Category: Development

Why Publishing on the Windows Phone Marketplace is Like Walking Barefoot On Broken Glass

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We started developing Toshl for Windows Phone because we liked the platform and saw the potential in it. It’s a beautifully designed OS, even if the experience starts to wear a bit thin after a few weeks and a giant leap for Microsoft. Publishing apps for it though, has turned out to be a very painful experience. From time to time the tale gets so surreal and horrible I sometimes wish Franz Kafka were alive to describe it instead of me.

 

World outside the few largest markets does not exist

While it’s possible to download applications from the Windows Phone Marketplace in Slovenia and many other countries, it’s impossible for developers to publish them with their own account. You simply cannot register a developer account. We are not even talking about the possibility of accepting payments, it’s impossible to publish free applications as well. Why they would insist on such a limitation is truly baffling.

So Microsoft Slovenia is kind enough to publish all the apps from Slovenian developers under their account. While that was better than nothing, it also meant that we didn’t have the access to publishing our own app or statistics about how the app was doing. Everything could only be done through email with the Microsoft Slovenia employees. What that also meant is that any phone which we wanted to use for development purposes had to be physically taken to Ljubljana, to the local Microsoft HQ to be unlocked. Doable, but highly annoying and time-consuming.

Imagine badgering employees at another company to hurry up with the upload by email each time you need to publish a bug fix, let alone optimise the description of the app.

Impossible to move the app to another account

We kept working on Toshl Finance, got a lot of new users (with little thanks to Windows Phone), established a US corporation and got accepted into 500 Startups. Since we now had a US company we could finally get our own Windows Phone developer account, get the app there and live happily ever after, right? Not so fast, Mr. Naïve.

When making an account Microsoft’s site would not accept any of three credit cards. One credit card was Slovenian, one French and one US all issued by different banks so I’m pretty sure the problem was on their side. Luckily we were at the 500 Startups offices and were just talking to a Microsoft developer evangelist before and he helped us out so we could create the account without the credit card.

Once we got that done, we wanted to move the app from the old account owned by Slovenian Microsoft to our new one. We were building and improving the app for more than a year after all, got a considerable amount of downloads and great ratings on the Marketplace. As there wasn’t any way to do this in the web interface we contacted the support. The Slovenian Microsoft helped, as well as our helpful developer evangelist in the Silicon Valley. Result after weeks of wasted time: CANNOT BE DONE. They don’t have the “technical ability.”

Their answer was that we had to remove the app from the Marketplace and upload it all again. That meant losing all the download statistics, ratings as well as the inability of existing users to update through the Marketplace mechanism. To be fair, we have the same problem with Apple and the App Store and they’re being even greater assholes about it.

It was a tough pill to swallow, but we had to do it to actually have control over our publishing. We said: let’s do it quickly, like pulling of a band-aid. Take it off the Marketplace first, so we can keep the app name and uploading it the same day. What a mistake to make. Lesson learnt: never take off a live app until you have a replacement already up, rename later.

Arbitrary Marketplace certification ridiculous “morality” standards

Beacuse Microsoft (like Apple), manually inspects and certifies each app it takes about a week from the upload to the publishing of the app. Since the app was already present on the Marketplace for a year without a problem we assumed it should be a routine thing and the app will again be available to our users very soon. Wrong again!

It took A MONTH to get the app back on the Marketplace, during which time our users could not download the app, many of them paying users. While dealing with the outfall Microsoft and the Windows Phone certification team kept coming up with stupider and stupider reasons to decline our app.

First we needed to state the privacy policy again (even though it was already explained in the app and our Privacy Policy available on our site). Keep in mind that was all ok for an entire year before and numerous updates. Then they decided that we logged location data without permission. The tracking of the location of the expense was of course completely optional and up to the user, but it was true that it was marked improperly at one place. Again, that was fine for an entire year before then!

Then came the icing on the cake. The third rejection because our app used a Bing map (which isn’t allowed in China), but more importantly, our app was immoral and contained inappropriate material. As such it could not be published in Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, United Arab Emirates… Keep in mind that Toshl is a personal finance app, it’s not about porn or gambling. Even after contacting their support they refused to elaborate on what was the offensive element.

