Just in time for the Ubuntu App Showdown deadline, I released RamSamSam Reader version 0.2.1 in the click store.

Many thinks were improved in version 0.2.1:

Offline reading

Articles are saved in the localstorage and can be read offline. To save space, images are not saved in the localstorage.

New UI element: number of unread items

Version 0.2.1 of RamSamSam Reader shows the number of unread items of a feed. Here is a screenshot of it, as it looks like on tablets.

[caption id="attachment_1004" align="alignnone" width="831"] Unread items (tablets)[/caption]

Searching for newsfeeds

Entering an URL is quite unpractical on a phone. RamSamSam Reader can now search for RSS feeds. Simply enter one or several keywords in the "Add feed" dialog, and the google search is executed. URL and ebay-feeds work, too. At the end of this blog post is a video, that shows this feature in action.

Dynamic convergence

I implemented convergence dynamically. Depending on the resolution,

the layout of the application changes, and more pages are displayed on smaller displays

Point "2" means that the user is guided differently according to its display resolution. This provides a much better user experience. Technically, this means that the page-history has to be cleared, otherwise the back button would stop working. This feature made it in version 0.2.1, too. I named it "dynamic convergence" since it allows to switch the display mode at runtime (for example by rotating a smartphone in landscape mode).

TheOldReader: Cloud synchronization runs in the background

News items from theOldreader are downloaded in the background and stored in the localstorage. As a result, using theOldReader-cloud feels much faster. Since data is loaded from the localstorage, clicking on a feed immediatly shows up its items. Try it out yourself!

TheOldReader: read articles

Articles are marked as read in the theOldReader-cloud as soon as they are displayed.

Simultaneous Android Release

Only a small amount of users could already install Ubuntu Touch on their handheld device. That's why I also released a binary of version 0.2.1 for Android. Minimum requirement is Android version 4.1.

Desktop version

Beeing programmed with HTML5 and javascript, RamSamSam Reader can also be tried without installation on a desktop computer. To use the synchronization feature with theOldReader, "chrome" must be started with " chromium-browser --disable-web-security". Firefox does not allow disabling CORS security checks and will thus only work with feeds stored locally.

Here is the link to the web version.

Showcase video

Finally, for all users who do not want to install RamSamSam Reader, I created a showcase video where I show it in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFq7sBcb24Y&feature=youtu.be