Hey again guys!
Thanks for all the responses, I appreciate it!
Well, I basically sat down at my computer for the day and coded and got the bulk of it done.
I also got a bit carried away and decided not to just do the News section but I have also
pretty much done most of the site!
You can now view RSS Feeds of the whole forum
except 'Guild Recruitment'(may add in a later revision) and 'Archive'.
I'm not sure if I will keep that design in later revisions. The second screen of the app which uses imagebuttons (News, World of Warcraft, etc) may be changed to a listview like the later screens.
The app should correctly (hopefully!) warn the user if he is offline and has no internet connection. This should prevent the app from attempting to load the rss feed and crashing.
My back is aching and my neck is cramped like hell but it has been a productive day! I was glad to get back into coding and delve into it for the day.
I would have waited an extra day to publish but tomorrow is my Birthday and I don't think I will be at my computer too much.
Now the
nitty gritty!
There was
some things I really wanted to do which I just could not in the end (maybe I will return to it and improve it once I learn more).
I wanted to attempt parse the text from each rss item (each news item basically) and pull the text out of them and display it on a screen which would be highly optimised for mobile.
I tried for weeks to do this during my dissertation too. I gave it another go and again failed. I once managed to pull the text without the images but it missed a LOT of characters and refused to space the words.
Someone asked about the ability to post responses, while technically you can do it, I haven't added anything to enhance this. Basically because I don't know how and don't have the confidence in doing it (I have to emphasise
how much of an amateur I am! haha).
While coding this I went into my habit of coding it the long way. I could have completed the app much faster had I used some better coding techniques (such as one RSS class using if statements or something similar). It really wouldn't have improved performance at all but it would have been good coding practice. Old habits! I always do things the long way!
And now
regarding iOS development. I noticed quite a few of you asked for it and it pains me. Unfortunately I don't have a bit of C programming in me. I coded exclusively in Java in College and while I know they are both almost identical there is still some stuff you need to know when coding in C (garbage cleanup and stuff like that) that I have no clue about.
On top of that you need to dish out around €100 to get the development tools from Apple (so I heard). Sorry about that guys!
Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy it. I'll be the first to admit it's far from perfect but it's definitely small and portable. Hopefully some of you may enjoy it.
And with that,
here is the link!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...v.mmo_champion
If you guys did enjoy it I would ask you to submit an ol'review of it for me please!
And as always, I take criticism extremely positively!