It seems like no time at all since the last update, but once again a new version of Showr brings the features that users have asked for, as well as being more sensitive to your phone’s needs and more responsive to you, the user. If you don’t already have Showr, download it now from Google Play.

RSS and Atom feeds

The biggest addition really expands what you can do with Showr. You can now use Showr to stay up to date with a webcomic, a Tumblelog on Tumblr, any photostream on Flickr, or a photo blog. Best of all, because Showr runs on your phone, not someone else’s “cloud”, nobody’s going to go all “Google Reader” and turn it off.

Now, when you create a Showr widget with a Get image from Internet source, instead of entering the address of an image, enter the address of an RSS or Atom feed. Showr will download the feed and display the first image it can find from the feed. This is the point where I’d normally put a screenshot of the new user interface, but there’s no new screen to shoot! Just enter the address the same way you do in previous versions, and how often you want to update, and Showr does the rest.

If you’re moving away from Google Reader but your new feed reader isn’t very good with images, Showr can complement it by putting your favourite webcomic right on your home screen where you can see it. Showr’s smart updating works with RSS and Atom feeds too. Even if you set it to update more often than the feed is updated, Showr will only download the feed if it has changed, and will only download an image if it has changed.

In more detail: if any item from the feed has an image enclosure, or an HTML summary or description that uses an <img> tag, Showr will download and display the most recent item’s linked image.

Showr will also set the widget’s “website” to the item’s link from the feed, so the Visit website option on the widget popup menu takes you straight to that photo or blog post. Don’t forget you can use the Widget settings page to tell Showr what to do When you click the widget, so you can set your comic to go full-screen with one click, or share an interesting image.

Kinder to your battery

Showr 1.3 is more sensitive to your phone’s needs. When your phone’s battery is running on fumes, the last thing you need is home screen widgets burning those last electrons, so Showr 1.3 stops updating when your battery is low. At other times, Showr 1.3 is more aware of your phone’s Internet connection, and can use this to schedule updates better to use less energy.

Meeting your expectations

We know that exciting features aren’t all there is to a product, so Showr 1.3 incorporates some of the latest User Experience research, so even in unusual situations it fulfils your expectations of how it should behave.

When you update a Showr manually (using the action mode in the widget list, or the Update Now item in a widget’s Source settings), Showr will update the widget right away, even if you’re connected to a network you don’t usually want Showr to use. If the update fails, Showr will try again at the next opportunity (e.g. when you next connect to Internet). Previously, Showr would not let you override the network settings in this way, and if a manual update failed, it would only retry at the next scheduled update time. This change makes it possible to use the manual update feature for control over when widgets update.

Showr 1.2 made it easier to enter image addresses using an NFC tag or QR code. Unfortunately, this change introduced a problem that could cause Showr to close unexpectedly after scanning a QR code. This problem was found with improved internal testing and is fixed in Showr 1.3.

Showr 1.3 declares itself in a User-Agent header when talking to web servers. This probably makes no difference to most users, and is provided for users who are using Showr with their own web or intranet site.

Paying the bills

The new RSS and Atom support in Showr 1.3 means you’ll all be filling your home screens with widgets. Showr 1.3 helps the users who get the most value of Showr to contribute to its development. When you try to create your fourth widget, Showr will first remind you about the benefits of upgrading to Showr Pro. Income from Showr Pro sales pays for the development of Showr, and if you already have three widgets, you’re using it enough that you should contribute.

If you already have four or more widgets from Showr 1.2 or earlier, they will keep working after the update. If you have inactive widgets restored from a backup, Showr gives you an extra two slots so that you can activate them. And if you’re already supporting Shadowburst as a Showr Pro user, you won’t see any difference from this change (unless you notice that the Image source menu is a little smoother than before).

The improvements in Showr 1.2 go beyond the boundaries of the app and even the phone, and focus on how Showr fits into your world. This update’s three headline features have been popular requests from users, so don’t forget to email your feedback to support at this domain. Even if you don’t know what feature you want, letting us know how you use Showr helps us to make it easier and faster for you.

Friendlier to your data plan

Showr 1.2 gives you more control of downloading over mobile networks. If you’re on a metered data plan, a new setting lets you stop Showr updating images on a mobile network. If you miss an update that way, Showr will update all the images it missed as soon as you connect to a Wi-Fi network.

Even if you’re on unlimited data, many mobile networks compress images you download. This helps them to save network bandwidth, but it makes JPEG images look bad when updated on a mobile network. By default, Showr 1.2 won’t update images if they might be compressed this way, to keep your home screen looking good. (That is, on mobile networks it will only download JPEG images if the server uses HTTPS.) Another new setting lets you control this feature.

Maybe you use a tablet with a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, or you don’t want to update images when you connect to your office Wi-Fi network. Showr 1.2 Pro lets you customize your download settings for each network individually. You can tell it that a Wi-Fi network is really using 3G, or not to use certain Wi-Fi networks at all.

Google Backup

Showr 1.2 integrates with the built-in Android backup system. If you have backup turned on in your system settings, Showr will automatically backup all your widget settings and any photos you’ve taken. It uses the Google backup system or whatever backup transport your device manufacturer included, so your widget settings are just as secure as other data backed up from your device.

If Showr’s settings are restored but not the home screen’s settings, Showr can end up with widget settings that don’t correspond to a widget on the home screen. This might happen after reinstalling Showr, when starting on a new device, or if your home screen app doesn’t support backup. In this case, Showr 1.2 keeps those settings as inactive Showrs. You can activate an inactive Showr by adding a new widget in the usual way and then choosing Activate inactive widget from the list of sources. Alternatively, you can delete an inactive Showr by selecting it in the main Showr activity.

