Version 1.7 Released!

Version 1.7 of Handicap: Golf Tracker is now available on the android market.  The major change with this version of the application has to do with using the Play Round feature.  Now if you have started to keeping track of a round using the Play Round screens, your round will be saved if you exit the app.  Once returning to the app and selecting Play Round you will be prompted to continue the round or start over.  You can also now go to the Rounds screen and see the abandoned round.  You will be able to enter your complete rounds stats there if you’d like.

I made a small UI change to all of the screens in the application.  I added a title bar to each screen that should help distinguish each screen a little better. This space will host some of the ads when in landscape perspective.

The other change has been to the ads shown in the free version of the app.  I have removed the ads from the Add Round and Add Course screens to make entering courses and rounds easier.  I have also adjusted where ads are shown when the phone is in landscape.  This should hopefully utilize screen space better.

Please feel free to contact me about any additional functionality you’d like to see in the applications.  The changes above have come from user reviews and emails I have received from consumers of my application.

Filtering Rounds

As people start to play more rounds it can be a little more difficult to find specific rounds.  In an effort to resolve this I have added two new menu options about filtering the Rounds list screen.

Now when viewing an individual course you can now open the menu and go to a new round list screen with just rounds played at that course.  I thought this might be helpful to see how you’ve played a course in the past.  You can now see how you are trending at that course.

The second menu change is to the Rounds list screen.  Now if you press the menu button you will have the option of filtering the courses.  This menu button will navigate you to a new screen where you can choose to filter by course, year and/or holes.  Make you choices then click Apply and you’ll be navigated to a filtered rounds list screen.   To remove the filter just navigate to the Filter screen again and click clear.

I am using these new features to see how I’m going in my 9 hole league and to see the rounds I entered last year.  Hopefully this will be beneficial for those of you that play a ton of golf each year.  If you would like to have some more filtering options please drop me an email.

Backup & Restore

In a recent update to Handicap: Golf Tracker the ability to backup and restore your data was made available.  From the main screen you can now press the Menu button on your phone and the options to Backup and Restore are available.  This feature will backup your stats, courses and rounds to your SD card.  

Once you have backed up your data you can easily move it to another phone or your home computer for safe keeping.  To restore the data just make sure you copy the handicap folder with the export.xml onto your SD card.  Then after starting Handicap: Golf Tracker press the Menu button and choose to restore.  This will delete all current data and replace it with the data from the SD card.

I hope this feature will make it easier for people to move from phone to phone.  It will also make it easier for those that downloaded the free app to migrate over to the paid app.  As I’ve said before there will be advantages to owning the paid version in the future.  This feature should help those planning on making the switch.

New version of Handicap: Golf Tracker Lite

Voghan Apps is proud to announce that Handicap: Golf Tracker Lite has released version 1.3 to the Android market.  The new version has some minor usability changes in regards to ad placement and now the application has been localized to French.  

I am currently working on some major changes to Handicap: Golf Tracker which I hope to release  before the holidays.  The new features will include a totally remodeled Play Round section to the app and a export/import feature to migrate your data easily from phone to phone or from the free app to the paid app.

Productive Week

It’s been a very productive couple days for me. In the past couple days I’ve pushed out two changes to Handicap and release an ad supported version. I have a list of features I want to roll out for everyone but I ended up working on ideas that came up.

The first was to simply localize my application for English and Italian. I really have no reason to do this because I’m not seeing an traffic from Italian android users but it was a nice learning activity for myself.

I also added the ability to share your rounds or handicap with others. Now you can share your round via twitter with your friends. This should be a fun feature allowing people to directly brag about their golf skills.

I had been working on an ad supported version of Handicap for a while now. Originally it was going to be the slimmed down version of the app but for the initial release it’s identical except for the ads. I’m not sure how I will be releasing features but I’ll probably make it worth while to have a paid version of the app.

Localization

I haven't done much in my app lately so I decided to localize the app and rename it to Handicap: Golf Tracker. I was going to go with Golf Tracks but it was taken.  It's crazy to see all the different golf apps in the market.  When I first started developing mine there were a handful but now the space is packed.

