IndiePass Update - April 2023

It's been a long time since I did a proper update on IndiePass, and to be honest since I was in the mood to spend any real time on it. However, I have spent the past couple of days making real progress on the new IndiePass app (screenshots below), and also updating the current Indigenous app to be compliant with the current and impending Google Play store SDK platform requirements.

IndiePass

First things first, I have essentially started afresh with the Flutter codebase through the mix of deprecated methods used and the benefit of having gained more experience with it elsewhere.

As it currently stands, I am filling out the UI in it's entirety, and have upgraded it to use Material 3, along with a modern dark mode that doesn't require reloading the app each time. My main focus at the minute is getting the posting experience working and complete, with support for a few additional post types that are present within things like the Post Kinds WordPress plugin by David Shanske.

Below is some screenshots of a few aspects of the app as it stands this evening on an Android and iOS device

New Post Menu

New Post UI on Android in light mode
New Post UI on Android in dark mode
New Post UI on iOS in light mode
New Post UI on iOS in dark mode

New Note UI

New note UI on Android in light mode
New note UI on Android in dark mode
New note UI on iOS in light mode
New note UI on iOS in dark mode

Settings UI

New settings UI on Android in light mode
New settings UI on Android in dark mode
New settings UI on iOS in light mode
New settings UI on iOS in dark mode

To keep things manageable, I am purely focusing on the mobile versions of the app for the time being, and will focus on the desktop versions once these are released.

Indigenous App Update

Realistically, new IndiePass won't have every feature that Indigenous currently has for the first few releases at least. With Google Play store's app requirements changing in a few months time to require a more recent version of the SDK Platform, I am in the process of updating the app to the current SDK platform version 33 and addressing a few minor bugs while I am at it. On a negative note, I have had to remove the photo editor for the time being, as the version currently included with Indiegenous is pretty much entirely incompatible with newer versions of the android SDK. There is a current version of the photo editor, which I will look to re-add in due course. Apologies in advance to anyone who uses this feature.

Amazon App Store

Following a recent GitHub issue with regards to installing the app on an Amazon Fire tablet, I have begun the process of getting the app listed on the Amazon App Store in addition to Google Play and Fdroid.

In Summary

Things are progressing once again, and I am hoping to keep on this trend going forward to get the new IndiePass app to the point where I can release the app. Once the Android & iOS versions are published I will focus on getting the version for desktop OSes (macOS, Linux & Windows) released.

Cheers, Mark

Also posted on IndieNews