John Spahr

Revisiting Wear OS Development 9/29/2020   I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I released a Wear OS app. However, I’m pleased to say that I am currently working on a new one! In this post, I’ll be talking about why I haven’t worked on a new Wear OS app for a really long time, and what my plan is for this new one. Why so long? To be honest, the reason I haven’t ever gotten super into Wear OS development is that I had previously been using Xamarin, which allowed me to write Android apps in C#. ​While Xamarin is really cool, it’s also not the most reliable. After installing updates for it, I will often have to do quite a bit of troubleshooting to get the app I am working on to build and/or get deployed to the emulator or physical device that I’m testing the app on. It’s not always this complicated to use Xamarin, but this sort of thing is quite irritating when I’m on a schedule, so I have been trying to move on from it over the last few months, especially when the app was able to buil...

LifeBoard v1.3 has been released! 9/26/2020   Hey, everyone! I am excited to announce that a new version of LifeBoard has been released! This update truly is quite important, as it adds a really handy new feature, and improves upon an existing one in a major way. So, without further ado, let’s dive in! Link a location! This has already become one of my top 10 favorite LifeBoard features. If you can see the image above, you’ll notice that it has a  “loc:”  (location) link. In the case of this sticky, when it is tapped, Google Maps opens and it gives you directions to the nearest Subway restaurant. Not only is linking a location really neat, but it’s also super handy! ​ Revamping highlight colors as categories. I’ll admit, the highlight color feature wasn’t terribly useful at launch. However, this update should fix that! You now have 5 preset categories that feature unique highlight colors. This makes it a lot easier to sort your stickies and keep track of them. Awesome! ​ ...

Meet the new Lynx Online Editor! 9/24/2020   Hey, everyone! I have some pretty exciting news: the new Nova editor is now available for online Lynx users! If you're interested, you can check it out  here . I hope you like it! I know this is a super short post, but to be honest, there's not much more to say. The new Nova editor can now run in your browser, and it's totally rad!

Small update for Lynx Desktop Nova! 9/21/2020   Hey, everyone! I just wanted to quickly mention that I have released a minor update for the new Lynx Desktop Nova editor. It’s pretty small, but it does make a couple of important improvements to the user experience. The portable version is now available for download, and an installer will hopefully be coming later today! You can visit the  Lynx Page   to learn more.

Introducing Lynx Desktop Nova! 9/20/2020   A few days ago, I revealed that I was working on a new desktop editor for Lynx. The Windows editor was really starting to show its age, and I thought that an updated version of Lynx could be a great idea for my first Electron app. So, that led me to create Lynx Desktop Nova! Lynx Desktop Nova for Windows What's new? This version of Lynx adds a ton of exciting new features, such as undo/redo buttons, the ability to hide the log, inserting images, and more! I already covered a lot of the new features in my  previous post , so you can read more about them there. Neat! Is it coming to macOS and Linux? I hope to release Nova for macOS and Linux eventually. However, I'm mainly going to be focusing on the Windows version for now, as I want to iron out some of the bugs before I start releasing it on more platforms. What about the Lynx Online Editor? I hope to replace the current online editor with the Nova editor pretty soon! Like I said befo...

Lynx Desktop - what to expect 9/17/2020   A few days ago, I revealed some more information about my first Electron app on Twitter. If you saw that Tweet and have been following the site for a while, you were probably able to guess what my upcoming Electron app is: a new version of Lynx. That’s right! I’ve been working hard on a new program, called Lynx Desktop, that might just be the beginning of a new era for the entire Lynx project! However, I’m getting ahead of myself. In this post, I’ll be talking about the history of Lynx and what to expect in the future. Some history... To fully understand Lynx Desktop, I think we need to go back to Lynx for Windows v1.0. Released a few months into 2019, Lynx for Windows was truly a turning point for Tectra. How come? Well, it was the first program that I truly got super invested in. There was a time when I was literally releasing a new major update every week! However, Lynx for Windows wasn’t perfect, and around the release of version 2.0, i...

