BBC News - a new Widget for Android

July 3, 2009 in Handheld applications | 25 comments

nw_detailBBC News is a widget for Android for that shows you the latest news headlines in a compact 2 x 1 widget on the Android home screen. Clicking on the widget takes you to a full list of headlines and more story details.

In the headline view, clicking on a headline will in turn take you to the mobile version of the BBC News page on your Android browser.

Feed selection

Each widget can be customised to show content from any of the BBC’s feeds. The default is the Most Popular feed, but users can choose others such as Sports headlines, Entertainment or Technology news.


Android users outside the UK will see the international versions of feeds and stories. UK users will see the local version by default, although any user can switch between UK and international versions in the Preferences.


You can have multiple widgets on your home screen. They will not normally show the same story, so if you set up three widgets from the same feed you will have the first, second and third headlines shown, in the order the widgets were added.


This isn’t a general purpose feed reader. It is customised to the style of the excellent BBC News feeds to give the best experience. I saw some RSS widgets but they try to include too much text on the widget, and the result is hard to read. Also they did not use the thumbnails that accompany each story, losing the visual appeal that they add.

Download

Download BBC News from the Android market now.

Credits

This program is free software under the Apache license. Supported by BBC Backstage.

I hope you enjoy BBC News. As always, leave bugs and requests here. Even if you just enjoyed the app and would like to let me know. I read all comments but I have only around an hour a day for development so I usually can’t fulfil requests. I normally act when several people start asking for the same thing.


  1. Mark’s avatar

    Mark on November 4, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    One of my favourite apps for Android. I would love either a slightly larger version of the widget or even a customisable size?

  2. ian milliken’s avatar

    ian milliken on November 26, 2009 at 10:21 am

    Jim Sorry to bother you but i cannot get the widget to open as a 2×1 on the home page of my HTC hero. I just get the standard BBC News 1×1 widget. Can you help. Thanks

  3. jimblackler’s avatar

    jimblackler on November 26, 2009 at 10:42 am

    Are you 100% sure that the widgets you are seeing are from my BBC News app? There are other similarly-named apps in the market. There’s only a 2 x 1 widget from my app.

  4. ian milliken’s avatar

    ian milliken on November 26, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    jim on the about page v 1.5.4 written by you supported by backstage.bbc etc?!

  6. Gareth’s avatar

    Gareth on December 21, 2009 at 8:09 pm

    Superb app (I don’t use the widget). Makes browsing the headlines far easier. My only complaint is that the app loads itself up in the background even if the widget is off. If this could be changed in the update I would give this app 5/5, at the moment I only give it 4/5.

  7. Graziano’s avatar

    Graziano on December 26, 2009 at 10:53 pm

    Hi and thanks for the beautiful app.

    You say this program is free software released under the Apache 2.0 license.

    Could you please link this sentence to the place where the source code is hosted?

    Where is it?

    Thanks.

  8. Joe’s avatar

    Joe on February 8, 2010 at 10:47 pm

    Jim, I love the app - it dominates my second screen on my HTC Hero. One suggestion is to link through to the mobile detail page rather than the ‘low’ version URL returned in the RSS feed source from the BBC. For example,

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/mobile/football/teams/c/chelsea/8505270.stm

    rather than

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/low/football/teams/c/chelsea/8505270.stm

    The problem with the ‘low’ version detail page is that it has all of the site nav dominating the start of the article on Android. Not sure if the BBC provide a mobile RSS feed with mobile-friendly detail URLs or if you would need to parse and transform the URLs yourself.

    This would make this a killer app for me.

    Well done,
    Joe

  9. jimblackler’s avatar

    jimblackler on February 8, 2010 at 11:05 pm

    Hi Joe

    I am working on a major new version of BBC News, I address this very issue by stripping out the heading with JavaScript. This is possible because the new version has its own browser rather than using the Android browser.

    I haven’t released it yet because there are a handful of known bugs, although these are all in the new features rather than the existing features. Please get in touch on jimblackler@gmail.com if you would like to test it for me. That goes for anyone else reading this who is interested. It’s a big new release because it has its own cache for offline access.

    You are spot on about the problem of getting the mobile versions of the articles rather than the ‘low’ versions. The nice thing about the ‘low’ versions is you can just do a search and replace on the URLs of the ‘high’ versions to convert them over. It doesn’t seem to be that straightforward for the mobile versions.

