v4.3 – Screen Indicator and Screen Switcher

Yes, we released an update today again

It has the same screen indicators as you would find in Android 2.1’s default Home screen. Long pressing the indicators will also give you a screen switcher just like in Android 2.1. We also added a fancier animation to home switcher to make it look even cooler. Enjoy!

Open Home v4.x now on market

We are pleased to announce that Open Home (full version) is not now at its 4th major version v4.x . Here is a list of note-worthy changes/enhancements/features/bug fixes:

- Allow users to set the default fonts to any home screen widgets. Please note that only default fonts are changed because some widgets have custom fonts and we don’t want to give override them. (menu/more/font & color/Widget font)

- Performance enhancements from android 2.1, now home screen scrolling is much smoother, force close issues are gone for Motorola Droid and HTC Nexus One

- More home screen animations and effects, including an experimental 3D cube transition effect  (menu/more/Open home setting/3D cube)

- Live Wallpaper is now supported on Nexus One

- Home Chooser’s default setting check box now works as it should  (menu/more/home chooser)

Enjoy!

Better Keyboard 4.0 released

Better keyboard 4.0 was just released to public. Here are the list of new features:

- All android keyboard improvements from android 2.0: better stability, improved performance, contacts in dictionary suggestions, frequently typed words automatically adds to user dictionary

- Speech input: this is an US only feature, currently android’s speech recognition feature is only available for American English. To launch speech input, long press ‘?123′ key and choose speech input.

- Usability update: gesture was made less sensitive so that they don’t get accidentally triggered as often when typing fast. Also up/down dismiss keyboard gesture is disabled by default, you can re-enabled it in setting screen.

- Access Compact qwerty without swiping: long press ‘?123′ and you will see an option to access compact qwerty without needing to do any swipe gesture. You can disable keyboard gestures completely so that you can type as fast as you can in landscape mode.

- Compact qwerty can be set as default: a new setting was added to allow compact qwerty layout to be used as the default layout over normal qwerty.

Enjoy and have a great holiday!

Some of the latest skins for Open Home

They are all created by artists from xda-developers, enjoy!

Better Keyboard is among the 50 Best Android Apps!

Just received an email from www.Androinica.com . The site listed 50 best android apps that are currently available on the app market. Better keyboard is one of them!  It is a wonderful list of apps, we use and love a lot of them. It is a great honor to be listed among all these wonderful android apps.

Better cut is on the list as well.

Thank you for all your supports!

Better Keyboard 3.0 released

Version 3.0 of Better keyboard has performance update, bug fixes and most noticeably, update to keyboard skins. The new skinning update allows artist to create more interesting keyboard skins for Better Keyboard.

Enjoy!

Better Keyboard: Tips & Tricks

Better keyboard 2.4.2 was released to the market, here are a few quick tips:

- The normal qwerty has a proximity correction algorithm, which means it is NOT necessary to type every key correctly. In fact, even when you type every key incorrectly, the text correction algorithm is still able to suggest the correct spelling.

- The key on the lower left corner (the ?123 key) is the setting key. Long pressing it to get quick access to keyboard settings and quick access to input method selection which allows you to switch to different keyboard apps

- You can use user dictionary to bring a word to the front of the suggestion list. For example, if you put the word ‘if’ in the user dictionary, then when you type ”ud’ on the compact qwerty keyboard, the word ‘if’ will be one of the first suggestions in the predictive text list.

Here is a gallery of some of the newer skins for better keyboard, there are a lot more on the app market.

Setting Widget Added

Just trying to keep up with the developments at xda-developers

We added the new setting widget that will be in the next update of android. Enjoy! The settings are (from left to right): Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Auto Sync, Screen Brightness

Gps toggle brings up the gps setting screen because apps no longer have permissions to toggle gps in cupcake, we will probably remove this widget when the official android update is released.

Big Analog Clock

We get at least 2 emails everyday asking for the Hero like big analog clock widget, ask no more, here it is in Open Home 2.4.

There isn’t really much utility to this clock other than it’s bigger, but we figure that since we are porting themes from xda-developer, we should make them as close to the original as possible. Some elements (such as status bar) cannot be modified by Home app (yet), but we do our best to bring you whatever is possible.

At this time only a small number of skins have image resources for the big analog clock.

By the way, the flip clock widget you see on some of the screenshots below is from an app called ‘Weather Widget -Donate’ from Android Apps , don’t start looking for it in open home

Better Keyboard 2.0 has compact qwerty

Better Keyboard 2.0 was just released. It now has a compact qwerty layout. You can access this compact qwerty layout by swiping left on the keyboard. Swipe left again will switch back to normal qwerty. Swipe right toggles symbol keyboard on/off. The compact qwerty keyboard has predictive text that works very well.

We also added an option to toggle spelling suggestions on auto complete text boxes (i.e. search box). This makes searching a much more pleasant experience.

We hope you enjoy this release as much as we do!