{"id":16349,"date":"2018-11-08T11:09:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T10:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/?p=16349"},"modified":"2021-02-16T18:06:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T18:06:47","slug":"android-app-release-2-9-1-usability-improvements-new-network-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/blogs\/android-app-release-2-9-1-usability-improvements-new-network-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Android App Release 2.9.1: Usability Improvements and a New Network Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

Future technology needs a strong basis. Not only in the ownCloud Android app 2.9.1, there is a lot of effort in architecture consolidation right now – you can also see this with the rewrite of the iOS app<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Version 2.9.1 makes progress with introducing a new network library, but more architecture improvements are in the pipeline for the next versions. A good architecture is the foundation of handy usability features.<\/p>\n

Do you have feedback about the new version? Please drop a review at the Google Play Store, or send us an E-Mail to apps@owncloud.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There was no blogpost about 2.9.0, because this is a hotfix release. If you are on 2.9.0 already and experience login errors, upgrading to 2.9.1 should solve them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Usability Features<\/h2>\n

The new version also contains several long expected usability features:<\/p>\n

You can now search for files in the current folder<\/strong>. Especially in large folders, this makes file discovery a lot easier:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ownCloud<\/a>

Locally search for files in the current folder<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shashvat Kedia<\/a>, one of our most active community members, contributed another long expected usability feature. You can now select all<\/strong> files in the current folder, or inverse the selection<\/strong> for more granular changes:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ownCloud<\/a>

Sekect all files or inverse the selection in the current folder<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

While this makes the app way more usable and convenient, it also gets more beautiful with 2.9.1. The new login view<\/strong> welcomes new users to their ownCloud. It looks more similar to the web interface now:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ownCloud<\/a>

The redesigned login view of the ownCloud Android app<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Apart from that, there are other small user interface improvements, including a changed edit share icon, and a new gradient in top of the list of files.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

New Network Library<\/h2>\n

In the last years, the ownCloud Android app used two libraries for network connections: the HTTPclient library and the jackrabbit WebDAV library by Apache. Instead, the app switched to the more modern and active library OkHttp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is also a new library for WebDAV requests: the dav4android<\/a> library by bitfire<\/a>. You may know bitfire from the popular DavDroid app<\/a>, which is very useful to sync your calendar & contacts with your ownCloud.<\/p>\n

The bitfire developers were at the ownCloud Conference 2018, where they talked with the ownCloud Android developers – a very productive collaboration emerged out of this. In the end, ownCloud developers helped merging some WebDAV operations to dav4android, making it more complete.<\/p>\n

In the ownCloud app, the WebDAV requests are completely abstracted from the network library now. A better isolation of network library and WebDAV library ensures a more reliable architecture.<\/p>\n

This will probably fix some connection errors too, and ensures a working foundation for the rest of the app. Almost everything in the app needs a reliable way to talk to the ownCloud server – this is a very important part of the architecture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Available Offline Check<\/h2>\n

When you make a file Available Offline, it synchronizes regularly with the server. If a file on your phone changes, the changes get uploaded, too. This way you can always be sure that you have an up-to-date version of the file on the other devices.<\/p>\n

The checks are now included in Android Events – the app checks for file changes every 15 minutes, even if the phone is locked and the app is closed. This goes easy on your battery while not sacrificing reliability.<\/p>\n

To pull changes from the server, just open the app. Then the app will ask the server for new versions of a file.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bug Fixes<\/h2>\n

The new version brings a lot of bug fixes, as usual. Especially if you had crashes when rebooting the device, you can expect a fix now. Another crash when copying, moving files or choosing a folder within camera uploads feature was especially hard to track down.<\/p>\n

If you had failing downloads with the last version, then you should retry those in 2.9.1 – they probably got fixed, too.<\/p>\n

And finally, Shashvat Kedia<\/a> fixed another bug that the pattern lock was asked very often after disabling the fingerprint lock.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Try it Out!<\/h2>\n

Get the new version at the Google Play Store. It will also be available on F-Droid in the next days.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n \n   <\/i>\n Get it at the Google Play Store! <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n \n   <\/i>\n Get it at F-Droid! <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you like these changes? Leave a comment below or share this post on social media!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s update for the ownCloud Android app brings library and usability improvements. With each release, the app becomes more stable, performant, and future-proof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[399,347,491,225,364,492,352,358,447,493],"class_list":["post-16349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-android","tag-app","tag-bitfire","tag-community","tag-contribution","tag-davdroid","tag-opensource","tag-release","tag-ui","tag-webdav"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59148,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16349\/revisions\/59148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}