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1.1.0: Bring FOSSWarn to a stable state again.

It has been a journey since the release of version 1.0.0. Many things were not working as expected, so version 1.0.1 focused on fixing some bugs. But there were still many remaining. User complained about the removal of features present in version < 1.0.0, and the entire push notification system proved unreliable. So this release focuses on bringing FOSSWarn back on track.

What's new or changed in version 1.1.0 compared to 1.0.1?

  • Over 150 commits just with bug fixes.
  • A new feature to get alerts for the current location
  • Implement an alert filtering based on the alert categories
  • Implement an alternative to push notifications
  • Some small UI improvements
  • A brand-new documentation hosted on docs.fosswarn.org

Bug fixes

This turned out to be a bigger thing than expected. FOSSWarn was full of both minor and major bugs. Some things were known issues, and I was lacking the time to finally fix them. Other things were noticeable while using the app, but I did not know where this was coming from, and some aspects were just working, but could have failed at some point in the future. People who are interested in all the improvements take a look at the commit messages. There are still some known issues remaining that need to be addressed in the future, but hopefully, I caught the most important ones now. Let's see.

Alerts for current location

A feature that was on my own wishlist since starting to work on the FOSS Public Alert Server was getting alerts automatically for your current location. You can now enable this optional feature in the settings, and FOSSWarn will subscribe to your current location, and you will get alerts at this location. FOSSWarn currently tries to update the location every 1.5h. This is still an experimental feature, so expect it not to be perfect. One known limitation is that you might get notifications twice if you manually select the same area, as the current location feature is also subscribed to. Try it out and let me know what you think and how it works for you.

Alert filtering based on the alert categories

Long-time users will remember that in version < 1.0.0, FOSSWarn provided a feature to select the alert notifications they want to get based on the alert source. This feature was not usable anymore with the server. Listing >150 sources was not a suitable approach, so this feature was removed. Of course, the user complained about that, and indeed, this was a lacking feature. This release introduces a new filtering feature. This filtering is based on the alert categories that are defined in the CAP standard. You can now select either a global level or, if you want, select a higher level for some alert categories. Like this, you can, e.g., only get severe weather alerts but minor alerts in all other categories. This is an effective and even better replacement for the old filtering.

Alternative to push notifications

Push notifications are the way to go, and the FOSS community must work on making them easy to use and reliable. Bother is currently limited, and some others just do not want to use them. So this brings back a similar feature that was used in the previous version. If you select "legacy polling," FOSSWarn can wake up in periods to check for new notifications. This will delay notifications and drain your battery more than push notifications, but it is simple and requires no additional applications or push server. As I was working on it, I directly added two more modes. One is to combine push and poll. So, using the polling as backup in case push fails (still very much experimental) or disabling notification at all if you only want to see alerts when you open the app. To test if everything is working, you can subscribe to Point Nemo and get test notifications every 5 minutes.

Side note: In the developer options, there is now a toggle to turn off the search map search restriction. If you turn that off, you can search for everything (also for point Nemo) that OSM has to offer.

UI improvements

While implementing bug fixes and other features, I made some small touches to the UI.

Documentation

To reduce my email volume and improve the user experience, I wrote documentation for FOSSWarn. Hosted under docs.fosswarn.org. It provides basic information and an explanation to make FOSSWarn self-understandable. The docs will be expanded in the future, and I would really appreciate any help with that. It's just Markdown, so there is no reason why you can not help improve these docs. Check it out.