Labr's open beta has received its first (huge!) update, getting us a whole lot closer to a public release.

Three weeks after the initial beta on Android, v0.2.1 is now available on both Android and the web. It's been a whirlwind of development! I'm excited to share the details:

v0.2.1 Release Notes

All platforms

  • Added support for larger screens
    To bring Labr to the web, the layout of its user interface needed to adapt dynamically to larger screens and changing window sizes (e.g., a user resizing their browser window). These changes also naturally improve support for larger Android devices, such as tablets and ChromeOS laptops.
  • Added DropBox integration (invite-only for now)
    DropBox integration is in a development status (and may stay that way until public release), which means it's invite-only. If you'd like to use it, send me an email at [email protected] with the email address you'd like invited.
  • Removed pCloud integration (for now)
    pCloud will be back, but not until after their developer backend is restored; It's down for necessary maintenance which prevents me from making changes required for this update.
  • Added chart thumbnails
  • Added settings option to erase your data
  • Added confirmation dialogs to dangerous actions (i.e., deleting a chart)
  • Replaced Angular CDK/Material libraries with custom UI components
    You may notice Labr's user interface is more polished and consistent! Removing the Angular Material library was an enormous task, but the benefits go beyond the app's appearance: The app's DOM is now roughly half as complex, the app's build size has been reduced by several megabytes, and my components have a more efficient runtime because they lack the bloat of 'options' that Angular Material includes. All of these benefits make for a smaller, faster Labr.
  • Updated to Angular 17
  • Many bug fixes and smaller improvements

Android

  • Replaced Mozilla Gecko with Chromium-based Webkit
    Mozilla's Gecko is the engine that powers the Firefox browser. Its support for exchanging data across the native/JavaScript barrier is not as good as Android's Webkit, which made moving to Webkit a no-brainer. Even worse, because it's not natively present on Android devices, including Gecko dramatically increased the app's size: Removing it reduced the initial build artifact from 155 MB to 10 MB!
  • Updated Android libraries
  • Optimized app download size
    Removing Mozilla's Gecko (see above) already put Labr ahead of its peers, but further optimizations allowed me to get the size of the build artifact down to an incredible 890 KB. For comparison, DropBox's Android SDK (which Labr no longer uses) is 9 MB by itself. A typical 4K PNG image is 8-21 MB!

That's all for now. Enjoy the beta! Much more is coming, so keep an eye out. Planned development for the next update (in no particular order) includes re-integrating pCloud, adding an iOS version of the app, adding new features, and polishing/bug-fixing/testing in preparation for public release.

Stay healthy!