We do try to put some humour into the apps. For example the Toshl monsters say funny sentences while syncing. We went through them one more time and the absolutely juiciest we could find is “I saw that expense you marked as “other toys.” Naughty.” It shows up randomly during sync and for max. 3 seconds. That was enough to get us banned in all those countries. We had no choice as they wouldn’t explain which exact thing was the violation and our loyal users have been already waiting for more than a month. We also refused to censor ourselves everywhere else due to puritanism of some Microsoft bureaucrats. So we disabled the distribution in those countries and published again. Finally, we got through.
We still had to email all our users, as they couldn’t update automatically from the Marketplace.

Incompetent publishing tools

The publishing platform on create.msdn.com is of course built with Microsoft tools. Which means forms made in Silverlight. Which means PAIN. When our Windows Phone developer sends me the .XAP file to publish the app I usually publish from my Mac. I need to switch browsers to publish the app and even then it’s a horrible experience. Why?

Google Chrome: Cannot even open the submit form, keeps loading in perpetuity.
Firefox: The same.
Safari (what I use in the end): Can open the form, but each time I hit space in one of the text fields it jumps to the bottom of the page, making it impossible to edit any text and actually seeing it.

Furthermore the page is confusing and the statistics poor. Microsoft bury Silverlight once and for all!

Low numbers user numbers

The results in new users from publishing on the Windows Phone Marketplace are also very low. Negligible compared to the the App Store or the Android Market. I suppose you could also blame this on us and our promotional skills but we did quite a few things to get Toshl Finance better numbers on the Marketplace, got reviews on a lot of the Windows Phone dedicated sites etc. Quite simply there aren’t a lot of Windows Phone users. In the Toshl Finance ecosystem there’s even a few percent more BlackBerry users and A LOT more Symbian^3 and MeeGo users than Windows Phone.

Promotional bait and switch

We were talking to a Windows Phone developer evangelist a while back about how we could get our app featured in the Marketplace and get more users that way. We do have a 5 star rating in the Marketplace and the users love the app, problem is getting exposure. Don’t believe the 5 star? Check out the app on the Marketplace.

We wanted to get the app on our account first, how quickly that went you already know. They told us that we’d have a lot better chance with more Windows Phone specific features, like live tiles and to try and apply later on. Live tiles are a great idea, we love them and they really make understanding your finances at a glance easy, so we went for it.

Talking to the Windows Phone evangelist today we found out there’s basically no way to get into the Marketplace nomination program currently and that they’re only focusing on promoting the upcoming Windows 8 apps…. Not even on the phone (for which SDK isn’t available), but on the desktop. He also mentioned we should do desktop app as well. Yeah right. After a developer relationship like this, who in their right mind would hop on another “burning platform” of theirs.

Microsoft and the Windows Phone team: Get your act together! If you think you can make your platform matter on mobile while offering such experiences to developers you are sorely mistaken.

Posted in Development, Opinions

Beware Windows Phone Developers: A Generic Phone Image Can Get Your App Rejected (updated)

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The Windows Phone Marketplace takes time to accept and reject your app based on their rules much like most other app stores on the mobile landscape. There have been many debates on the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach, but what we usually do agree upon in the community is that there is a need for consistency and rationality in enforcing those rules.

I’m writing this because just today an update of Toshl for Windows Phone 7 got rejected by the Marketplace staff. The reason: multiple iPhone references in the app. We all looked in confusion as none of us could recall any iPhone references in the app nor in the description. It was also only a minor update fixing a few bugs, so there were no UI changes where iPhone references could have crept in. Previous versions which were identical UI-wise got accepted without any problems.

To quote the rejection:

Requirements
If an application depicts any mobile or wired telephone, handheld PDA, or any other data and voice communicator, it must be either generic or a Windows Phone device

Comments
Your application failed the Marketplace prohibited application policy check. Please review the above policy, notes below (if applicable), update and re-submit your application.
It appears there are multiple reference to the iPhone in the application. Please modify so that the mobile device is a Windows Phone or a generic mobile device.

Searching through the app all we found that even remotely resembled an iPhone was an error image where the Toshl dog is holding a phone in his hand. While it’s true that there’s only one button under the screen, the shape could depict almost any touch-based phone. In other words, generic.

