Development Log – 08/24/2020
Today marks the first day of Phase II of the project. During Phase I, I basically set up the project repository, implemented basic functionalities. Phase II means to provide more important features to the app, and more investigation.
I've setup a board on Github (https://github.com/YuantongL/YToke/projects/1) to manage the tasks I want to do in the early next phase.
Basically on front-end, I want to investigate if we could eliminate human voice in the MV in real-time, also we want to introduce auto update and more.
In terms of back-end, a major task is migrate Invidious call to server side, and make APIs for update/fetch likes and any video tags. I should also put find alternatives for Invidious API to a higher priority since there are so much uncertainty around that in the future.
I'm very excited about Phase II, there are a lot of work to do though! I certainly hope people enjoys the app, if people can contribute to the repository will be the best!
Development Log – 08/22/2020
Found a bug (infinite scroll will break the second search) and fixed it in 5 minutes. Now when I fix a bug I have to create a new release, this is the time we should probably introduce in-app update (user with older releases will not get the patch).
Development Log – 08/19/2020
I absolutely did nothing today, because Apple blocks me from renewing my developer enrollment.
I did added some Unit-test for the data provider and some models though.
If I don't get approved tomorrow morning, I'm going to call Apple again.
Development Log – 08/18/2020
I give Apple Developer Support a phone call this morning, actually they care about my request a lot from what I can tell talk with him (except that they are slow responding email requests). He gave me a 7 day extension on my developer program but that doesn't fix my problem. He then realize that the system blocks me from extension because region was not updated. He send me the email to upload a file to prove I live in US (a bank statement works), I replied real quick and it's the wait again. Hopefully in a day or two they can respond then I could sign my code...
Development Log – 08/17/2020
I'm disappointed to Apple! I finished all the work but find out I need to renew Apple Developer Program to sign the code, if not, the app couldn't be opened by user. I'm not disappointed by this itself, but because my Apple Developer ID's region was China (I made a few apps to the AppStore when I was back in China), and somehow it is associated with my previous company's account. Now I couldn't renew it until I can change the address to a US one, and I can't do it right now!
They need government ID and takes a few days to replay to me. I don't want to wait for their reply, instead I want to make a call to them tomorrow and solve this ASAP.
I added multi-language support at late night, Chinese; Japanese and English are supported.
Development Log – Sun 08/16/2020
I'm making tweak to the app icon that the designer gave me. I basically made it conform to the MacOS app icon size, and also made a logo with text. The name of the app is finalized: YToke~
With all these, I'm able to paste app icon to Xcode, setup email and PayPal account, also could finish up writing the Github README. Now I'm super excited for the next week – make final preparation for publishing the app!
Development Log – 08/14/2020
I received the logo designed by random person found on Fiverr, it is not bad but still not met the level I'm envisioning. I'm going to take that and tweak a little bit by myself.
I did not do any actual work today, just want to give myself a break, so maybe next week I will finalize the logo design and upload to Github.
Development Blog – 08/13/2020
More Github README.
The designer did great job, although I still provided some feedback. I also spend time migrate this development logs to write.as (It was local on my Mac’s Pages).
Development Log – 08/12/2020
More unit tests.
I also spent some time to think about the name of the App. My initial thought is to have a simple name like “Youtube-KTV”, but I want it to be more unique and exciting. Then I think “KaraUke” is another good name because U is homophony of YouTube, but this word is hard to read and understand.
Finally “YT-oke” maybe the name, YT stands for Youtube and also my first name ^.^
I spent the whole afternoon designing app logo in Photoshop, then discovered that I'm that not good enough to draw a logo by myself.
Fiverr is a great website where you can find people specialized in different areas, I found a guy who will do the design work for $15, I paid and it will due in 2 days, let’s wait and see what he could give me.
I started to write Github README in late night, it is very exciting that I'm finally in the stage of publishing this project to public.
Development Log – 08/11/2020
Infinite scroll is added!
I also added some missing tiny pieces to the list, now I think it’s pretty much hit my first milestone – basic feature and UI.
Now I should start to think about unit testing, logo and the name…