windows 8 app not up to date

Discussions around the Gospel Library application for Windows for Desktop and Mobile

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russellhltn
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Re: windows 8 app not up to date

#11

Post by russellhltn »

garyoranzabriskie wrote:So who do we contact for this?
That would be a question for ToManyLetters. He's a lot closer to that type of stuff than I am.
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sbradshaw
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Re: windows 8 app not up to date

#12

Post by sbradshaw »

It's unlikely to happen unless there are several volunteers who are willing to do the necessary coding work. The Gospel Library for Windows team (a small group and all volunteers) doesn't have manpower to also support older versions of the operating system. Having a Windows version of Gospel Library at all is a luxury (there's no Gospel Library for Mac or Linux).
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
ToManyLetters
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Re: windows 8 app not up to date

#13

Post by ToManyLetters »

Windows 8.1 is still on use by millions of users[...]. It shouldn't be too hard to keep it updated.
I've mentioned this in the past, but to get the Windows 8.1 app working with the new content requires a near-complete rewrite of the app--and it's been done. It's the app built for Windows 10. As Microsoft offered everyone a free upgrade to Windows 10 for a year, we made the decision to focus support for our new version of Gospel Library for Windows on Windows 10--this allowed us to continue to not only to support older devices that had upgraded for free, but also new devices like Xbox One, Microsoft HoloLens (and other Mixed Reality devices), and Microsoft Surface Hub (and other "hub" devices). The general public's strong dislike of all things Windows 8.1 led us to believe that that choice was a pretty safe one to make. While I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, people using the app on a Windows 8.1 or Windows 8 device are a tiny fraction of the total userbase on Windows--I would guess less than one percent. So while it may be true that, worldwide, there are millions of people still using Windows 8.1, the overlap with Gospel Library users is insignificant. While this decision has negatively impacted a few holdouts like yourself, I am quite confident it was the best decision the team could have made given our exceptionally limited resources.
As I understand it, because Windows trails in a distant third place in the moble device market, the Windows effort is completely handled by volenteer developers. And as it is, they struggling to keep up.
It's unlikely to happen unless there are several volunteers who are willing to do the necessary coding work. The Gospel Library for Windows team (a small group and all volunteers) doesn't have manpower to also support older versions of the operating system. Having a Windows version of Gospel Library at all is a luxury (there's no Gospel Library for Mac or Linux).
This is more or less true, though historically the lack of communication from the developers of the apps on iOS and Android has been the reason here, not a lack of will. We still lack some features that the apps on iOS and Android have, it's true. However, they also lack quite a number of our features. As soon as we're able to get back to feature development (after the latest massive change to the content structure has concluded and our W10 app has been updated to handle the structure changes), we'll be narrowing the list of features we don't have.
they'd have to resurrect the old code base and update it and either maintain two code bases for 5 years (when support for Windows 8.1 Update ends), or abandon the other devices that GL for Windows currently does support
It wouldn't just be a resurrection of the codebase, we'd basically have to write a new Windows 8.1 app from scratch. Because of how dramatically the content source has changed since our 2.x release, we'd be able to salvage rather little of the code.
So who do we contact for this? I would be willing to link a doodle Poll to gauge the support for an updated Windows 8.1 version of Gospel Library and LDS tools.
Polls aren't going to help here--our analytics are pretty clear. That said, the decision to kill off LDS Tools on Windows was not ours and it died even before Windows 10 released. That won't come back without approval and funding, I'm afraid. The volunteer project was asked to cease development and to delist the app. We did. (See https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 43#p161543 for a whole thread on this topic.)
Learn more about Gospel Library for Windows 10 Beta at the link below:
https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Gospel_Library_for_Windows_10
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