Here’s how the error image looked like:
v1

In the absence of a good feedback channel and in the quest for the quickest solution possible to get the fixes to Toshl users we decided to change the design to look more Windows Phone-ey:
v2

We’re waiting for the results of the second review process. To be honest this whole issue seems quite silly and unfounded. If only they paid this much critical attention to the apps with poor UIs and user experiences the Marketplace would be a lot nicer place. So, what’s your opinion, was the phone image generic enough or not? Do you think the Marketplace rules are too strict or inconsistent?

Update (26. 8. 2011)

We’ve posted about this problem to Microsoft’s Ben Riga on Twitter and he was quick with the response and letting the Marketplace team know about this issue.

Here’s the respose from the Marketplace team:
The device containing strong similarities to the iPhone was found on the page depicted on your blogpost. While it does have strong similarities, it is a generic device and thus should not have failed during certification. We apologize for that inconvenience as well as the lack of direct information in the test report. In the future, feel free to also submit support requests from your App Hub account and you can expect prompt responses from the support team.

So all is well that ends well I guess. It’s good to know that Microsoft is responsive about such issues. But in the vein of a never 100% satisfied person I have to add: If only they would add Slovenia to the list of countries from where developers could actually have their own accounts, our development lives would be much easier.

Written by Matic Bitenc

Posted in Announcements, Development

Toshl and WebOS

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In the light of pessimistic news around WebOS ecosystem, Toshl also decides to move on.

A few hours ago, HP announced that it is pretty much decapitating WebOS platform for mobile phone/tablet devices. This came as a shock to the whole WebOS developer community, known for its stubborn support of this revolutionary OS. The Toshl team was shocked as well.

Toshl, known for its cross platform support, has been developing a version for WebOS since first Palm Pre days. You can still see some screenshots of Toshl for WebOS around the internet, even though the version was never released. During our WebOS development struggle, we received fantastic support from some Palm and later on HP individuals like Ben Ritmeyer, Peter Helm, Adela Gildo-Mazzon, Sean Lindo and many others, and we think nothing but the best of these individuals. They were just awesome. But unfortunately the lack of HP properly backing up the platform finally put a stop to Toshl WebOS development, even though we spent a substantial amount of energy and financial resources on it.

From today on, Toshl WebOS development will no longer exist and Toshl WebOS version will not see a public release. We would like to thank Palm and HP for giving us fantastic support, we would like to thank WebOS community for providing extremely useful coding information and we would like to thank all the WebOS fans for sending us emails of encouragement. We are really sad to say goodbye to WebOS, not only due to once-promising platform facts, but also due to just personal love Toshl team had for this niche platform.

Toshl WebOS concept design

Posted in Announcements, Development

Designing for Blackberry

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I’ll be frank with you, I don’t like BlackBerries. I do not understand people who say they’re beautiful and I certainly do NOT understand how they manage to stay sane, without straight jackets, using that train wreck which the people at RIM call an user interface.

Possibly the main cause of this is within RIM itself, and its engineering driven pipeline. Anyone who has ever held a Blackberry and used it knows this. It looks shiny and nice on the surface. But if you dare not stop there, you’re in for a surprise. An uncomfortable one too. The second layer of menus and options is on the level windows was in 1992. And even then they knew better and used icons. Endless lists of options three, even four layers deep. Absolutely no sign of grouping or helping the user in any way. Did I mention its black and white? Drop down menus with on/off options? With that rather passive aggressive intro I should remind you, this post is not a Blackberry public hanging. It was just my first reaction tho the ascetic interface and lack of proper user experience.

Blackberry has its own app store now. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there aren’t many apps that challenge the status quo in design. This might sound cocky and arrogant but I’ve done my research and there is only a handful of apps that don’t give in to the dull, gray, “business” look. Those apps are the beacon of light for RIM, although they might not know it (RIM that is). I’m talking of course about Evernote, Opera mini and facebook.

Blackberry applications

So, what are the biggest issues when designing for Blackberry? There are many caveats from the multiple resolutions, navigations, input methods (keyboards/touchscreens) to hardware and operating system constraints. This kind of fragmentation can only be matched by android and Nokia’s Symbian. Toshl is an application designed for smart phones, problem is, Blackberry has many smart phones. Torch, Pearl, Bold, Curve and Storm 1 & 2. They have four different resolutions ranging from 320×240 up to 480×360 pixels. To top it off, we have to deal with 3 different operating systems (4.2, 5.0 and 6.0) coupled with touch only, touch + keyboard and the classic Blackberry slide button navigation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you are a bad person for using a Blackberry, what I’m saying is the people at RIM could do much, much better and I back it up with examples above.

