Xwing Posted October 21, 2011 at 04:32 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 04:32 PM Ready for the Illinois Legislature coming back in session on Monday? New tool now available: I have finally ported my Illinois Government iPhone app (discussed here) to Android (https://market.andro...yan.illinoisgov). I actually built it because of input from Illinois Carry. When I created the original iPhone version, several members here requested a version in DROID. It was a larger effort than I had anticipated, I ended up having to re-write the entire app (re-using only the data and the images, with all else brand new). This version includes all of the feature updates from the original iPhone app, and has updated data (pulled fresh 4 days ago) for each Representative and Senator. This application provides a very convenient way to contact our legislators. Description below:Illinois State Legislature: Access the State Congress of Illinois in the General Assembly! This application provides detailed information about the 97th General Assembly. All Members of both the Illinois House and Illinois Senate are included in the application, including all members elected in 2010 for terms begun in 2011, and all new members appointed for the Fall '11 veto session. See the latest details on each member of Congress, with easy access to them at your fingertips. Look up your representatives (or representatives anywhere in the state), by zip code, address, name, or district. Everyone who has interest in being active in our state can benefit from the application! Be able to quickly look up and find the representative for any area, and contact them immediately on the go. As a Citizen of this state, use this to contact and keep informed about our government. Includes detailed contact information for each member (including district office and phone, Springfield office and phone, and email), as well as gives you one-touch emailing, calling and office mapping functionality. You can also see the picture, bio, committee membership , and sponsored bills (all kept up to date) for each member. This app gives you the easy ability to find and contact your representatives in the General Assembly. This app includes the ability to easily look up and find your legislators by any part of their name or district. You can also see the latest Illinois Congressional news and information through RSS feeds surfaced on this app. This application is ad-free. No annoying advertisements or messages
Molly B. Posted October 21, 2011 at 04:47 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 04:47 PM Absolutely FANTASTIC!!
stm Posted October 21, 2011 at 04:48 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 04:48 PM [robocop] "I'll buy that for a dollar!" [/robocop] Well, 99 cents, anyway. Ill download it tonight and let you know what I think. Thanks for including us 'droids!
Federal Farmer Posted October 21, 2011 at 05:10 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 05:10 PM Bought and downloaded..thanks!
Uncle Harley Posted October 21, 2011 at 05:17 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 05:17 PM bought and downloaded! Looks pretty slick so far! One thing that you might add on one of your updates is a zip code finder, or search by city. That way for example say I wanted to get ahold of the rep for Oak park but I don't know the rep's name or district number or zip code.
wazzle Posted October 21, 2011 at 06:23 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 06:23 PM Well done. Don't spend all the profit in one place.
Xwing Posted October 21, 2011 at 07:04 PM Author Posted October 21, 2011 at 07:04 PM bought and downloaded! Looks pretty slick so far! One thing that you might add on one of your updates is a zip code finder, or search by city. That way for example say I wanted to get ahold of the rep for Oak park but I don't know the rep's name or district number or zip code. That is a good point. Thank you for the suggestion. I will mark that as a future enhancement. I haven't been able to find a free zip code web service available to use, but will continue to look for one. One other feature I plan to build in the future is the ability to click a "find my rep here" button, where it will find the rep for wherever the phone is currently located, based on GPS. I do have a "poor man's version" available to use, that I can look to implement in the short term.
mrmagloo Posted October 21, 2011 at 08:11 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 08:11 PM .99 is a bargain. Downloading it now. Thanks!
Sigma Posted October 21, 2011 at 09:18 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 09:18 PM First app I ever bought
XJCraver Posted October 21, 2011 at 09:20 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 09:20 PM Awesome, thanks a bunch. Bought and downloaded.
Xwing Posted October 21, 2011 at 09:53 PM Author Posted October 21, 2011 at 09:53 PM I hope you find it useful! Please let me know if you see any issues or problems using it. (or if there's any functionality that is confusing or hard to use.) It's my first Android app; but I'd be happy to fix any bugs if any are found.
