Spit, Polish and More to Come

Today Apple has approved version 1.0.5 of Flexile.  This version contains a whole bunch of user interface improvements, bug fixes and a few new features.  ​Just about everything in this release is based on the feedback I’ve gotten from users and it contains a lot of improvements designed to make Flexile easier to use and a lot more intuitive.  It also represents a very good lesson I learned: Gestures are not king.  Previous versions of Flexile relied on gestures to perform a lot of functions in Flexile.  Those gestures are still there (and they’re great to use) but I’ve exposed all the functionality now with buttons.  There are, of course, quite a few more improvements to this update which you can read about here: ​Release Notes.

Going Forward

There are still quite a few features missing in Flexile, though, so I’m working hard now to get those features worked in.  Since Flexile has stabilized out a bit, I can afford to begin working on one feature at a time.  This should produce shorter release cycles, where updates correspond to at most only a couple of updates.  

Importing

Probably the feature I’ve gotten the most requests for is for Importing files.  This is good, very good.  It means (or I hope it means) people are wanting to use Flexile even more than they are now.  So I have been putting my whole focus now into developing that feature.  I’ve gotten a lot of the groundwork for it covered now.  I’m hoping to begin testing it in the next week or so and from there I’ll submit another update, assuming all goes well.

Upcoming Features

Aside from Importing, I will of course work on “Exporting”.  But exporting isn’t really as requested, so there may be a few other features that make their way in before I get “Exporting” done.  Right now these are the features I intend on working on (after Import) in the immediate future…in no particular order:

Link Field Type - This one is really important. It allows you to reference (or display) data from a Linked record based on a criteria (first, last, etc). ​

Concatenate Fields

Running Balance - Increasingly I’m finding this would be useful

Password Protection - At the very least on the “App” level, but ideally I would like to also have “Table” access level password (pin) protection.​

​Totals: At the bottom of a record list you can pull up a view that display aggregates of the table (totals, min, max, avg).

Column Headers - I am aware that the current system has the potential to waste a lot of space with Field labels in a list view. I have an idea to add an option to place all labels in a section header instead of with the field itself (similar to a column header). They would, of course, correspond to each respective field position, so the header would be the same height as each row, but it would allow you to easily create data-dense displays.

Website

I’ve update some of the website to reflect the new changes in Flexile, but mostly I’m leaving the website alone right now.  It’s sad, I know.  There’s a lot I need to do with the website, especially in the Support section, but for now I think it’s best for me to keep working on the features I’m getting repeated requests for.  ​Flexile still has a bit of a way to go before it’s ready for “prime-time” and I want to make sure most of my attention goes toward making that happen.  However, I will continue to work on updating the website here and there and hopefully get it caught up.

​I really appreciate the support I’ve gotten so far from my users and especially all the beta testers that have, for some unexplainable reason, put in hours testing my app.  Thank you… Flexile quite literally wouldn’t be where it is without all of you.