Screens shots:

Dashboard

At last year's Google IO, a fair amount of attention was given to the Android UI.  I did not attend but there were a couple presentations made available online.  The schedule app Google made for the presentation was an example of the UI concepts they want to promote. One of the key features was the main home screen.  They referred to it as the dashboard plus gave a couple examples of it in use today: Twitter for Android and Facebook for Android.  I have recently gotten a hold of the source code and implemented a similar dashboard for Handicap.  Below is a preview.

Feedback

So far I'm looking to narrow down the changes I make in the next minor update to Handicap.  I've started designing the changes for tracking your scrambling and sand saves in a round.  I may also add the ability to track penalties for a round.  

I am currently developing the ability to search rounds and courses.  This is kind of an big change in the code but worth the work.  I think as people start adding more rounds it'll be easier look at past performances via search.  I'm not ready to implement search to create new courses.  The cost out weights the benefits right now.

I'm curious if people like the grass background. I've been thinking about applying themes to the app to allow people to change the background.  Maybe a solid color scheme would look better.

Upcoming Features

Now that version 1.1 has been released I'm currently looking for new features to add to by Handicap application.  I'd love to get some requests from my users so see what they would like to see improved or added to the app.  I did get some suggestions about looking up course data and having the ability to post scores to GHIN.  I am looking into possibly licensing the GHIN software but I'm just researching.  I have not had much luck finding a way to load all the different courses.  We'll see what happens.

I'm working on added a next and previous button to the Hole detail screen.  This way as you play you can switch easily from hole to hole without going to the scorecard screen.  Should be up Thursday or Friday depending on how testing goes.

Handicap Help

How to add a Course
Inside the application you need to click the menu button on your phone. You should see two options: Add Round or Add Course.  Select Add Course.  This will show you a new screen with text input fields.  You should fill in the name, tee box, slope, rating and holes if you want the app to track your handicap.  These fields can be filled out be the data you would find on a score card.  Click the Save button to save the course.

How to add a Round
Inside the application you need to click the menu button on your phone. You should see two options: Add Round or Add Course.  Select Add Round.  This will show a screen with multiple spinner drop downs.  Select a course, score and holes played for handicap tracking.  You can also enter the number of fairways, greens and putts for additional stat tracking.

Rounds Tab
This screen will display the golfer's name, handicap and a list of rounds ordered by most recently entered.  You can click on an individual row to edit the round or delete the round.

Course Tab
This screen will display the list of courses you have entered in the app.  The courses are listed in alphabetical order.  You can click on an individual course to edit the data or delete the course.  If you delete a course you will also delete all rounds at that course.

Handicap Tab
This screen allows you to edit the golfer's name and view the golfers stats.  You can see the 18 hole and 9 hole handicap for the golfer.  This screen also shows your average score, fairways hit, green in regulation and putts for 18 holes.

Play Round
This screen allows you to enter a rounds data one hole at a time.You can pick the course from the spinner and then click on each hole to enter your score, putts, hit the green or hit the fairway.  This screen will keep a running tally of your stats at the top of the screen and will not save the round until you click the Post button.

Why is my handicap 0?
This app uses the USGA formula for handicap tracking.  To get a valid handicap you need to have five rounds posted.  You will also see a 0 if your course is missing the rating, slope or holes.

Why is my handicap 95.9?
When you setup your course you did not provide a slope or a rating.  You need to provide this data to get a valid handicap.

How to get a Handicap(N)
This is a nine hole handicap.  You need to setup the course as a nine hole course and use the rate and slope from the USGA course database.

Don't see a 9 hole handicap or Play Round
You are using the free version of Handicap.  These features are only available for those who bought the full version of the application.

I've been working on a handful of bug fixes for Handicap.  It's interesting to see what happens once someone else starts using the app.  I've created a few modifications to help bullet proof the UI and fixed some bugs associated to the Play Round screen.  I'll post another article with the list of bug fixes.

It's official!  I launched Handicap for the Android market place and have already seen a few customers purchase the app.  So far I have been surprised to see exactly how easy it has been to launch an app on Android.  I have also seen my first error report.  I didn't negative test the Add Course screen enough and have a couple fixes for not entering any data and clicking save.  

Here are some screen shots of Handicap.  The app allows you to add courses, add rounds, track stats and calculate your handicap.

Welcome to the dedicated development site for The Voghan applications.  I am currently preparing to launch my first application, Handicap, that will allow you to track your golf rounds and statistics on your phone. I plan to post screen shots and instructions on how the application works in the upcoming days.