All Google Play Developers Can Now Reply to User Reviews

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

There are a lot of great things a developer can do to promote their app, but the best way for your app to take off is when a really happy user tells their friend about your app, who tells their friend, who tells someone else — you get the picture.

That’s why it’s always been a priority for us to strengthen that conversation between developers and their users. Google Play is now connected with Google+, and by associating reviews with an identity, the quality of reviews has increased tremendously (in addition to letting users find reviews they trust).

We’re happy to announce today that all developers on Google Play can now reply to user reviews. You can reply to user reviews in the Google Play Developer Console, and your replies are shown publicly below the corresponding user review on Google Play. Users receive an email notification when you reply and can either reply to you directly by email, or update their review if they choose to do so -- though keep in mind that users are not obligated to update their reviews. You can also update your reply at any time.

Developers who have been using this feature have told us that the following best practices are most effective in improving their apps and building strong relationships with their users:

• Check reviews frequently, and involve people from all parts of your organization


• Identify and prioritize bugs based on user impact


• Let users know when their problems are resolved


• Reply constructively to both negative and positive reviews


• Refer users to documentation or other support channels


• Get ideas about new improvements or features


• Thank the users who are your biggest advocates

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Before replying to user reviews, it is important to review the posting guidelines to be sure that you are using this feature in compliance with Google Play’s policies at all times. The reply to each user’s review will be public, so prospective users will see if you provide consistently high quality customer support. Read the posting guidelines, and start connecting with users today.

Conversations are meant to be two-sided, and facilitating discussion between developers and users will ultimately yield better apps, to the benefit of everyone.

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Android at Google I/O 2013

Posted by Reto Meier, Android Developer Relations Tech Lead

Google I/O 2013 is less than a week away, and the full session schedule - featuring 34 Android sessions (and 3 codelabs) - is now available. We have great Android content spread across three packed days - covering everything from design, development, and distribution.

Not everyone can come to San Francisco to join us in person, so we’ll be streaming a selection of the best content as part of Google Developers Live. In addition to the keynote and four session streams (including one dedicated to Android), you’ll see one-on-one product deep dives, executive interviews, and Sandbox walkthroughs broadcast from the GDL stage at I/O. All the live feeds will be available on the Google I/O homepage from the comfort of your own home - or join our Google Developer Groups to experience Google I/O as part of Google I/O Extended.

Whether you’re attending in person or virtually, you can follow all the action using the official Google I/O 2013 conference companion app! It supports devices running Android 2.3+, and is optimized for phones and tablets of all shapes and sizes.

Use it to view the conference sessions agenda and create your own personal schedule with reminders, view details on sessions, code labs, office hours, and speakers, track announcements, and even view the keynote and live streamed sessions throughout the conference!

If you’re attending in person, you can use it to guide yourself around the venue using the vector-based conference map, Android Beam session details, scan fellow attendee badges, and provide feedback on the sessions you watch.

And stay tuned after I/O when every Google I/O technical session will also be posted to GDL and YouTube, and the conference app will be open sourced.

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Tablet Optimization Tips in the Google Play Developer Console

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

Last week we updated our guidelines for making great tablet apps and added the ability to upload tablet screenshots that are shown preferentially in Google Play to users on those devices. Today we’re introducing a new Optimization Tips page in the Google Play Developer Console that lets you quickly see how your app is doing against basic guidelines for tablet app distribution and quality.

When you upload an app, the Developer Console now runs a series of checks to verify basic criteria from the Tablet App Quality Checklist and shows you any issues it finds in the Optimization Tips page.

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If you’re developing for tablets, make sure to visit your Optimization Tips page to ensure that your app is delivering a great tablet experience. If there are any issues listed, we recommend addressing them in your app as soon as possible and uploading a new binary for distribution, if needed.

For ideas on how to design and build a great tablet app, including details on how to address issues listed in your Optimization Tips page, check out the Tablet App Quality Checklist. Remember that a great tablet experience goes well beyond these basic checks. Keep working to bring your tablet users the most polished UI and richest content possible.

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Update on Tablet App Guidelines and Screenshots

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

More and more, developers are investing in a full tablet experience for their apps and seeing those investments pay off big. Starting today, it’s even easier to show off those tablet apps to users and to understand what it takes to make a great tablet app.

Many of you have already made optimizations to your apps to make them more beautiful and useful on tablets, and we’re giving you a way to showcase your application’s specialized tablet layouts. You’re now able to upload screenshots of your app running on 7” and 10” tablets to the Google Play Developer Console, and those screenshots are shown preferentially in Google Play to users on those devices.

In October, we published the tablet app quality checklist, which shares best practices for creating tablet applications that users will love. We've updated this checklist with additional tips and guidelines, as well as more details on specific technical checks you should perform to ensure your app is correctly optimized for tablets. Soon, we’ll start surfacing tips based on our tablet app quality guidelines directly in the Google Play Developer Console, and we’ll use these guidelines to help users better discover tablet apps in Google Play.