Easier to get started

Showr 1.2 reduces wear on your fingers by letting you add a new Showr with fewer clicks. All the options for choosing an existing picture or taking a photo now appear in the first menu, along with their apps’ icons to help you go straight to the one you want.

Easier to manage widgets

The main Showr activity now uses an “action mode”. You can select several widgets and update them all at once with a single tap. The activity also tells you how many Showrs you have.

New optimizations in this activity also make it more responsive, and kinder to your battery.

When you’re changing the URL a Showr downloads from, the dialog now gives you the same options to scan a barcode or NFC tag that were already available when creating a new Showr.

Get in touch

Because we want to hear from you, we’ve made it even easier to get in touch. The main activity and the widget settings now have a menu option that starts composing an email to Shadowburst support. Now if you see anything odd, or want an option but can’t find it, you can let us know right away (before you forget).

More reliable

When creating a Stack Exchange flair widget, returning to the sites list from the users list no longer makes it forget your filter.

Updating an image will now succeed even if the web server reports the MIME type incorrectly or doesn’t report a type.

If you haven’t tried Showr yet, download it now free from Google Play.

Showr 1.1 went out today on Google Play. This new version adds new sources, including the first integration with a third-party service: Stack Exchange. If you get into trouble with your widgets, the new troubleshooting feature helps you get sorted again. And it’s easier to view and share downloaded images with the new widget popup menu.

Camera

Showr isn’t just for downloading images from the Internet. You’ve already seen that it can show an image from your Gallery (or another gallery app you have installed). Now Showr integrates with the built-in camera too. When you create a new Showr widget, tap the Take a photo option to do just that. Capture your little one’s new finger-painting to give you some inspiration later, or just use it as a sticky note on your home screen to save an important notice or signpost without cluttering up the Gallery. Just like any other Showr, from the widget you can view the photo full-screen or share it.

Stack Exchange

Stack Exchange is a family of question-and-answer forum sites. You may already know Stack Overflow for programming questions, or Arqade for questions about computer games, but there’s a Stack Exchange site for nearly every topic. Stack Exchange offers a thing called a ‘flair’, which is a little image showing your username on one of their sites, and your ‘reputation’ on that site. For instance, here’s mine from the site for Bicycles:

If you use a Stack Exchange site and you want to see your flair, it’s usually quite fiddly. First you have to log into your account and view your profile, then find the page about flair, then copy and paste the link into your address bar, or into Showr. With Showr 1.1, it’s simple. When you add a new Showr to your home screen, the Stack Exchange option takes you to a menu of Stack Exchange sites. When you’ve chosen the site you want, you can enter the name of any user on that site to create a Showr pointing to their flair. It automatically links to the user profile: if the reputation changes unexpectedly, it’s quick and easy to find out why.

New ways to work with widgets

Showr widgets already let you see the information and pictures you want, and with Showr 1.1 they’re more interactive, too. For newly created Showr widgets, the default action when you click on the Showr is to pop up a menu like this one.

• Settings opens the settings activity for that widget.
• Visit website opens a browser window on the website you set for that widget in the settings. You can use a Showr as a custom website shortcut this way.
• View opens a full-screen Gallery window on the current image, so you can see it full-size and zoom and pan it.
• Share image shares the image just the same way as from the Gallery, Chrome, or any other app. Other apps you’ve installed, such as image editing tools, can show up on this menu too, if they register the right “intent” with the Android system. Now if something funny happens on your favourite webcam, you can share the image with your friends without having to race the next update.

The menu is the default click action for new Showr widgets, and you can add it to an existing Showr in the widget settings.

Showr 1.1 introduces the first setting exclusive to Pro users: you can control how the image fits into the widget’s space. The default option scales the widget to fit inside the space, keeping it the right aspect. If you prefer, you can still keep the right aspect but crop the long ends of the image, to fill up the available space. You could use this if you want to create a Windows Phone-like home screen of tiles.

Troubleshooting

The web isn’t always reliable on a mobile device. Just as you think you’ve connected, the Wifi cuts out. And then when you find a new connection, the server goes down! With all these possible problems, how can you trust that the information you’re seeing is up to date?

Showr can’t fix the Internet, but it can make it more trustable. For a Showr that updates over the Internet (including the new Stack Exchange flairs), the settings activity now shows you when it last tried to update the widget, and the result. When an update fails, Showr tries to work out what went wrong, and it’ll tell you what you can do about it.

The same information that Showr keeps to help troubleshoot also helps it make smart updating even smarter, reducing network and battery use. The troubleshooting information is still experimental in this release: over the next releases, it’ll learn more about network transfers, how to use them efficiently, and how to fix problems.

If you don’t already have Showr on your Android smartphone or tablet, you can get these features and more by downloading it free from Google Play.

Here at Shadowburst we were very surprised to discover there’s no app available that lets you input the web address of an image and show it on your home screen. It seems like an everyday sort of thing to want to do, whether the image is your Stack Overflow flair, a webcam, gaming stats, the latest episode of your favourite webcomic, or a photo of a loved one.

So we made one. Showr is now in open beta, which means that you can help make it awesome: download it, try it out, and email in your feedback to ‘support’ at this domain. It’s such a flexible app, we want to hear about any exciting uses you come up with. And of course, if anything doesn’t work quite the way you want, we want to know about that too, so we can make you happy.

Get Showr now from Google Play™, and don’t forget to leave a review:

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