Power Menu for Windows Mobile is here! 9/16/2020   In my last post, I mentioned that I had started working on a new Pocket PC app. Today, I am excited to announce that this app is now complete! Introducing Power Menu, the easiest way to restart, shut down, and hard reset your Pocket PC via software! ​ Power Menu has a nice and simple user interface. You can easily restart your device, right from the Start Menu! (via the "Quick Restart" shortcut) The screenshots above (taken on my iPAQ) should give you a pretty decent idea of how Power Menu works. It's pretty handy, as a lot of Pocket PCs don't have this functionality built into Windows Mobile! If you want to check Power Menu out, you can visit the  Windows Mobile page . I hope you find it helpful!

New Plans for September! 9/15/2020   I'll admit, September has been a bit of an odd month for Tectra. Due to my Universal Windows Platform plans not working out, my schedule is kind of messed up. Thankfully, I have some new plans for the remainder of September, and I'll be going over them in this post! ​ ​What to expect: ​ Electron app:  First and foremost, I hope to release my first Electron app very soon. I've made some serious progress, and I mainly need to polish things up at this point. Stay tuned for more updates!   Change in plans:  I had originally planned to start writing a new Palm OS app in CodeWarrior this month, but I'm probably going to have to put the project on hold for a bit.   New Windows Mobile app:  Instead, I have started working on a new Windows Mobile app! The reason for this is that I got a new Pocket PC a couple of days ago, and I really wanted to write a new app for it. However, because I am working on a new Windows Mobil...

Goodbye, Universal Windows Platform 9/12/2020   At the beginning of the month, I announced that I was working on a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app. However, as time went on, I started to realize that this just wasn’t going to work out. Today, I have finally made up my mind: I am going to scrap my first (and potentially only ever) UWP app. Why? So, what’s the problem with UWP anyway? Well, put simply, lack of documentation. With something like Windows Forms, there are a  ton  of resources out there, as it has been around for a really long time and has been quite successful. However, UWP isn’t nearly as old or successful as Windows Forms, so it doesn’t have nearly as much documentation. Furthermore, UWP is really sandboxed, which means that you have limited permission to access files. (You can’t just read/write to any file at any path) This is really annoying if your app needs to easily do this, as was true with my app. Finding ways to work with these limitations is a ...

A small update for one of my Palm OS apps! 9/9/2020   Hi, everyone! I know I haven't been super active lately, as I've been busy with my job (had some training last week) and making some major improvements to my other big project,  Pocket PC Planet . (I have been working on a post system for it in PHP) Additionally, I've had school to worry about, which has also taken up a decent bit of time. For these reasons, I haven't been able to work on a ton of Tectra stuff this month. Thankfully, if things go as planned, I'll hopefully be able to work on some Tectra projects over the next few days. However, in the meantime, I thought I'd release a small update for a project I hadn't worked on in a while. I decided that I wanted this project to be Owner Info, one of my Palm OS apps! As a result, I'm happy to report that Owner Info v1.2 has been completed, and it is  available for download ! This update makes a few UI improvements, adds some shortcuts, and fixes a f...

Plans for September 9/1/2020   Though it may not seem that way, August 2020 was a pretty big month for Tectra. I announced my new plans for the site, released my first paid app, introduced widgets for binoc, as well as a version of it for Windows Mobile devices, and released several minor bug fix updates. Overall, August has been a good month for Tectra. However, this leads me to the main topic of this post: My plans for September. ​ LifeBoard update:  One of the main things I hope to do this month is to release an update for LifeBoard. I have a few ideas for things to add, so I hope I can work on it soon. ComplimentMe:  I hope to make some improvements and refinements to ComplimentMe sometime this month. CodeWarrior and Palm OS:  Up until now, I have been using an IDE called NS Basic to create Palm OS apps. At first, I really liked it. Sure, it had its problems, but it seemed like a decent way to finally make Palm OS apps, something I had been interested in doing fo...