Tech Forum

Gospel Library 4.0.3 is now available on the Google Play store and will be available on the Amazon Appstore in the next few days.

Here are some of the improvements:
• Highlight colors are now indicated in the sidebar for user-created notes.
• Added button for switching between a user-created note and full related content in the sidebar.
• Links in D&C headings jump to the verse instead of opening the side drawer.
• Fixed issue where some chapters were skipped when downloading all audio files for a book.
• Fixed issue where Chromecast popup appeared while reading.
• Bugs fixes and stability improvements.

sbradshaw wrote:Gospel Library 4.0.3 is now available on the Google Play store and will be available on the Amazon Appstore in the next few days.

Here are some of the improvements:
• Highlight colors are now indicated in the sidebar for user-created notes.
• Added button for switching between a user-created note and full related content in the sidebar.
• Links in D&C headings jump to the verse instead of opening the side drawer.
• Fixed issue where some chapters were skipped when downloading all audio files for a book.
• Fixed issue where Chromecast popup appeared while reading.
• Bugs fixes and stability improvements.

Glory, hallelujah!

Now let's hope the next one includes a way to exit the app without having to hit the back button through every page you've been to since opening the app.

lmcguire wrote:Now let's hope the next one includes a way to exit the app without having to hit the back button through every page you've been to since opening the app.

Could you describe what you're seeing, and what you'd expect? I just hit the home button to go to the home screen, or the overview button to switch to a different open app...

sbradshaw wrote:

lmcguire wrote:Now let's hope the next one includes a way to exit the app without having to hit the back button through every page you've been to since opening the app.

Could you describe what you're seeing, and what you'd expect? I just hit the home button to go to the home screen, or the overview button to switch to a different open app...

Apparently you like having 12-billion apps running in the background on your phone. Android has a nice little utility you can use to see the number of open apps (and switch to them, or force them to close). I prefer to close my apps, so that the ones I really am using run best, and the ones I'm not using don't use up resources, including battery.

In the old version of GL, go to the main library page, and use your device's back button (the curved, sideways U with an arrow at one tip), and it would exit the app - not just take you to the device home screen, but also exit the app. In the new version of GL, it will do that, but only after doing a web-browser style back up through every page you've been to. If you go deliberately to the GL main screen, hoping to use the back button to exit, that just adds one more hop to the list of pages you have to navigate back through to get out of the app. So if they're going to change the app to work like a web browser, the least they can do is add an exit option to the menu or somewhere so I don't have to choose between:

a) Hitting the back button dozens of times
or
b) Forcing close on the app (from that nice little utility that tells me what apps are running)

I have used in-app feedback to email them a long list, including this item.

lmcguire wrote:I prefer to close my apps, so that the ones I really am using run best, and the ones I'm not using don't use up resources, including battery.

Ditto. As lmcguire said, in earlier versions of the app, it would rightly step back through the menu I followed from where I was reading to return to the Library screen (i.e., 4 Nephi, Book of Mormon, Scriptures, Library (home screen)). But I could bypass that by selecting the dropdown at the top and jumping directly to Library. From that location, a press of the back button always exited the app.

With the latest version, If I have gone through the Library page several times to read several different books, the back button takes me back through the entire trail, including several times through the Library screen, when I would have expected it to exit the app at the first appearance of the Library screen.

I would like to see that again. I need to close the app, not just leave it to jump to another app.

lajackson wrote:I would like to see that again. I need to close the app, not just leave it to jump to another app.

Generally 'closing' an Android app is over-rated. Most normal (non-game) apps will not use up battery when in the background and will be closed down by Android automatically when it needs memory for other apps.

However, if you feel you do need to shut it down, just select the overview button and then swipe left or right. That will close it down with just a couple actions which is likely less than using the back button.

eblood66 wrote:Generally 'closing' an Android app is over-rated. Most normal (non-game) apps will not use up battery when in the background and will be closed down by Android automatically when it needs memory for other apps.

You and my Android phone should have a little chat. Mine does not close apps graciously to regain memory.

But I am off topic here. I will do some online research into the matter. Thank you for the pointer.

eblood66 wrote:

lajackson wrote:I would like to see that again. I need to close the app, not just leave it to jump to another app.

Generally 'closing' an Android app is over-rated. Most normal (non-game) apps will not use up battery when in the background and will be closed down by Android automatically when it needs memory for other apps.

However, if you feel you do need to shut it down, just select the overview button and then swipe left or right. That will close it down with just a couple actions which is likely less than using the back button.

If I understand what you're saying, then what you are doing only cleans out the list of apps you can easily switch to, it does not actually close the app nor release memory. Your only options in all the years I've been using multiple Android devices are:

1) Use the app's way of closing
or
2) Force close (using that utility I mentioned)
or
3) Leave it running in the background

I hear people constantly talking about how they have to charge their phone every night - when I first got mine, it was closer to once / week. Now it's about once every 3-4 days. I also hear people complaining about phone problems or performance - I don't have such problems. Maybe the difference is that I close my apps. Or maybe I'm just lucky, don't really care, I will close the app, one way or another, and it is not unreasonable for me to request an easier way to close the app.

I think I understand what you're suggesting now. There are two opposing use cases.

What if you follow a link from a manual to 1 Nephi 3:7, then want to go back to the manual? You wouldn't want back to take you to 1 Nephi, then to Book of Mormon. The way it's functioning currently, you can follow a scripture chain from one scripture to the next, then go back to the original scripture.

Another example: You want to see how a word is translated in Spanish, so you switch to the same chapter in Spanish, then press back – you wouldn't want the back button to take you through the Spanish content hierarchy.

How did the previous version of the app handle these cases – did the app history reset every time it hit the main library? I imagine it must have been some sort of hybrid between the two use cases.

lmcguire wrote: If I understand what you're saying, then what you are doing only cleans out the list of apps you can easily switch to, it does not actually close the app nor release memory.

That all depends on the app. Most apps will close when swiping. However, an app can keep background services running if it wants to. But the same is true if you 'close' in the app itself. If it wants to keep running background services it can do it until either Android forces it closed to gain resources or a Force Stop is done from settings or from another utility (assuming you have one that actually does something--many don't do much because of changes in how Android manages apps). But for the most part you get the same benefit from swiping that you do from closing from inside an app itself.