Sigma Posted October 21, 2011 at 10:41 PM Posted October 21, 2011 at 10:41 PM Illinois carry app next?
kurt555gs Posted October 22, 2011 at 01:48 AM Posted October 22, 2011 at 01:48 AM Normally I don't believe in paying for software, out of principal. I did buy this though. Sometimes we all make exceptions.
dan Posted October 22, 2011 at 02:35 AM Posted October 22, 2011 at 02:35 AM I installed it and it is working well. Good app. Sent from my HTC using Tapatalk
3ddiver Posted October 22, 2011 at 02:47 AM Posted October 22, 2011 at 02:47 AM I am still waiting for the android CCW like you have for the Iphone. It sounds sweet.
mrmagloo Posted October 22, 2011 at 05:30 PM Posted October 22, 2011 at 05:30 PM How about when you click the reps email address, it opens your email app with the reps email address populated.
stm Posted October 23, 2011 at 04:05 AM Posted October 23, 2011 at 04:05 AM Installed it on me EVO. Works great! Any support for tablets in the future?
Xwing Posted October 23, 2011 at 08:49 PM Author Posted October 23, 2011 at 08:49 PM I am still waiting for the android CCW like you have for the Iphone. It sounds sweet. Yep. I have been working on that app for a while as well. It's about 2/3 done at the moment. I have a (mostly) working prototype built, but still have a slew of bugs and a few missing features. Installed it on me EVO. Works great! Any support for tablets in the future?As the android OS code converges between tablet and phone version, I should be able to eventually support tablet UIs. However, it may be some time before I am able to do that.
Xwing Posted October 23, 2011 at 08:57 PM Author Posted October 23, 2011 at 08:57 PM How about when you click the reps email address, it opens your email app with the reps email address populated. Hmm... It does open the rep's email address pre-populated in the “to” field (and also populates a salutation and subject line). I tested this using the (free) K-9 Mail Google email client. What email program are you using? It's possible that your email client may be incompatible with that feature. If so, I would like to troubleshoot and fix it if possible. Also, what functionality do you get? When you click the email address, does it automatically open your email program, but with no fields pre-populated? Or does it open the "messaging" program, where that field is not capable of being pre-populated? This feature can only work if you have an external email client installed on your device (I do recommend K-9 Mail, although there are a lot to choose from). I just tested it again right now (after force-populating a temp email address to myself in my local copy of the program), and it sent the email just fine without me having to manually enter anything. Is anyone else having this problem?
mrmagloo Posted October 24, 2011 at 05:55 AM Posted October 24, 2011 at 05:55 AM How about when you click the reps email address, it opens your email app with the reps email address populated. Hmm... It does open the rep's email address pre-populated in the “to” field (and also populates a salutation and subject line). I tested this using the (free) K-9 Mail Google email client. What email program are you using? It's possible that your email client may be incompatible with that feature. If so, I would like to troubleshoot and fix it if possible. Also, what functionality do you get? When you click the email address, does it automatically open your email program, but with no fields pre-populated? Or does it open the "messaging" program, where that field is not capable of being pre-populated? This feature can only work if you have an external email client installed on your device (I do recommend K-9 Mail, although there are a lot to choose from). I just tested it again right now (after force-populating a temp email address to myself in my local copy of the program), and it sent the email just fine without me having to manually enter anything. Is anyone else having this problem? It might be my phones issue. When I used to click on email addresses embedded in text, I would get a Send mail popup where you could select the app from Bluetooth, email Print, Text, etc. However, I don't get any popup - for your app, nor anything else. Things on my Droix X went a little haywire after this last Gingerbread update.
