xScope Browser Update

[rjax]

Gary, as usual, nice job with the updates, particularly the new tab switcher.

I was using my Droid today to do a good bit of browsing (which for me on xScope means that I do a lot of opening up links to the background from one page until six tabs are open, then reading and closing all but one tab, then repeating the cycle), and I noticed a few issues that may or may not be tied together.

The first thing was my first force close experience (it only happened once) -- after probably 3 or 4 cycles of tab-opening, xScope froze in the middle of a web page -- I hit "wait" a couple times, but to no avail, and I was forced to force close.

I'm wondering if maybe there's just too much memory that ends up being used after a couple cycles because I've noticed strange behavior when I try to use the back button to close a tab (my preferred method). Basically, hitting back works great the first cycle, but after I open 5 new tabs, hitting back doesn't close the tab immediately, but instead takes me a page that was in one of the 5 tabs that I closed in the previous cycle. (You can also replicate this behavior by opening one tab, then closing it, doing that 5 times, then the sixth time you hit back, it takes you back the first new tab; the seventh time you hit back, you go back to the second new tab, etc.)

But probably the biggest problem is closing tabs after a cycle or two. I can't replicate at will, but every now and then, closing a tab closes all of xScope, even when there is more than one tab open. This has happened at least once for each method of tab-closing (back key, tapping on the tab currently in focus, and closing a tab from your new tab switcher).

The worst part is that when I start xScope back up after this happens, I'm back at my home page instead of your neat tab-restore feature kicking in. Also frustrating is that the history doesn't seem very reliable at all, to the point where most/all tabs I open don't appear in the history, even though sites I visited before opening the tabs show up in the history.

I've tried to make sure I have plenty of memory available when I open xScope (killing everything but a couple background apps that I prefer to be on all the time leaves me with 80-90M of memory before starting xScope), but I'm still consistently getting the xScope memory low notification, even after I've hit the "ignore future notifications" choice. Also, I was rather surprised to see to that xScope actually used more battery than the display during all this time.

Anyway, hopefully this will give you some direction on further optimization. I admit to being curious how the memory usage/battery performance would change without the embedded task manager/memory monitor/file manager...

[Balthazar]

Hey Gary - I know you've been busting your hump on the browser, which is the best out there IMHO, but have you given any thought to expanding the other features of xscope? In particular would it be possible to modify the file manager so rooted users can see root files?

[CorvetteAustin24]

I just wanted to chime in and say the browser has improved a ridiculous amount in the past few weeks. Amazing support. How are your sales of the paid app going?

[Phoxus]

Hey Gary - I know you've been busting your hump on the browser, which is the best out there IMHO, but have you given any thought to expanding the other features of xscope? In particular would it be possible to modify the file manager so rooted users can see root files?

It already does this.

[Balthazar]

Hey Gary - I know you've been busting your hump on the browser, which is the best out there IMHO, but have you given any thought to expanding the other features of xscope? In particular would it be possible to modify the file manager so rooted users can see root files?

It already does this.

Indeed it does. I am apparently semi-retarded. Next time I'll make sure this thing doesn't already do what I want it to do. I didn't realize some folders still didn't have files that could be recognized, but I can see the ones I wanted to modify. Sorry for the stupid post.

[garysui]

rjax,
Thanks for the great input! I have mixed news now.
1. Tabs recycling problem is solved. So you when you hit 'Back' on a newly opened tab, it will not take you to a previous page.
2. Remove one tab causing exit. This is a tough one. I will do more research on it.
3. Android system is design that it can kill any thing when needed. So the chance that a hidden tab is killed by the system is very high if memory is low. I don't yet know if this is the reason that causing 2 or not. But I added a litttle module to make sure it runs with enough memory. So I guess I rather than killing other tasks, clearing cache might be a good relieve for the browser. Again, I need understand state preserve/restore more to compltely solve this problem.
4. Restoring is only good when the android system kills xScope in background. If it is already in foreground, it crashes without having a chance to store state. So it can recover.
Memory is NOT being monitored by the browser. It is done by the system. Any app will be monitored by the system, no exception to xScope. When the system thinks the memory is low, it sends a notification to the app. Some app might just not deal with it. xScope receives the notice and tries to do something. So there is no performance hit here.
The same thing as the task killer. The task killer works this way: if it it not called, that segment of code will never be executed. If it is called, it is just like visiting a plain webpage. It issue a one time command to the system and grabs back all the running processes. That's it. So theoritically, there should have no performance hit either. The only downside is that it increases the file size some.
Hope this helps.

Gary, as usual, nice job with the updates, particularly the new tab switcher.

I was using my Droid today to do a good bit of browsing (which for me on xScope means that I do a lot of opening up links to the background from one page until six tabs are open, then reading and closing all but one tab, then repeating the cycle), and I noticed a few issues that may or may not be tied together.

The first thing was my first force close experience (it only happened once) -- after probably 3 or 4 cycles of tab-opening, xScope froze in the middle of a web page -- I hit "wait" a couple times, but to no avail, and I was forced to force close.

I'm wondering if maybe there's just too much memory that ends up being used after a couple cycles because I've noticed strange behavior when I try to use the back button to close a tab (my preferred method). Basically, hitting back works great the first cycle, but after I open 5 new tabs, hitting back doesn't close the tab immediately, but instead takes me a page that was in one of the 5 tabs that I closed in the previous cycle. (You can also replicate this behavior by opening one tab, then closing it, doing that 5 times, then the sixth time you hit back, it takes you back the first new tab; the seventh time you hit back, you go back to the second new tab, etc.)