    Jim

  10. Marky’s avatar

    Marky on March 24, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    Mate awesome app, if I could request one option for a future release and that is, when I click on a breaking new story in my notifications (HTC Hero) that the link could take me to the news article on your app?

    Other than that awesome, and an interesting read that interview of yours

    Mark

  11. simon’s avatar

    simon on April 26, 2010 at 11:52 am

    I have had to reset my hero - the news widget used to show a picture but now it doesnt - can you help - it also takes you to the bbc page not a mobile version

  13. Neil’s avatar

    Neil on May 6, 2010 at 2:00 pm

    Can the widget be customizable by the user to display more than 1 headline? Also, is it possible to add more than one BBC feed, so you can see say the UK News as well as Health or Technology at the same time?

    Only just installed it, but it looks great so far.

    Thanks

  14. Justin F’s avatar

    Justin F on May 18, 2010 at 10:37 am

    Hi there,

    Great program, but why does it always continue to run in the background? My Hero isn’t very generous with its RAM. So I was looking to leave the program as an on demand new reader.

    Thanks,

    Justin

  15. Justin F’s avatar

    Justin F on May 18, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    Its ok. I solved it somewhat by using Auto Memory Manager, and finding the process and setting the priority to low.

    Thanks

  17. Alfredo’s avatar

    Alfredo on May 26, 2010 at 2:05 am

    This app is amazing. It is obvious that you put a lot of thought into it. Unfortunately, my widget is stuck on “Headline will be available later” and I can’t figure out why. I initially thought it was due to custom launchers (HelixLauncher, LaunchPro) that I was trying out. But I uninstalled those, reinstalled the BBC News app, and restarted my phone, and the widget is still stuck. The news articles update when opening the app, and breaking news items show up in the status bar. It was working fine for months until last night and it’s driving me nuts. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Hopefully I don’t have to try a hard reset. Moto Droid.

  18. Alfredo’s avatar

    Alfredo on May 26, 2010 at 4:27 am

    I confirmed this must be an issue with the widget. My wife, who has an HTC Incredible, is also stuck with “Headline will be available later” but the app itself works when opened. Hopefully you can fix it soon. Thanks.

  19. Jeff’s avatar

    Jeff on May 26, 2010 at 11:43 am

    The widget has stopped showing headlines since I updated to 2.1. If I tap on it I can read the stories as normal, but the widget only says “Headline available later”

  20. Julian’s avatar

    Julian on May 26, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    Excellent news app. Unfortunately today the feed seems to have broken it as the widget is not displaying any headlines.

  21. jimblackler’s avatar

    jimblackler on May 26, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    Hi all, the default (Most Popular) feed is broken currently due to a mistake at the BBC. I have contacted them, in the mean time if you set your widget to another feed (make a new widget and select Preferences->Change widget feed) this will work around the problem.

  22. jimblackler’s avatar

    jimblackler on May 26, 2010 at 4:00 pm

    NB. if you would like to help test a new version which includes a reworked update mechanism (more battery-efficient), and also has a beta feature of alternative news feeds (the app will eventually be renamed BBC News Plus) please email me jimblackler@gmail.com

    As an added incentive I might put in a workaround for this current widget update problem.

  23. Damian’s avatar

    Damian on June 9, 2010 at 8:19 am

    Hi there, I have recently purchased a HTC desire from t-mobile. I have enjoyed the bbc news feed. (2 home screens to the right). However it now will not update. I touch the update bit at the bottom of the screen and it says updating but it never does. It did update the day after I got my phone(6th June 13:55). Since then it will not update no matter which internet connection I am on. Any ideas would be very much appreciated. Many thanks in advance, Damian.

  25. Mick George’s avatar

    Mick George on August 27, 2010 at 4:37 pm

    Hi Jim,

    Have been using the app for a while now, have to say it’s the best of the lot, especially with the alternative feeds. Unfortunately it won’t update via wireless anymore - fails with a “No internet connection is currently available”. Only happens when on wireless, works fine on data. All other similar apps work ok on wireless. Can’t remember exactly when it stopped working though… Help!

    Kind regards,

    Mick