Gestures implementation in Animated Widget 2.1

New version Animated Widget 2.1 is just released. Key feature of new version is support of gestures. The purpose of this article is to explain detailes of implementation and show ways to use this feature most efficiently.

Animated Widget 2.1 with gestures support was released

New version of Animated Widget was released. What's new:

• Gestures are supported. Now any action can be started using pre-selected gesture (new behavior) or single/long tap (old behavior). All coomon types of gestures are supported - swipe, scroll, pinch, zoom, 1-3 fingers.
  
  
  View detailes of gestures implementation.
• New global configuration params: "Enable gestures" and "Enable gesture's animation".
• Minimum required Android API is changed from 9 to 15 (Android 4.0.3).
• Free version only: limitation of number of created widgets is replaced by limitation of number of ads-free widgets. Total number of created widgets is not limited anymore.
• Compatibility with Android 4.4.X was improved. In particular, default backup directory on SD-card is changed. Previous path Android/com.mobilityflow.awidget/backup was changed to Android/data/awidget-package-name/backup due to restrictions introduced in Android 4.4. As result, different versions of Animated Widget (free, pro, beta, etc) are stored backups in different folders. Restore manager scans all possible backup folders and shows full list of backup files from these folders.
• Bugfixing.

Specialized shortcuts in Animated Widget 2.X: direct support of SMS through Whatsapp, Viber, Hangouts, etc.

Animated Widgets provides Single Contact widget, that allowes to create shortcuts for common contact actions: phone call, sms, email, Viber call, Skype call, sending message through IM or Facebook messager, opening contact address on map and so on.

By default, each action is handled by default application. If default application is not specified, system will show chooser dialog for selecting required application. For example, if you tap on SMS shortcut you could see chooser dialog like below:

If you use several sms-applications you are forced to select required application each time. It's inconvenient. Animated Widget 1.X suggests workaround for the problem:

• single tap on SMS-shortcut opens default SMS-application,
• long tap opens chooser dialog with full list of SMS-applications,

see Long, Short and Double Tap in Animated Widget for detailes. So, if you used both standard SMS application and Whatsapp, you were able to set standard SMS application as default application and start it by single tap, and, at the same time, open Whatsapp through long tap.

Animated Widget 2.0 provides new feature: specialized shortcuts. Now it's possible to select specified application for any contact shortcut. You are able to add several SMS-shortcuts to Single Contact: one shortcut for default SMS application, another one for Whatsapp, one more for Viber and so on.