But probably the biggest problem is closing tabs after a cycle or two. I can't replicate at will, but every now and then, closing a tab closes all of xScope, even when there is more than one tab open. This has happened at least once for each method of tab-closing (back key, tapping on the tab currently in focus, and closing a tab from your new tab switcher).

The worst part is that when I start xScope back up after this happens, I'm back at my home page instead of your neat tab-restore feature kicking in. Also frustrating is that the history doesn't seem very reliable at all, to the point where most/all tabs I open don't appear in the history, even though sites I visited before opening the tabs show up in the history.

I've tried to make sure I have plenty of memory available when I open xScope (killing everything but a couple background apps that I prefer to be on all the time leaves me with 80-90M of memory before starting xScope), but I'm still consistently getting the xScope memory low notification, even after I've hit the "ignore future notifications" choice. Also, I was rather surprised to see to that xScope actually used more battery than the display during all this time.

Anyway, hopefully this will give you some direction on further optimization. I admit to being curious how the memory usage/battery performance would change without the embedded task manager/memory monitor/file manager...

[garysui]

Corvette,
Thanks!
xScope app was first released on last November 23(first supporting the overly hyped multitouch for Droid back then). It was released as a paid app. Much later, a lite version was released.
So far, about 10000 downloads for lite and 1000+ for paid. With all you guys inputs (critics, suggestions....), it did mature a lot faster. THANKS!
As the money goes, Google charges 30% of each copy, and I keep 70%. I have to admit, this is the HARDEST money I have ever made. Thanks everyone for supporting. Other than the coding work, I also need to reply every single email I have received. One man in the business warned me that the customer support would kill me. I totally agree by now. I have spent 20 minutes on a phone just to explain to an old gentleman what a url is and how to enter a url in xScope...
All of those being said, however, it has been my GREATEST pleasure to do something that might make people's web surging a little easier. I also treat this adventure a semi-entertaining business. With so many witty and funny comments in this forum

I just wanted to chime in and say the browser has improved a ridiculous amount in the past few weeks. Amazing support. How are your sales of the paid app going?

[JonKyu]

Wait...you take calls? Is it toll free? lol j/k keep up with the great work

Corvette,
Thanks!
xScope app was first released on last November 23(first supporting the overly hyped multitouch for Droid back then). It was released as a paid app. Much later, a lite version was released.
So far, about 10000 downloads for lite and 1000+ for paid. With all you guys inputs (critics, suggestions....), it did mature a lot faster. THANKS!
As the money goes, Google charges 30% of each copy, and I keep 70%. I have to admit, this is the HARDEST money I have ever made. Thanks everyone for supporting. Other than the coding work, I also need to reply every single email I have received. One man in the business warned me that the customer support would kill me. I totally agree by now. I have spent 20 minutes on a phone just to explain to an old gentleman what a url is and how to enter a url in xScope...
All of those being said, however, it has been my GREATEST pleasure to do something that might make people's web surging a little easier. I also treat this adventure a semi-entertaining business. With so many witty and funny comments in this forum

I just wanted to chime in and say the browser has improved a ridiculous amount in the past few weeks. Amazing support. How are your sales of the paid app going?

[garysui]

lol.
There will be a new update tonight.
1. Enable embedded video previewing
2. Download prompt for user to choose (I checked megaupload, what happened is that if the server is not busy, I can always download successfully. If busy, I just downloaded a 1k file. I renamed that file and opened to view, it says "exceeded max downloads for regular users. try again later". So it is a message)
3. Accurate tab recycling
4. Javascript popup window (such as login and google news)
5. Number of favorites for paid version expaned to 50.
6. Import global bookmarks, export to there (as a bookmark backup facility), and save current favorites to sdcard ( /sdcard/xScope/xSopeBookmarks.html))
Thanks

Wait...you take calls? Is it toll free? lol j/k keep up with the great work

Corvette,
Thanks!
xScope app was first released on last November 23(first supporting the overly hyped multitouch for Droid back then). It was released as a paid app. Much later, a lite version was released.
So far, about 10000 downloads for lite and 1000+ for paid. With all you guys inputs (critics, suggestions....), it did mature a lot faster. THANKS!
As the money goes, Google charges 30% of each copy, and I keep 70%. I have to admit, this is the HARDEST money I have ever made. Thanks everyone for supporting. Other than the coding work, I also need to reply every single email I have received. One man in the business warned me that the customer support would kill me. I totally agree by now. I have spent 20 minutes on a phone just to explain to an old gentleman what a url is and how to enter a url in xScope...
All of those being said, however, it has been my GREATEST pleasure to do something that might make people's web surging a little easier. I also treat this adventure a semi-entertaining business. With so many witty and funny comments in this forum

I just wanted to chime in and say the browser has improved a ridiculous amount in the past few weeks. Amazing support. How are your sales of the paid app going?

[JonKyu]

lol.
There will be a new update tonight.
1. Enable embedded video previewing
2. Download prompt for user to choose (I checked megaupload, what happened is that if the server is not busy, I can always download successfully. If busy, I just downloaded a 1k file. I renamed that file and opened to view, it says "exceeded max downloads for regular users. try again later". So it is a message)
3. Accurate tab recycling
4. Javascript popup window (such as login and google news)
5. Number of favorites for paid version expaned to 50.
6. Import global bookmarks, export to there (as a bookmark backup facility), and save current favorites to sdcard ( /sdcard/xScope/xSopeBookmarks.html))
Thanks

Awesome, hopefully this will be the update that will let me dump dolphin.