So upload your tablet screenshots and confirm your app follows the quality guidelines today.

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New Look, New Purchase Flow in Google Play

Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development, Games & Applications

Today we announced that a new version of the Google Play Store app is rolling out worldwide to Android phones and tablets. This new app brings a redesigned UI that’s easier to use and showcases more great content for users. For developers, the new app offers more ways for your app to get noticed, as well as a new, simpler purchase flow.

The new UI is simple and easier to browse. Collections are front and center on the homepage, helping users discover great content through recommendations and curated lists. Items in collections are now presented as cards, with a larger area for your app’s graphics and a larger touch target for users. Overall, the homepage surfaces more apps than before and highlights them more effectively right on the page.

Most important for apps that sell in-app products, the new UI offers a dramatically simplified, dialog-based purchase flow that lets users buy your products without leaving the context of the app. Your app remains active and visible behind the purchase dialogs. When the purchase is complete, users return directly to the place they left, without your app having to reconstruct its state. It’s especially powerful when combined with In-app Billing v3, providing a faster and more reliable purchase flow.

All of these changes build on the core features of Google Play. Our editorial team will continue to look for exemplary apps to showcase in Editors’ Choice and other collections, and our familiar top lists will continue to track the market performance of your app on an ongoing basis.

Watch for the new Play Store app (version 4.0.25) coming to your devices soon. The rollout has already started and we expect all devices running Android 2.2 or higher to have received the update over the next few weeks.

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Now is the time to switch to the new Google Play Developer Console

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

The new Google Play Developer Console is out of preview and is the default experience. In addition to offering all of the functionality of the old version, the new version features a streamlined publishing flow, store listings in more languages with language-specific graphics, and new user ratings statistics, so you’ll have better tools for delivering great Android apps that delight users. If you haven't already made the switch, now is the time, as we'll be retiring the former version on April 15 to focus our efforts on this new experience.

The new Developer Console brings you new functionality built on top of a quick-to-navigate user experience. You can add language-specific graphics to your store listing to help your users around the world understand what your app is about. New graphs let you track your ratings over time with breakdowns by device, country, app version, and more. The statistics page now shows you when you released each version of your app, so you see how each new version changes your installations and ratings, and you can view crashes specific to an application version. These new features are only the beginning of what’s to come for developers on Google Play in the future.

If you're still using the old Developer Console, now is the time to switch over fully to the new version by clicking “Try the new version” in the header. Let us know what you think by clicking the “Feedback” link in the header in the new Developer Console, and if you experience any serious issues, please contact support. We’re planning some more improvements in the next month and in the future. Your input will continue to be key to what we do.

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Native RTL support in Android 4.2

Posted by Fabrice Di Meglio, Android Frameworks Team

Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) introduced limited support for bidirectional text in TextView and EditText elements, allowing apps to display and edit text in both left-to-right (LTR) and right-to-left (RTL) scripts. Android 4.2 added full native support for RTL layouts, including layout mirroring, allowing you to deliver the same great app experience to all of your users, whether their language uses a script that reads right-to-left or one that reads left-to-right.

If you do nothing, your app will not change — it will continue to appear as it currently does. However, with a few simple changes, your app will be automatically mirrored when the user switches the system language to a right-to-left script (such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Persian). For example, see the following screenshots of the Settings app:

To take advantage of RTL layout mirroring, simply make the following changes to your app:

1. Declare in your app manifest that your app supports RTL mirroring.
   
   

   Specifically, add android:supportsRtl="true" to the <application> element in your manifest file.




2. Change all of your app's "left/right" layout properties to new "start/end" equivalents.
   
   
   
   
   • If you are targeting your app to Android 4.2 (the app's targetSdkVersion or minSdkVersion is 17 or higher), then you should use “start” and “end” instead of “left” and “right”. For example, android:paddingLeft should become android:paddingStart.
   
   
   • If you want your app to work with versions earlier than Android 4.2 (the app's targetSdkVersion or minSdkVersion is 16 or less), then you should add “start” and end” in addition to “left” and “right”. For example, you’d use both android:paddingLeft and android:paddingStart.
     
   
   

For more precise control over your app UI in both LTR and RTL mode, Android 4.2 includes the following new APIs to help manage View components:

• android:layoutDirection — attribute for setting the direction of a component's layout.


• android:textDirection — attribute for setting the direction of a component's text.


• android:textAlignment — attribute for setting the alignment of a component's text.



• getLayoutDirectionFromLocale() — method for getting the Locale-specified direction

You can even create custom versions of layout, drawables, and other resources for display when a right-to-left script is in use. Simply use the resource qualifier "ldrtl" to tag your resources, meaning “layout direction right-to-left”. To debug and optimize custom right-to-left layouts, HierarchyViewer now lets you see start/end properties, layout direction, text direction, and text alignment for all the Views in the hierarchy.

It's now easy to create beautiful Android apps for all your users, whether they use a right-to-left or left-to-right language. We look forward to seeing some great apps!

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