Brandsonic Apps blog

I found out on Tuesday that Packix, the repo I've been hosting Brandsonic Web mobile on since ModMyi/ModMy shut down in 2017, is shutting down too. A new repo called Havoc is its successor. I intended to move Brandsonic Web mobile there. I transferred it from Packix to Havoc. I followed all of their guidelines and submitted Brandsonic Web mobile for review and approval. This morning I woke up to an email saying that it was rejected because they are "not interested" in hosting it. I am extremely disappointed and I honestly was not expecting them to reject it. I was ready to announce that Brandsonic Web mobile had been moved to Havoc. This leaves me in an awkward position. As of now, I have nowhere to host Brandsonic Web mobile. Brandsonic Web mobile will still be downloadable from Packix indefinitely but I have nowhere to submit future versions. I will host it on my own if that's what I have to do but I chose repos like Packix so I wouldn't have to go through the h...

 This is a follow-up to this post I made recently on the future of the Brandsonic Apps website. I found out today that Webs has extended the shutdown date from March 31st to June 30th. This means that the Brandsonic Web portal and the Brandsonic Apps site on Webs will stay up longer than I originally expected. That being said, I will still not be updating the Brandsonic Apps site on Webs. The Google Sites site has been up for over a month now and it serves as the current Brandsonic Apps site. As I stated in the last post, I intended for the Google Sites site to be temporary. I have been working on a new site on and off since 2017. I plan to host this site on Github Pages when it is complete. The portal page is being hosted there now. I'm also planning a complete overhaul of the Brandsonic Web Portal. I made it back when my web development skills weren't as good as they are now. It will be more streamlined, with a focus on search, while still retaining most of the content it h...

I am releasing small updates for both Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS and Brandsonic Web for Mac. I have updated the URL for the default homepage to it's new location . This is in preparation for the Webs shutdown that will be happening very soon. There are no new features in this release. I will also be releasing a version of Brandsonic Web for Mac that already has the Big Sur icon. The icon is the only difference, the application is unchanged. I hope to have fixed the install issues that affected certain jailbreaks with Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS with this release as well. Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS 0.10.1 has been submitted to Packix and should be available soon. Brandsonic Web for iOS 0.10.1 will be available soon on the Google Sites site.

Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS 0.10 is now available on Cydia. This is the Swift rewrite on Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS. For more detailed information about this release, check out this blog post. There are a few know issues with this release. Certain websites will stretch the web view above and below the top and bottom of the screen. This makes it so you can't access the very top and bottom of a page. Not really sure what's causing this, but it only happens with certain sites. The other issue is the app will crash if you try to submit something with a space in it via auto-correct or copy and paste. I'll try to fix this for the next release. If you are using the Electra jailbreak, the app may not install correctly. It may not show up on the home screen after installing. This is because the command to make the app appear on the homescreen (uicache) works differently on this jailbreak. If you run into this issue, you will have to run uicache manually. The website has not be...

I recently found out that my long time web host, Webs (AKA Freewebs) will be shutting down on March 31st of this year. This will leave me without a website. I outgrew Webs a long time ago and I've been wanting to move to something different, but I haven't found anything else I really like. I am setting up a site on Google Sites that I intend to be temporary. With this site, I don't have the same page limits as I did on Webs. So I plan to have more apps on it than just Brandsonic Web. When the new site is ready I will announce it here and on Twitter. This blog will remain, it is not being affected by the Webs shutdown.  Google Sites doesn't resolve the issue of where to host the Brandsonic Web portal. Not sure what I am going to do about that. The portal is hardcoded as the default home page in all versions of Brandsonic Web except for the latest version of Brandsonic Web for Mac. This means that once Webs is shutdown, the portal will no longer be the home page. I don...

After working on it for over a year, the Swift rewrite of Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS is nearly ready for release. There are many reasons why I decided to do this rewrite. The original codebase of Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS is over 10 years old. It dated back to the iOS 4 and Xcode 3 days. It was becoming harder and harder to maintain. This was part of the reason for the infrequent updates. When I started Brandsonic Web, I wasn't as skilled with coding as I am now. While I am no expert now, I know a lot more than I did when I started Brandsonic Web 10 years ago. My lack of skill lead to a lot of poor programming practices with also made the codebase harder to maintain. The old version of Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS is based on the old UIWebView API, which was deprecated by Apple a number of years ago. It was replaced by a new API, WKWebView. This was the biggest reason for the rewrite. I attempted to transition the current version of Brandsonic Web mobile for iOS to WKWebVie...