The Guardian Anywhere problem

[pinn]

hi,

not sure if anyone knows of this app but its a very nice offline browser for the guardian uk paper. it downloads over wifi, over night and then you are good to go.

my question tho is, i have added it as a wiuget but only one story displays on the desktop and it never changes. also when i click it only opens further details on that one story, and i seem unable to change it.

does anyone know how to switch stories easily?

Thanks

 

[jamesh]

Hi,

I'm the author of the Guardian Anywhere app. Thanks for the great feedback.

You can use a home screen widget for any tag you are following.

The widget has a number of clickable links on it:

• the picture or headline, and it will take you to the story behind that headline.
• the blue "g" logo will take you to the front screen of the app
• the tag name - e.g. "Top Stories" - will take you to a list of stories with that tag.
• the time of the article will force an update of the widget.

The widget checks for new stories every hour; however for a lot of tags, this doesn't happen that frequently. For example the Android tag often has nothing new in it for days at a time.

To save on batteries, and bandwidth, the widget will download stories for its tag until it finds a story it already knows about. This algorithm may miss stories that have been updated more recently than the first story in tags that are not ordered by time (e.g. Top Most Clipped, Top Stories).

I have not yet found a "Breaking News" style tag yet, but I have found a frequently updated feed to be "Features".

Many thanks, and regards,

James Hugman
Future Platforms

 

[pinn]

Hi James,

thanks for that info;I didn't realise so much functionality was built into the widget. I had posted a similar question on your site, so was surprised to see you answer my question here!

From your reply, it would seem then that the widget can't display different stories like a rss ticker would. Could this kind of feature be implemented in future versions, as otherwise it seems more efficient to use a short cut to the app rather than the widget itself?

Thanks

 

[jamesh]

> it would seem then that the widget can't display different stories like a rss ticker would.
Not currently, no. Actually, I don't think I'm sure how an RSS ticker behaves.

> Could this kind of feature be implemented in future versions,

If you'd like to spec out something: I'm not quite sure how it should behave in a number of edge cases (e.g. non-time ordered feeds, infrequently updated feeds, what is infrequent). I will certainly have a look at it. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you understand, I am not able to promise any particular new feature.

> otherwise it seems more efficient to use a short cut to the app rather than the widget itself?
Currently short cuts to a particular tag is not implemented; only to the app itself.

The widgets can serve this purpose.

Many thanks and regards

James

 

[hwcheng]

Hi James. It seems GA does not always update. Is it a problem with MS or the feed? Kindly inspire me. Also, is there a way to clean up the cache on sd card. After a couple of days' use, the cache now is over 150mb and still keeps growing!

I really enjoy using GA. Thanks.
With best regards

HW

 

[adam111]

Hi, my 'guardian anywhere' is somehow not able to do the updates. I use the samsung galaxy S1. I would appriciate any hints how to make the updates work. I live in germany and not in england.