Week 7: File Browser

Sorry about the really late post. I had a half written one from last week, and never came back to finish it, so I'll recap. Last week, I started working with the File Browser. There really is no way to get any further in the app without a way to set up playlists properly. Previously, I would make a playlist in the old version of ShuffleTone, uninstall, install the new version of ShuffleTone, and the used a little tool I wrote that converted the files to the new format. It was a horrible process. 

Anyway, one of my goals is to do a better job handling loading the ringtones from your phone. A lot of people have brought up issues of incorrect length songs, which I would like to fix if I can. I've created what's called an AsyncTask, which basically allows for work to be done in the background but also keep the user informed on the main view. I attempted to pull Metadata from the media files, but it's really slow. This is obviously not the solution, but it's a good start. 

Most likely what's going to happen is that loading metadata will happen in a reduced scale, like maybe just prior to displaying each item. This would leave only a need to load the file info and media id when the application loads the file browser, and loads the media info as needed. Another possible solution is loading the metadata in the background after the ringtones have been gathered together into a playlist, starting with the ones the user is seeing first.

Once I've finished with this issue, I'll be working on adapting the data to something that can be displayed and eventually used properly. This will take all this data that is loaded from your internal and external memory, and allow you to click, manipulate, listen to and otherwise set up your playlists. 

Anyway, till next week! :)

Tyler--DizWARE