Hi everyone. I just released a new separate version of the Asianfanfics app for open testing for Android (iOS coming soon).

I can't believe it's been 9 months since my last blog post. I guess it took about that long to learn six new technologies and languages just to be able to solve just two issues that people brought up that have been eating at me to solve but couldn't do it with the website or the old app.

The first problem was the issue of reading stories while having spotty wifi or no internet at all. When I first released "read offline", it was fairly open since I figured that it would help everyone who had a bad internet connection and there were no downsides for anybody. Well I was wrong. A few authors didn't like the loss of control over who can read their story especially if they decided later on to set a privacy restriction on it while a copy of it still lived on someone's phone. That's completely understandable and I should have thought of it at the time. As I talked to a few more authors, I added more privacy restrictions for authors like a friends-only feature or the ability to turn it off altogether until I finally removed the default setting of allowing any story to be read offline and making that opt-in by the author only.

Of course, no one was happy. Readers with bad internet connections or expensive data plans could no longer read many of the older stories offline while authors who wanted to make their stories available for offline reading have to explicitly mark each of their stories as available offline.

The new app seeks to solve the issue on both sides. Stories on the app can now be read offline as before but now have a 72 hour time limit until it's automatically removed from the phone. If a reader wants to extend the time to read the story, they just need to hit the "Read Offline" button for the story again when they get to a place with good internet. This helps protect authors so that if an author decides to disable the read offline feature or mark it as friends only, the story automatically expires out of the phone and can no longer be read offline. On the other hand, readers can now read older stories offline with the new app since the app ensures the story is protected from living anywhere for too long.

Another issue I'm hoping to solve in the near future is the issue of when someone uninstalls and reinstalls the app then loses all of their offline stories or if they buy a new phone and have to access each of their stories one by one again. I'll have a fix for this problem, hopefully soon.

One more issue is the problem with voting up stories. Months ago, a reader mentioned how hard it was for new members to upvote stories because they had to have 10 karma points and a registered email. The new app no longer has those restrictions as a native app has other ways to help against cheating. It's not perfect, but the person was right; new members shouldn't have to jump through hoops to like their favorite authors' stories just for the actions of a few people.

I also added just a few more things to the app to make it a little more fun (at least for me) like a focus on the feed, image gallery, and building in most of the messaging features. It's nowhere near done yet but I wanted to give you all a crack at the beta app while I work on it so you can get the benefits now instead of me waiting to release it until it's "done". Just keep in mind that it's in Beta so keep using the website (which does not change at all for this update) for the other features until I slowly add more into the app.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or just want to talk, PM me. I obviously listen to you all even if it takes me a few weeks (or in this case, nine months) to get back to you. I don't know if this is shelter-in-place talking or not but I've sincerely missed you all. Hope you've all been doing well.