iOS and Mac developer
Since iTunes Connect has been down for the holidays, I wasn’t able to check my app store sales until today. I got a very pleasant surprise when I checked the reports. Both the free & premium versions of I Can Has Cheezburger had their best sales day since their release. Even iDjembe had a huge sales spike. Unfortunately PicSlide (which is my favorite application & which I consider my best) didn’t see any such increase.
I just submitted the 1.5.4 update for both the free & pro versions of I Can Has Cheezburger.
New in this version:
Good news: there will be an ICanHasCheezburger app update sometime after the holidays. This isn’t the fabled Three20 based version 2.0, but a minor update which simply changes the feed URL. However, by doing so, it should fix most of the crashes.
Our application uses a ‘scraped’ feed generated from the site content rather than the site’s own RSS feed. We do this because the standard RSS feed only has a limited number of items and must be loaded in its entirety. By scraping the site, we can create multiple pages with unlimited items, which load a lot faster since it only loads 10 or fewer items at a time.
The feed scraper was originally developed by the folks at ICHC for their dashboard widget. I later modified it to support all of their sites and change the output from JSON to simplified XML. Unfortunately that feed scraper has a major flaw. It uses regex pattern matching to parse the HTML, which is a Very Bad Thing. The script can easily get confused by changes to the site and often produces invalid data. It also hasn’t included videos since a format change at the site broke it.
Last night I started hacking at it with PHP’s XML parser and DOM commands and came up with a much more robust script that uses element classes to identify valid items and to avoid outputting bad data that could crash the application. I’m also hosting it on my own server at DreamHost, so I can easily fix it myself instead of having to go back and forth for fixes as we do now.
Unfortunately a few Viddler movies still won’t play, since they must be explicitly enabled for downloading on the site.
Updates are now available for both free & paid versions of I Can Has Cheezburger, version 1.5.3. There are no new features or visible changes – it simply fixes a crash several people were experiencing related to FAILblog.
I need ICHC users who are experiencing the crash to beta test a possible fix. I’m fairly sure what’s causing the crash, although I’ve been unable to duplicate it myself (it has to do with your saved position setting and the number of items changing, due to a feed problem). I would like someone to verify that it actually does fix the crash before I submit it.
In order to send beta copies, I will need your iPhones device ID (not the serial number). To get the device ID, click once on the serial number in iTunes when your iPhone is connected.
The device ID will then be displayed. You can simply hit Command-C to copy it to the clipboard.
After this bug is fixed, there will be no further updates to version 1.x. I’m completely rewriting 2.0 (which, of course, will be a free update) using Three20, the open source framework used for the FaceBook app. There will be a completely new user interface, much faster switching, zooming that actually works properly, and *maybe* a thumbnail view.
Before version 2.0, I have another application I’m getting ready to release very soon. I’ll be writing more about it later this week.
I’ve been receiving a lot of reports of ICHC crashing recently. I’ve never been able to duplicate any of those crashes myself, but from looking at the crash logs available in iTunes Connect I have an idea of what’s crashing them.
The crashes seem to occur when restoring the last viewed item results in an index out of range. We use a scraped feed (which is hosted on one of ICHC’s servers) that returns pages of 10 items each, to reduce the load time. I’ve seen a few instances where items, usually videos, are missing from the scraped feed, and in that case it returns a page of fewer than 10 items. If you happen to have been viewing item 10 the last time you quit and the next time you end up with only 9 items, it will crash.
I’ve put in some error handling for that case, but if you’re experiencing that crash, I’d like to have you test it before I submit the update, so email me your device ID and I’ll add you to my beta list. Note that Apple can take several weeks to approve an update, so even if I submit it right away, it may be a while before the update becomes available.
This will be the last update to this version. I’m doing a major rewrite for version 2.0 using Three20, the framework used in the FaceBook app. This will be a free upgrade.
Before I do much on v2.0, I’m finishing a new application I plan to release first. More about that in the next few weeks.
I always love to get emails like this:
You can download it here. If you already own ICHC, it should appear as a free update.
Tip: try viewing it in landscape 🙂
I submitted version 1.5.2 of both the free & pro versions at the same time. As you know, ICHC Pro was approved a few days ago. The free version is still in review.
I got a call from Apple today asking about a contest (which I figured out was probably one of the ads). Thanks to AT&T’s wonderful wireless service, the call was dropped right in the middle. I wasn’t able to return the call and they haven’t called me back.
I Can Has Cheezburger ad free 1.5.1 (actually 1.5.2, which I replaced while 1.5.1 was still in review) is now ready for sale. The free version, which I submitted at the same time, is still in review, although the old version 1.5 is available again.
You can download ICHC (ad-free) here, or if you prefer the free version, download it here.
New features in this version:
Note that not all Viddler movies are playable; the person who created it has to specifically enable downloading for it to work.
I just got an email from Apple saying that I Can Has Cheezburger (ad free) is ready for sale. Nothing about the free version, which I submitted at the same time.
However, as of 11PM (3 hours after I received the email), it still shows ‘removed by developer’. Something is badly screwed up. I had pulled the previous version while waiting for this update to be approved, but it changed from ‘in review’ to ‘removed by developer’ rather than being ‘available for sale’.
