Animated Widget 1.6.2 is released

Animated Widget 1.6.2 is released. What's new:

• Brazilian Portuguese localization was added
• Long tap on "..." button directly opens widget properties without opening menu at the bottom of the screen. This can be useful for users of Android 3.X - there are some devices where bottom menu is not visible. The problem will be fixed in next versions, long tap by "..." is workaround.
• Problem with double tap in Single Contact Widget is fixed. Now it's possible (again) to launch default action by single tap by widget.
• Loading images from Facebook didn't work.
• Bugfixing and minor improvements.

Animated Widget 1.6.1 is released

Animated Widget 1.6.1 is released. Some critical bugs were fixed:

• Flag "Toggle tap and double tap action" didn't work.
• Widgets had size 2x2 instead of 1x1 on ICS.

There was no possibility to hide "More" button on ICS in version 1.6. Now, the possibility was returned. At the same time, new parameter was added to application settings - "Show More button always". This flag will force application to show More button in all widgets even if this button is marked as hidden in Widget Properties.

Animated Widget 1.6 is released

Aimated Widget 1.6 is released. What's new:

• New style of widget properties editor. Now, you can change widget parameters and view results immediately without closing widget properties.
  
• Possibility to select skin, iconset and position for overlays (overlays are small icons upon shortcuts in group contact). See details
  
• Possibility to select shortcuts label mode (hide, title, details, title + detailes). Different widget types have different set of available modes.
• Support of "no skin" to get widgets and overlays without background.
  
• New action in single contact: "Call using Viber" and Facebook. These actions are not added automatically, you should add them manually if necessary.
• Possibility to delete all items by single click and sort items automatically in Widget Properties
  
• New skin "Round Black Gloss".
  
• Romanian, Serbian and Lithuanian localizations were added.
• Two new iconsets: ICS Holo Light and ICS Holo Darks
• ACRA library is used for crash reports handling
• Subcontacts in group contact appears in the order of selection. In the previous versions the order of appearing was undetermined.
• Bugfixing and minor improvements.

Overlays in group contact

Animated Widget allows you to create Group Contact Widget. Tap on Group Contact Widget opens list of pre-selected contacts. Tap on any contact launches default contact action, i.e. phone call. Default action is marked by so-called "overlay" icon - small icon of action at the right top corner of shortcut.

There are a couple of parameters in Applications Settings associated with overlays: "Enable overlays in group contacts" and "Hide overlays on shaking". Fist one enables/disables showing overlays over shortcuts. Last one enables possibility to hide overlays for short time (~2 seconds) by shaking device.

Animated Widget 1.6 introduces new possibilities to customize overlays appearance: it's possible to select skin for overlay background, iconset for overlay icon and overlay position. It's possible to hide overlay background at all by selecting "none" skin. There are some examples of possible overlays appearance below.

Please note, that Animated Widget 1.6 allows you to change widget parameters and immediately preview widget appearance without saving and closing Widget Properties.

Long, Short and Double Tap in Animated Widget

Animated Widget is animated fast dial widget for Android. This application allows you to accelerate such tasks as dialing frequent contacts, sending SMS, e-mailing, making Viber calls, launching favorite applications, bookmarks, opening Facebook pages, etc.

Animated Widget uses three kinds of tap: short, long and double. Short tap is most common and mostly used. Double and long taps are less intuitive, most users don't know about their possibilities at all. Nevertheless, double and long taps can be very useful in some cases. I will try to describe these cases below.