I noticed that since the lastest public version (I don’t use daily builds) my apps have a black screen on Kindle Fire, but beside that they work very normally (ie: play sounds, music, I can touch stuff, and so on…)
Why is that?
Without more details about your app, it will be very hard to answer that. There were quite a few fixes between public builds including breaking changes in Storyboard, Networking and Widgets. My advice would be to get the Android Debug Bridge tools installed and use “adb logcat” from a terminal window with your Kindle Fire tethered and see what errors you’re getting.
I am not getting errors, it only happens with Kindle, and happen with ALL apps.
I am suspecting it is legacy code that you left there when you charged more to allow Kindle, I know how Kindle apks work, although I use Corona, I know how to make native Android apps, and native Kindle Fire apps, and I know that when you used to charge more to allow Kindle apk, you did it by blanking the screen on software side when you compiled a non-Kindle apk.
Please, fix this, it is very urgent and serious, I am publishing to about 7 stores already, and I cannot keep running after your code doing wonky stuff like this, specially because you also do not allow script-able builds.
This is one of the major reasons we tried to switch out of Corona once, and it still is a reason I am still checking other SDKs, as soon someone offer better support and community than Corona, we will switch out, unless this sort of behavior stop (stopping blanking my screen on Kindle Fire would be a great start).
The “black screen” was never something we designed into the Kindle (or Nook) for non-subscribers. Before we opened up the SDK, you couldn’t build a Kindle or Nook app with an Indie account.
Can you try running some of the sample apps and see if they run on the device. I would also suggest downloading and running the latest Daily Build to see if that changes anything.
Which Kindle Fire are you using?
The public build has been out for a while and I haven’t seen any other users reporting this problem.
Yes, “indie” could not make Kindle build, because when you put your indie Android APK on Kindle, it blanked the screen.
I am a Pro subscriber (the forums do not support several people of the same company having everyone Pro tag).
In old versions, if you made a build for “Android” and gave the APK for kindle, it blanked the screen.
If you made a APK for kindle, it worked fine everywhere.
Clearly, this was made to invent a way to “block” non-Pro people from making Kindle builds, because the Kindle itself do not block anything, all APKs should be compatible with Kindle unless they use some google specific APIs (that we never use here).
I just tested, and see that this behavior is still there, when I make my app with the store selected to “Amazon” it works on Kindle. When I put -none- in the store, it blanks the screen. It is obvious that Corona does this on purpose, and is not a bug or a incompability issue.
In fact, ANY person here, Corona staff or user can test, now that the free edition allow Kindle builds, even free users can see this behavior.
Fix it.
Stop blanking my screen because of the store settings, this is silly, specially when you do not charge anymore for Kindle, and specially because now the option is named “store”, not “device”, Kindle people might install other stores on their Kindles, and people might be using Amazon store on non-Kindle device, thus conflating the two is very wrong.
“I just tested, and see that this behavior is still there, when I make my app with the store selected to “Amazon” it works on Kindle.”
This is different from what you first reported. So building for Kindle, works on Kindle. So there is no problem there. If you build for Android (or none) and try to run it on Amazon it will give you a message box saying it’s not compatible. Yes, there is a black screen behind the message box but that’s the background for the message box.
If you would just run the latest Daily Build, you will find that we now allow Android, Nook, Samsung, and None builds to work on Kindle. That was a changed we made in a recent daily build.
Stop doing it.
There is no reason to do that anymore. The app DO WORK fine, only you blank the screen, on purpose, because I selected another “store” option.
What if I want to run on a Kindle and NOT on Amazon store?
Mind you, we currently support on Kidoteca several stores, including carrier stores, your misfeature just damages my business for no good reason (maybe it was a good reason when you charged more to make Kindle apps, but you don’t charge more anymore, and you already changed your build language from “Kindle” to Amazon Store, and they are NOT the same thing).
Orspeeder, they did stop doing that, but you will have to break your own rule and use the current daily build, or wait for the next public build. Personally I have shipped products using daily builds without problems but that’s your choice.
