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Showing posts from 2017

My experiences with Summer of Code 2017

How quickly the summer ran away, in a wild mix of fun, frustration, development, and success! It seems like just yesterday that I received news of working with Marble in the summer, yet now September quickly approaches, and it’s time to look back on all our experiences this summer. This year hasn’t been my first foray into contributing open-source projects, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Marble under last year as well. However this year has come with it’s own set of challenges and I’m proud to have taken part in such a great experience, built up by fantastic mentors and a lovely community who helped me along the way. But let’s get to the recap, this year's tale, from beginning to end, how the summer went! This years project was focused on Marbles Android version, Marble Maps, and my task was redesigning the UI, adding features and making sure it's all up to Material Design standards! The summer began with my work on Marbles historical map viewing app, Behaim Globe...

Moving forward! - Dialing phones, and designs featuring Kirigami

Hello everyone, it's been all-too-long! I am proud to announce the end of the semester! Exams are finally all done, but that only means the real fun can start. And so many things to come and do! I'm also happy to announce one of the first new features! Marble Maps now supports in-app phone calls! If you're browsing the map, and come across a nice looking shop, you can easily access their phone number, and give them a call right there! This task has been very useful to establish a lot of the inner workings, and also gave insight to a lot of UI elements that could be structured differently. But with that question of layouts and design decisions, came the question of what tools to use to achieve them. On that note: Behaim Globe with Kirigami Kirigami is a QtQuick based components set that brings a lot of useful reusable components to QtQuick UI's. Among these we're easy to create menus, unit based scaling , drawers and all sorts of navigation options. It w...

Compare and Contrast - Marble Maps and other Map applications

Still knee-deep in exam territory but our dreams fly high ahead! Let's take a moment to compare Marble Maps to some of the other available Android Map applications. This will help us find places that need some polish, and features that we need to add. So without further ado, Google Maps - Maps.Me - Marble Maps Google Maps Routes have a drag & drop system for managing the order of the locations. A menu has frequently used options such as a quick button for reversing the order, as well as route options. Adding a stop can be done with through the menu, not just by clicking on the map. The side bar has several options, including Tips and Tricks under which a contribution option can be found, as well as a Send feedback option which is great for user made reports. Help menu offers a forum of problems with most frequent ones at the top. Maps.Me Has an  Introduction  that showcases some of the main features. Uses  Empty States ...