/index.html

Daffodx, if you have thought about implementing my suggestion it could be an opportunity to experiment writing a web service on google app engine. It's free up to a certain usage.

You could have registration using google sign on.
The service could parse the sites in question doing all of the grunt work.
Use JMS to notify clients of any changes to subscribed flight info.

Now I'm just thinking out loud.

[IGNORE]

Atomic Pineapple

I've been two years doing Android development but mainly low level stuff and very little UI stuff.

The commonsware books are a good starting point but as Slaanesh says the developer site is excellent as are most tutorials on the Internet, stack overflow can also be a good resource.

Thanks Slaanesh, I'll look into that, currently PHP is doing the heavy parsing but I'll look into it for the notification idea. I plan to keep the app free and ad free though as it's going to be my portfolio/CV app.

marcbrophy

Nice app draffodx!

I've installed it and messed about with it. It works nice and quick and I certainly have no complaints!

I can't think of any improvements either though. If I think of any, I'll be back

conolan

Well done, good app. Interested in seeing it on iPhone too. There are a lot of developers working in one or the other. The future is cross-platform. And let's not forget that there might be a third serious player if Windows phone catches on.

Atomic Pineapple

conolan wrote: »

Well done, good app. Interested in seeing it on iPhone too. There are a lot of developers working in one or the other. The future is cross-platform. And let's not forget that there might be a third serious player if Windows phone catches on.

Thanks, would love to develop it for iPhone and I have iPhone experience in work but I don't have a personal MAC to be able to do iPhone development, currently learning the basics of WP7 too

Atomic Pineapple

It looks like the site I was parsing has blocked my scripts so just taking out weather, knock & belfast airport at the minute, will sort it out and get them back another way asap!

Kavrocks

draffodx wrote: »

It looks like the site I was parsing has blocked my scripts so just taking out weather, knock & belfast airport at the minute, will sort it out and get them back another way asap!

Do you do the parsing in the app or on a separate server?

Atomic Pineapple

Kavrocks wrote: »

Do you do the parsing in the app or on a separate server?

Separate server to do the heavy parsing.

Kavrocks

draffodx wrote: »

Separate server to do the heavy parsing.

Have you looked into doing it in app?

Atomic Pineapple

Kavrocks wrote: »

Have you looked into doing it in app?

Yes, its probably the only way to avoid getting blocked by ip, shouldn't be too hard I'll hopefully have it done over the weekend

Kavrocks

draffodx wrote: »

Yes, its probably the only way to avoid getting blocked by ip, shouldn't be too hard I'll hopefully have it done over the weekend

Yeah I'm planning an app similar to yours to have as a sort of portfolio app and was planning to do the parsing in app. I'd be interested to know how you get on.

Good luck.

conolan

draffodx wrote: »

but I don't have a personal MAC to be able to do iPhone development

Try macincloud.com. Rent mac online for $1 an hour. Bit slow, but fine for uploading to App Store and other basics.

Atomic Pineapple

Weather should be back working now with version 1.0.4 update, as well as Belfast International and Knock data.

So I can concentrate on implementing some of the ideas in this thread now!

Kavrocks if you want info on parsing in on the device sent me a pm and I'll see if I can be of help.

Slaanesh

On each client request are the results parsed on the server?

You could keep a cache of flight state for 5 minutes a time. So if someone requests information, they might trigger an update if your cache is greater than 5 mins old but if less than that they just get the cached version.

I'm tinkering with writing a web service to accomplish this. You could then call the web service from the app for the info. Just a thought! I've also implemented some stuff in Amazon's EC2 which would be great for doing the grunt work. I don't know what provider you're using.

Again, I'm just bloody thinking out loud.

mjsmyth

Any chance of getting a direct link for the APK? I'd love to get my hands on it to run it through the Blackberry Playbook Android convertor to see if it will run on the Blackberry Playbook.

MJ

Atomic Pineapple

mjsmyth wrote: »

Any chance of getting a direct link for the APK? I'd love to get my hands on it to run it through the Blackberry Playbook Android convertor to see if it will run on the Blackberry Playbook.

MJ

I'm hoping to do that myself soon and I'll let you know how I get on

Atomic Pineapple

I've updated the app last night to version 1.2.3.

It includes better font for the terminals on Dublin airport, filtering by airline, flight number and location, fetching of airline logo if available on the details screen, Airline name is now displayed on the list of flights and flights info for Kerry airport is implemented (Weather is not available).

I'm hoping I've improved the app taking in the suggestions here but I've received my lowest rating since the new updated was published and no comment was left for that rating so any feedback on the new updates is really greatly appreciated.