In 2013, when I first brought CrewNerd to Android, I was a developer in the Windows Phone division of Microsoft. Because of that, I decided to develop the Android version using an approach that would make it possible to support both Android and Windows Phone with nearly identical code. At the time, the best option for that was a cross-platform tool called Xamarin.
Lots of things have changed since then and the decision to choose Xamarin has not aged well. When I learned that Microsoft would soon be forcing Xamarin developers to transition their apps to a new iteration of the platform, I decided it was time to consider a different approach.
After researching the alternatives, I decided to completely rewrite the app using the latest Android programming language and tools. The rewrite gave me the opportunity to revisit many decisions and give the app a much-needed facelift.
CrewNerd on Android now looks much more like the iPhone version. Navigation between pages is done using tabs at the bottom of the display, and the old “app menu” is now gone, replaced by new controls placed more closely to the context where they’re used.
Animations make screen transitions less jarring, and I reorganized the settings page to make it clearer and more consistent with the iPhone.
We’re in the final phase of testing now, and expect the new release to be available within the next couple of weeks. If you’d like to try the new version now, you can opt in as a tester and give it a try. (We recommend backing up your CrewNerd data first!) We hope you like the new interface but we’re anxious to hear what you think. Please let us know if you run into any problems. We’ll try to resolve them as quickly as we can!