The Android Market has its deficiencies. I don’t think anyone would deny that. One of the niggles is that there’s no place to list the changes between application versions.
I think this is very important in Android applications because the limited screen space often necessitates moving access to core application functions into the menu. Users who are already familiar with an application may never discover a new feature that has been added to a menu that they opened once and never since.
Instead of lamenting the Android Market’s inability to display my application changes to users, I decided that the information was important enough to move in-app; in the past I’ve simply logged changes on my website. The design I settled on was to introduce a small notification at the top of my main application activity - about the size of a mobile ad - that appears if there is change information to present to the user. The user can tap the notification to read details about the changes in the latest version.
Not all updates will need explanations, so the user may not receive a notification on every update, and users can cancel a notification without bothering to read it. Accidentally dismissing the notification isn’t much of a concern since on the next update the user can page backwards and see the descriptions of previous changes.
This functionality will be included in the next release of Daisy Garden. I think it works well and I hope users like it; the use of animations to show and hide the notification adds extra bit of polish. And I’ve implemented it as a library project, so I’ll be able to introduce it into my other Android projects.
I think every developer should consider adding something similar to their applications.