Back to designing. Usually the best thing to do when developing for a device is to own one, and test prototypes of the software on it. Not being avid BB users, we hit a wall pretty soon. The famous BlackBerry navigation. All of a sudden EVERYTHING needed an over state. And I admit I did not see that one coming. Back to the drawing board it was for me. I studied the OS and used the phone for awhile. I got used to the slide button (or whatever they call it) and saw the beauty in it. Its an elegant way to traverse boatloads of options and data. The design on BlackBerry is nothing like the other platforms, it covers touch based devices as well as slide button ones. The flow of information and inputs was adjusted to better suit the vertical natured navigation. The biggest change in design is possibly the BlackBerry menu. We asked a good number of BlackBerry users what its for and learned that its THE option in BB applications. This means, when a user starts the application one of the first things he does is press the BB button to see the options he has.

Toshl Finance Expenses Screen on Blackberry

We took this and twisted it a bit. Where as the conventional way is to display all the options all the time, we decided to display options relevant to the content. And because we didn’t want to add more tabs we included the total sum in the BB menu. The basic way to navigate Toshl is pretty simple. You see, the sliding button allows only four directions, so we decided left and right should be used for selecting tabs, up and down should be used for selecting elements within a tab. And this goes for the whole application.

Toshl Finance Tags Screen on Blackberry

Adding an expense is what matters most when you use an application like Toshl. If thats cumbersome, you better pack your bags. That’s why we want the application to walk the user through the process. At the start you’ll be greeted by one of our mascots, telling you to push the BB button and select “add expense” to begin using the application. The first thing you need to get out of your short term memory is the number. You always forget the number, so thats what’s up first. Next its the tags. You can either enter new ones and press the slide button (which neatly adds a space and comma), select an existing tag from the autosuggest menu or go to the tag screen via the handy button on the right of the tag input field. And thats it! That’s all you need to add an expense. One of the challenges here was getting the relevant information into the 320×240 pixel window. But I think this constrain helped us to stay focused and keep it as simple as possible.

Toshl Finance New Expense Screen on Blackberry

Concluding, Toshl for BlackBerries turned out to be a great project with great results. It tested the way we prepare for different resolutions and multiple input methods, actually, it took them to a whole new level. And that’s always a good thing. I tried to stay as objective as possible, but you should know that I’m the one responsible for the Toshl design, and that this could be classified as a rant. Don’t mind me then, BlackBerry phones (and users for that matter) just seem to think differently. Aw, snap!

At this point we would also like to thank all of our volunteer BlackBerry testers. Kudos to all of you.

written by Matic Pelcl, Toshl lead designer.

Posted in Development

Toshl on Windows phone 7 – not yet

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Mantra of being available on as many platforms as possible is still our focus. We consider Windows phone 7 platform as one of the core ecosystems of mobile smart phone market and this obviously brings us to a promise: yes, we are already developing Toshl for WP7 and yes, we will deliver it very soon.

Toshl designers, usability experts and also programmers are extremely enthusiastic about the platform. Overall design concept of user interface of Windows phone 7 is unique, beautiful, easy to use… well, it’s just awesome, no matter what MS haters think. Development tools are also there, are very polished (as you might expect from MS) and overall programing is fairly fast and efficient, as long as you stay in the given course of supported functionality and UI creation. Of course, database support is not the best, but with some brainpower even this can be resolved.

With all this in mind, Windows phone 7 platform is a perfect fit for Toshl and it’s core values: ease of use, nice to look at, stable and efficient. We believe that once we are publicly available, Toshl will be the best overall expense tracker on WP7 platform and people will not only love it, but they will actually use it. And that is the biggest overall goal of Toshl and it’s creators. By using Toshl, people actually start realizing where the money is going and eventually save some of the hard earned dineros for a higher cause.

Even though Toshl WP7 is in development already, we are still accepting new ideas on what would make your lives with Toshl easier. If you have any, we would be thrilled to hear them.
Check out the sneak peek:

Toshl Finance on Windows Phone 7 preview

written by Andraž Logar, Toshl product owner.

Posted in Announcements, Development
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