Developer's Notes for: xShortcut FREE

Developer's Notes

xShortcut, short for eXtreme Shortcut, is a handy android app that allows users to quickly create different types of homescreen shortcuts. -- for Android 2.1 and higher (supports App2SD).
Key Features:
1. Activity Shortcut Capture Mode: This feature allows you to directly select the active (running) activity as a homescreen shortcut (See NOTE 1). Here, an activity simply refers to a specific window/page within an app, e.g. any settings page within the System Settings (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Locale, TTS, APN, ...).

Basic Usage:
(a) Start Activity Capture Mode either by tapping the first item in the main function list or by enabling the setting "Permanent Capture"
(b) Move on to the target activity or window (e.g. the Locale settings page within the System Settings).
(c) Pull down the status bar and click [Grab Activity] for an attempt to capture the selected window as a shortcut.
(d) Edit, Test and Create the target shortcut.
(See more examples on the web site: http://sites.google.com/site/appschinyang/ )

2. Advanced Shortcut Editor: MAINLY intended for advanced users who might be familiar with the android Intent (i.e. component/action intent) and would like to create their own shortcuts.

3. Shortcut icon is allowed to be changed (before the shortcut is created).

4. More Supported Types: Application Shortcut, Direct Call Shortcut, Direct Message Shortcut, Direct Contact Shortcut, Direct Email Shortcut, Bookmark Shortcut, System Settings Shortcut (by directly selecting from a list -- especially helpful for Android3.0+ devices).

5. Auto-save all the created shortcuts data for later use: text format saved for FREE/LITE version and binary format (e.g. icon) saved for FULL version.

** You can get a FULL version of xShortcut on the Google Play Store. **

NOTE 1: Not all of the activities were originally designed to be launched by other applications/launchers. An activity shortcut only makes sense if the target activity is exported and not guarded by permissions. In xShortcut, a Test procedure will be automatically performed when creating shortcut.

NOTE 2: A *DEFAULT* icon size based on the device screen density is used to create homescreen shortcuts. You can try different sizes when the DEFAULT one is not applicable to your device (in Settings Window).

Known Issues:
# The Activity Capture Mode of xShortcut does not work when enabling "Don't keep activities" under [Settings][Developer options] (only for Android 4.0+).

# Few users reported that xShortcut running on some "custom ROMs" seems unable to create homescreen shortcuts. If this is the case, I have to say sorry because that is not an easy problem I can deal with for you.

# The System Settings program (since android 3.0) has been rewritten, so that the Activity Capture Mode (provided by xShortcut) does not work well for "system settings". One workaround is to manually edit the intent via the Advanced Shortcut Editor provided by xShortcut, or simply use the newly-added shortcut type "System Settings".

Developer: appschinyang ( Email: chinyang.x@gmail.com )

* If you want localization for your language and can help out, please email me. Thanks. *

DO NOT request features, report bugs, or ask for assistance in your review. I can't reply to them! Please e-mail me instead.


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