Asianfanfics App Version 2
It was around the Christmas holidays last year when I started getting emails from users of the Asianfanfics app. I thought "that's odd, I don't normally get emails from the App-using crowd" so I was a bit worried. Unfortunately, I was right. Here's a random sampling of the emails I was getting:
Email 37: "Hei, i just update my phone to android 12. why's your app won't open on my phone?"
Email 108: "I’ve been an avid user of the Asianfanfics app for years, and with Androids recent update the app no longer opens properly and says it has a bug that the owner needs to fix and update. So if you could update the app again to clear this bug it would be awesome!"
"Well, scheiße", I thought. The old app can't be updated anymore since the platform it was built on no longer exists and I wasn't the original developer to begin with so I'm SOL with the old app. Partly luckily though, I already started building out a new version 2 app myself a few months ago (even posted a job ad for it!) but it was barely ready for even a draft release so I spent the next couple of weeks after receiving those reports to at least get most of the features working. After a bunch of back and forth with Google Play to get the app approved, I finally got it released a few days ago.
This new update was not meant to be released for another year or so but since the old app could no longer be updated (the old development team went out of business), it was either upload the Beta app or slowly have the old app break for everyone as they update their phones. We understand that the old app had more features compared to now so this was a hard choice to make but it was either this or having everyone's apps break as they eventually update their Android OS. If you were never planning on updating your phone, then we really apologize for this update since we know the old app was working great. Because of this, we're rushing out updates to the new app to have the same features as the website and we're hoping to get most of what's needed in the app within a few months. If you want to list which features you want prioritized for the app, you can let us know and we'll prioritize it.
Predictably, I'm getting a lot of angry emails about the new app not having all of the same features as the old app. Since there isn't anything I can do about that, I just have to keep updating the new one until it catches up. I'll continue to add pages to this blog post with new updates to the app as they come out.
I'll be adding labels and maybe the signup screen soon. I want to improve the search feature eventually so you can just search titles, tags, and story descriptions but I'll try to add the old advanced search feature for now since that's easier. If there is a feature you use very often that's not currently on the app yet (or it's there but it's broken 😱), let me know and I'll put it on the priority list. The more people that request it, the higher up it goes.
Hope you're all having a good weekend!
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