Our new app is now available. In fact, it’s been available in the App store for more than a week.
I've been waiting to write about it, hoping I could discuss a fully functional, rock-solid app that was serving our readers without fault. Especially since our previous app went dark almost a month earlier.
But I can’t. The thing is buggy as hell.
It crashes. A lot. Especially if you’re trying to use it on an iPad, which many of you do.
It’s been working fairly well on my iPhone 4 (yes, 4!) since I installed it 10 days ago. But my iPad Air is a different story. It launches, it crashes. It launches, it crashes.
I had some luck deleting the app and reinstalling, but eventually the launch-crash cycle returns.
But it’s not all bad. When it works, it works quite well.
If you’re old, non-functioning Times Colonist app didn’t automatically update, you should delete it and go find the new one in the App store. Or, here’s a link.
(((Always remember that our responsive-design website is viewable on any size screen.)))
When searching for the update, make sure you install the “victoria times colonist” app and not the “victoria times colonist for ipad” app. That’s the the old one; it will (hopefully) be removed soon from the App Store.
After an initially ugly splash page, we now have one we like very much and it’s what you should see when you launch the new app:
If you see anything else after launching, you have the old app. Or someone else’s app.
To get to stories, just click on those three lines in the top left corner and that will open the menu:
Choose the category that interests you and you’re off to the races.
It will look like this:
One new wrinkle with this new app is that it lists stories with the newest first. That’s handy if you’re checking back often for new stuff or updates.
Those sharing icons to the left of the headlines don’t work, however. So far, they seem to just crash the app.
The good news is that clicking on a headline opens a version of the story from our webpage. So most of the features you find on our website are intact, such as sharing buttons, comments and multiple photos.
We’re going to refine the presentation for the smaller screens of smartphones, so stay tuned.
I wish it was better. There’s no weather and there’s no video. And the whole crashing thing.
We’re working on the deficiencies and I’ll talk here about upgrades as they come online. In the meantime, check it out and tell us what you think.
Really, I can take it.
(Oh, and the Android version isn’t ready yet.)
