EditorActivity

Overview

The editor activity is the main interface for creating and editing an ad. It provides an option to tag an ad with a company, add a logo, add text, add a filter, and post the ad to the website.

It is laid out with the current ad at the top, and available editing options below.

Users are first taken to this page after selecting a picture that they would like to use. They are first asked to tag the picture with the company, and after tagging they are presented with additional editing options.

Users can go back and change what tag is applied, and editing options are then hidden until the tag is finalized.

Users exit the screen by canceling to the main menu and starting over, or by posting the ad to the website. On a successful post they are returned to the main menu.

Features

All changes made to the ad are stored in the ad manager class. A new ad manager is created on the start of every new ad, and is stored in the application context so that it can be accessed from any activity.

When the user first comes to the editor activity, they will be instructed to tag the company that they are creating the ad for. No other options will be shown until the tag is set. When returning to the editor activity from other editing activities, any previously set tag will be recalled from the ad manager and reapplied.

The text entry field for tagging a company, uses an auto complete text view that provides suggestions for the company name based on what has already been entered. The suggestions are taken from the list of available companies that is synced with the server on login. This is done through the CompanyList class.

A Start Over button allows the user to return to the main menu at any time without saving the current ad.

Once the company tag has been set, the following editing options are shown:

1. Add a filter. A spinner drop-down menu shows all available filters that can be applied to the ad. Upon selecting a filter the change is made immediately. The original picture is saved and can be reverted to buy selecting none in the spinner.
2. Add logo. This button launches the logo activity, which allows the user to add a logo to the ad.
3. Add text. This button launches the text activity, which allows the user to add text to the ad.
4. Post ad. This button attempts to post the current ad to the website using the user's session details. On success the user is taken to the main menu where a success message is shown. On failure, a toast is raised to acknowledge that something went wrong, but nothing else is changed.

Bugs

1. We allow the user to enter nothing.

Planned Features

1. Implement gesture recognition for interacting with the current picture.
2. Provide undo methods to revert to previous states.
3. Extend the filter application to its own activity and add more available filters.
4. Allow the user to save the ad to file without posting it.
5. Add more editing tools such as cropping and color manipulation