[Bud2]

Mike you are doing a great job and how much time it is taking is only because you have a main job which you obviously must give your main time to. At the moment I am fining the version we have to give me all I need but obviously if more things will be available and things made easier in the new version then that will be a bonus to me.
Regards, Bill

[jagny42]

Please add me to your list of beta testers for Ver. 5.
(Toshiba Thrive, 10" ICS)

[tcmschlosser]

I'm still available for beta testing if you need more people! :-)

[spike256]

If you need more testers, I'm available. My day job is software testing. I'd just ask you to give me a list of areas to concentrate on.

I love the app; I would appreciate the opportunity to give back.

Cheers

[flostog]

I would be interested in beta testing if you still need people. The new features I am particularly interested in are the midi control and the expanded foot switch control (not sure this feature is part of this release).

[maestralien]

Hi Mike! Please, feel free to add me as beta tester. Love MobileSheets and use it both on concerts, demos, lessons, practicing sessions, etc. Can't wait to get the new v.5!

Attached a screenshot posted on my facebook as well.. ;-)

Thanks, best.

[Zubersoft]

Midi control and expanded pedal actions (including support for four pedals are indeed being added in the next update).

I wanted to give everyone some screenshots of the new library screen. I'll post the pictures with a brief discussion of each, followed at the end by a summary of what's coming.

[Image: library1.png]

This is the new library screen in portrait orientation. The application is now running in full screen mode, meaning the status bar has been shoved to the bottom of the screen, and the navigation buttons are in the bottom left. This should result in MobileSheets using all of the available space while displaying scores. Also, you can see that the buttons that used to be at the bottom of the screen have been replaced by tabs at the top of the screen. Users who are pretty familiar with Android apps will recognize that I'm using the "Action Bar" now, which is the list of icons at the top right, and the tabs below. The action bar allows me to dynamically add new options depending upon what tab is selected as well as switching to a different list of actions if the user has entered selection mode (where you can select multiple songs for sharing, deletion, etc).

The nice thing about the tab implementation I'm using is that, not only can you tap the tabs to switch between them, you can also swipe the screen to switch between them. The swipe is fully animated so you will see the lists slide.

You can also see the filters that are visible below the tabs. There are some new features there such as being able to choose whether you want to include all songs in a collection, or exclude all songs in a collection (and you can select multiple collections at once). You can hide all these filters if desired by tapping the filter button visible at the bottom right in the new floating toolbar. This toolbar presents either actions that are state based (such as the left/right arrows which are just like the left/right arrows in the current version), or actions that can be toggled (such as shuffle mode, performance mode, and the filters visibility).

The last things I'm going to mention are the alphabet list on the right which now only shows letters that are actually match entries in the list, and the different icons at the top right. There is now one "group editor" button (to the left of the pencil) which is what is now used to modify any of the various group types (where a group is something that has a list of songs, such as a setlist/collection/genre/album, etc). The pencil is the edit button, which, when tapped once, prompts you to tap a song to edit (a little faster than long pressing). You can also long press a song in the list to select it, then tap the pencil to edit it.






[Image: library2.png]

I just wanted to show some of the additional tabs. There are currently 13 tabs supported, and I have them all enabled for demonstration purposes. In the settings, users can turn off the tabs they don't want or need, which cleans up the user interface and can speed up initialization a tiny bit. The "Custom Group" tab is one that you can name whatever you want, making it a convenient way to categorize songs based upon your own parameters.





[Image: quick_action.png]

Here you can see the new "quick action" menu which is used for popup menus. This one is for the overflow menu which is where actions are placed that are used less frequently.




[Image: alphabet.png]

Just another demonstration of the alphabet list on the right side and how it only shows relevant letters. Lists that aren't sorted (such as the Recent list) won't show this alphabet list at all, freeing up more screen space.




[Image: landscape.png]

In landscape mode, the tabs and icons are collapsed onto one line to make the best use of available screen space.




I was really hoping to have the beta ready by this point, but unfortunately, there have been a lot of bugs. Some of them have taken a fair amount of time to fix, and I have a lot more work left to do to make sure I've tested every possible option. Things are really coming together nicely, and I appreciate everyone's support and patience. I hope to have more screenshots soon of the song editor, group editor, and the various song display modes (two page, half page portrait, etc). On a side note, I'm getting married this week (yay!), so that is going to interfere with my progress quite a bit. When I get back on Saturday, I have to turn around and fly for work on Monday. I will continue to do my best to get things done as fast as I can.

I hope people like the changes that have been made so far. Please share comments if you have any.

Mike

[androidxen]

Looking beautiful! The new UI looks great. I look forward to the release!

[GeiGit]

Cool!
I like the new look and will be happy with the new possibillities!
Great work!

[GraemeJ]

Firstly, congratulations for your forthcoming marriage. I'm sure you will have other things to occupy your time for a while.

Secondly, it looks as though it's coming together nicely.

Lastly, take it easy - MS is not the most important thing in the world and you have more pressing issues to attend to.

[JustMe]

Hey Mike,

Looks really good! Looking forward to taking this baby for a beta-spin!

I think many don't have the knowledge to fully appreciating the amount of effort and skill it requires in building an app like MS. I mean, come on, the PDF rendering, the communications part (with the companion app), the companion app itself (Windows development skills), the annotation, the database that supports this app... The list goes on and on... It's truly amazing that you do all of this and even more than a full development team does on competing products (on other platforms )... And all of this IN YOUR SPARE TIME, and having a sweat heart in your life... Wow! I mean Zuberman must stand for like Superman in some language, right? Do you even have time left to actually make some music yourself (which is why you started MS in the first place)?

So I don't mind the wait as it is quite understandable.

Go have a blast with your marriage (congratulations on that! Lucky girl getting such a multi-talented husband); MS and its community will be right here, waiting patiently!

Cheers!

[jeffn1]

Looks great and congrats on your upcoming nuptials!

Jeff

[Zubersoft]

Thank you all so much! You are all such wonderful people, and I really appreciate the support you all give me. MobileSheets is definitely my passion right now, as there is nothing better than building something from the ground up. I barely have time to make music myself these days, but when I do, it's so nice to be able to use MobileSheets.

I'm excited to keep sharing more information on the updates, so as soon as I can gather some more screenshots, I'll post away.

Mike

[GraemeJ]

One small thought occurs. With all the extra bits and bobs being added to v5, is the documentation going to be upgraded at the same time as release?

[Zubersoft]

That's my goal. I was also thinking I should probably post YouTube tutorial videos, as I think the manual is hard for some people to use. I also have to gather all of the translators for the various languages so that I can update the translation files.

At some point I want to redesign the main website with html5, and make it a little more modern/polished. This isn't as important as all of the other things going on, but it's always on the back of my mind.