wazzle Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:02 AM Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:02 AM I don't know why but this app seems to use a lot of battery. Is there any reason for that? Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk
Uncle Harley Posted October 26, 2011 at 02:18 PM Posted October 26, 2011 at 02:18 PM bought and downloaded! Looks pretty slick so far! One thing that you might add on one of your updates is a zip code finder, or search by city. That way for example say I wanted to get ahold of the rep for Oak park but I don't know the rep's name or district number or zip code. That is a good point. Thank you for the suggestion. I will mark that as a future enhancement. I haven't been able to find a free zip code web service available to use, but will continue to look for one. One other feature I plan to build in the future is the ability to click a "find my rep here" button, where it will find the rep for wherever the phone is currently located, based on GPS. I do have a "poor man's version" available to use, that I can look to implement in the short term. these people allready have a zip code app, mabey you can intergrate http://www.zip-codes.com/mobile-apps.asp
Uncle Harley Posted October 26, 2011 at 02:23 PM Posted October 26, 2011 at 02:23 PM How about when you click the reps email address, it opens your email app with the reps email address populated. Hmm... It does open the rep's email address pre-populated in the "to" field (and also populates a salutation and subject line). I tested this using the (free) K-9 Mail Google email client. What email program are you using? It's possible that your email client may be incompatible with that feature. If so, I would like to troubleshoot and fix it if possible. Also, what functionality do you get? When you click the email address, does it automatically open your email program, but with no fields pre-populated? Or does it open the "messaging" program, where that field is not capable of being pre-populated? This feature can only work if you have an external email client installed on your device (I do recommend K-9 Mail, although there are a lot to choose from). I just tested it again right now (after force-populating a temp email address to myself in my local copy of the program), and it sent the email just fine without me having to manually enter anything. Is anyone else having this problem? populated and sent fine with yahoo.com tag line said ....... from constituent from district 109
Xwing Posted October 26, 2011 at 02:49 PM Author Posted October 26, 2011 at 02:49 PM I don't know why but this app seems to use a lot of battery. Is there any reason for that? Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk Things that tend to use a lot of battery are heavy network usage or heavy processing. This app should use almost no battery when just sitting there. The app is not doing any heavy processing; it reads the legislator’s info from a local DB, so that is a fairly small call. (And I make sure to manually open and close the DB each time it is needed to avoid a memory leak.) When you load a rep’s picture, it can be up to 50kb. When you click a rep’s bio, bills, or committee button, it can be up to 100kb being pulled and processed over the network. So it has some network usage to pull the latest info in those cases (and also when clicking on the News button or when clicking to find another rep by ZIP code). But this is really only medium network usage; it’s the same as you browsing webpages with a medium amount of content in your web browser. (IMO, Web Browsing does kill battery much faster than simply talking on the phone, but this is the case for any application that uses the internet.) And the application does not run any background processing that would eat up battery. It does not use GPS, which is a large battery killer. (GPS is a possible future enhancement, but it will be user-controlled, so it would not be called without the end user asking for it to be called.) Is it possible that you have something else on your phone running in the background that’s using more memory? Since android leaves all apps open in the background, a poorly-written “onPause” command for an app could allow it to continue to consume battery in the background.
Xwing Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:03 PM Author Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:03 PM populated and sent fine with yahoo.com tag line said ....... from constituent from district 109 Thank you for checking! Yep, I set it to auto-populate your district as part of the subject line; Good to know it's working correctly on your phone.
Uncle Harley Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:17 PM Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:17 PM if it's eating your battery check the number of windows you have open, I did not know androids leave windows open untill last night when it finally said "You have already reached the number of windows open" while trying to access a link. to check, click your browser icon and then menu button and select windows. YOu might be suprised to the number of pages clogging up your system.
wazzle Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:27 PM Posted October 26, 2011 at 03:27 PM I don't know why but this app seems to use a lot of battery. Is there any reason for that? Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk Things that tend to use a lot of battery are heavy network usage or heavy processing. This app should use almost no battery when just sitting there. The app is not doing any heavy processing; it reads the legislator’s info from a local DB, so that is a fairly small call. (And I make sure to manually open and close the DB each time it is needed to avoid a memory leak.) When you load a rep’s picture, it can be up to 50kb. When you click a rep’s bio, bills, or committee button, it can be up to 100kb being pulled and processed over the network. So it has some network usage to pull the latest info in those cases (and also when clicking on the News button or when clicking to find another rep by ZIP code). But this is really only medium network usage; it’s the same as you browsing webpages with a medium amount of content in your web browser. (IMO, Web Browsing does kill battery much faster than simply talking on the phone, but this is the case for any application that uses the internet.) And the application does not run any background processing that would eat up battery. It does not use GPS, which is a large battery killer. (GPS is a possible future enhancement, but it will be user-controlled, so it would not be called without the end user asking for it to be called.) Is it possible that you have something else on your phone running in the background that’s using more memory? Since android leaves all apps open in the background, a poorly-written “onPause” command for an app could allow it to continue to consume battery in the background. I don't install a lot of apps and my battery usage stays pretty consistent. After installing this, my battery started going in a day. I uninstalled it last night and will see how the usage is. I have only opened the app a couple of times over the last two days so I will let you know what happens.
Xwing Posted November 1, 2011 at 02:03 PM Author Posted November 1, 2011 at 02:03 PM Any input on the app? If anyone here has a chance, I would appreciate some reviews in the Android Market. Hopefully folks feel that it deserves 5 stars. (The iPhone version is at 100% 5 out of 5 star ratings) If you like it, please rate it. If not, please let me know how to improve it!
mrmagloo Posted November 1, 2011 at 02:22 PM Posted November 1, 2011 at 02:22 PM For .99 cents, why not. It certainly does the intended job very well.
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