If that is the case, please someone point to the changelog of the build that changed this (so I can read other changelogs and see what daily build is safe enough)
Without more details about your app, it will be very hard to answer that. There were quite a few fixes between public builds including breaking changes in Storyboard, Networking and Widgets. My advice would be to get the Android Debug Bridge tools installed and use “adb logcat” from a terminal window with your Kindle Fire tethered and see what errors you’re getting.
I am not getting errors, it only happens with Kindle, and happen with ALL apps.
I am suspecting it is legacy code that you left there when you charged more to allow Kindle, I know how Kindle apks work, although I use Corona, I know how to make native Android apps, and native Kindle Fire apps, and I know that when you used to charge more to allow Kindle apk, you did it by blanking the screen on software side when you compiled a non-Kindle apk.
Please, fix this, it is very urgent and serious, I am publishing to about 7 stores already, and I cannot keep running after your code doing wonky stuff like this, specially because you also do not allow script-able builds.
This is one of the major reasons we tried to switch out of Corona once, and it still is a reason I am still checking other SDKs, as soon someone offer better support and community than Corona, we will switch out, unless this sort of behavior stop (stopping blanking my screen on Kindle Fire would be a great start).
The “black screen” was never something we designed into the Kindle (or Nook) for non-subscribers. Before we opened up the SDK, you couldn’t build a Kindle or Nook app with an Indie account.
Can you try running some of the sample apps and see if they run on the device. I would also suggest downloading and running the latest Daily Build to see if that changes anything.
Which Kindle Fire are you using?
The public build has been out for a while and I haven’t seen any other users reporting this problem.
Yes, “indie” could not make Kindle build, because when you put your indie Android APK on Kindle, it blanked the screen.
I am a Pro subscriber (the forums do not support several people of the same company having everyone Pro tag).
In old versions, if you made a build for “Android” and gave the APK for kindle, it blanked the screen.
If you made a APK for kindle, it worked fine everywhere.
Clearly, this was made to invent a way to “block” non-Pro people from making Kindle builds, because the Kindle itself do not block anything, all APKs should be compatible with Kindle unless they use some google specific APIs (that we never use here).
I just tested, and see that this behavior is still there, when I make my app with the store selected to “Amazon” it works on Kindle. When I put -none- in the store, it blanks the screen. It is obvious that Corona does this on purpose, and is not a bug or a incompability issue.
In fact, ANY person here, Corona staff or user can test, now that the free edition allow Kindle builds, even free users can see this behavior.
Fix it.
Stop blanking my screen because of the store settings, this is silly, specially when you do not charge anymore for Kindle, and specially because now the option is named “store”, not “device”, Kindle people might install other stores on their Kindles, and people might be using Amazon store on non-Kindle device, thus conflating the two is very wrong.
“I just tested, and see that this behavior is still there, when I make my app with the store selected to “Amazon” it works on Kindle.”
This is different from what you first reported. So building for Kindle, works on Kindle. So there is no problem there. If you build for Android (or none) and try to run it on Amazon it will give you a message box saying it’s not compatible. Yes, there is a black screen behind the message box but that’s the background for the message box.
If you would just run the latest Daily Build, you will find that we now allow Android, Nook, Samsung, and None builds to work on Kindle. That was a changed we made in a recent daily build.
Stop doing it.
There is no reason to do that anymore. The app DO WORK fine, only you blank the screen, on purpose, because I selected another “store” option.
What if I want to run on a Kindle and NOT on Amazon store?
Mind you, we currently support on Kidoteca several stores, including carrier stores, your misfeature just damages my business for no good reason (maybe it was a good reason when you charged more to make Kindle apps, but you don’t charge more anymore, and you already changed your build language from “Kindle” to Amazon Store, and they are NOT the same thing).
Orspeeder, they did stop doing that, but you will have to break your own rule and use the current daily build, or wait for the next public build. Personally I have shipped products using daily builds without problems but that’s your choice.
If that is the case, please someone point to the changelog of the build that changed this (so I can read other changelogs and see what daily build is safe enough)