windows 8 app not up to date

I am currently using a windows 8 tablet. The updates have stopped. I don't have access to the current old testament sunday school material. I also don't have access to the October General Conference. It is as if just before the conference all updates have ceased. I uninstalled and tried beta but neither allowed the update to current material.

The version of GL that supports Win 8 gets it's content from an older content service that is no longer being updated for 2018.

lucifer wrote:I am currently using a windows 8 tablet. The updates have stopped. I don't have access to the current old testament sunday school material. I also don't have access to the October General Conference. It is as if just before the conference all updates have ceased. I uninstalled and tried beta but neither allowed the update to current material.

The current version of the app that is receiving content updates from the content team is version 4.x, which requires Windows 10. As Russelhltn has pointed out, Version 2.x of Gospel Library for Windows and version 3.x of Gospel Library for iOS and Gospel Library for Android get their content updates from a source for which the Church has ceased support (and updates).

Seriously? A current OS not supported?

georgedowden wrote:Seriously? A current OS not supported?

Win 7 is still current has had never been supported by GL.

From what I understand, the GL Windows was re-written so the same code could be used on tablet and phones. With a bonus of working on desktops/laptops as well. Priviusly, the team had been working on two code sets and were being stretched very thin.

The sacrifice was to drop Win 8 support. An OS that had a very low adoption rate. An OS that had a free upgrade offer for over a year.

That was before Microsoft gave up on the phone market.

Is there a chance to download the information externally and install it in the app?

dalobo wrote:Is there a chance to download the information externally and install it in the app?

No. Even if you could download it, it's in an entirely different format that the older apps can't read. The content format changed A LOT to accommodate things like being able to highlight everything. The move from version 2 to version 4 (3 during alpha) was HUGE for Windows, as it was for 3 to 4 for iOS and Android. The apps literally had to be rewritten from the ground up to handle the changes.

Windows 8.1 is still on use by millions of users who found the convoluted mess of Windows 10 unacceptable. 8.1 is a nearly perfect OS for tablets. Windows 10 was trying to satisfy both desktop users and tablet users and does a relatively poor job at both. How do we go about asking for support for those who use Windows 8.1 exclusively? There are many Windows 8.1 devices sold new to this day for reasonable cost. It shouldn't be too hard to keep it updated.

garyoranzabriskie wrote:How do we go about asking for support for those who use Windows 8.1 exclusively?

As I understand it, because Windows trails in a distant third place in the moble device market, the Windows effort is completely handled by volenteer developers. And as it is, they struggling to keep up.

The lack of suport for Windows 8 is an unfortunate side-effect of the development enviorment which was choosen to be more forward-looking in the devices it would support.

You can ask, but unless more developers show up, I wouldn't expect any changes. I believe to support Windows 8, they'd have to resurrect the old code base and update it and either maintain two code bases for 5 years (when support for Windows 8.1 Update ends), or abandon the other devices that GL for Windows currently does support.

russellhltn wrote:

garyoranzabriskie wrote:How do we go about asking for support for those who use Windows 8.1 exclusively?

As I understand it, because Windows trails in a distant third place in the moble device market, the Windows effort is completely handled by volenteer developers. And as it is, they struggling to keep up.

The lack of suport for Windows 8 is an unfortunate side-effect of the development enviorment which was choosen to be more forward-looking in the devices it would support.

You can ask, but unless more developers show up, I wouldn't expect any changes. I believe to support Windows 8, they'd have to resurrect the old code base and update it and either maintain two code bases for 5 years (when support for Windows 8.1 Update ends), or abandon the other devices that GL for Windows currently does support.

So who do we contact for this? I would be willing to link a doodle Poll to gauge the support for an updated Windows 8.1 version of Gospel Library and LDS tools. It is a shame that we are unable to utilize a current OS in use by millions worldwide and are left as orphans. We don't have an option to upgrade to a different OS as the free upgrade was limited and most did not do it to Windows 10 because of bugs that are still there to this day. It is a poor OS for tablets and desktops. Windows 8.1 is perfect for tablets.

garyoranzabriskie wrote:So who do we contact for this?

That would be a question for ToManyLetters. He's a lot closer to that type of stuff than I am.

It's unlikely to happen unless there are several volunteers who are willing to do the necessary coding work. The Gospel Library for Windows team (a small group and all volunteers) doesn't have manpower to also support older versions of the operating system. Having a Windows version of Gospel Library at all is a luxury (there's no Gospel Library for Mac or Linux).

Windows 8.1 is still on use by millions of users[...]. It shouldn't be too hard to keep it updated.

I've mentioned this in the past, but to get the Windows 8.1 app working with the new content requires a near-complete rewrite of the app--and it's been done. It's the app built for Windows 10. As Microsoft offered everyone a free upgrade to Windows 10 for a year, we made the decision to focus support for our new version of Gospel Library for Windows on Windows 10--this allowed us to continue to not only to support older devices that had upgraded for free, but also new devices like Xbox One, Microsoft HoloLens (and other Mixed Reality devices), and Microsoft Surface Hub (and other "hub" devices). The general public's strong dislike of all things Windows 8.1 led us to believe that that choice was a pretty safe one to make. While I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, people using the app on a Windows 8.1 or Windows 8 device are a tiny fraction of the total userbase on Windows--I would guess less than one percent. So while it may be true that, worldwide, there are millions of people still using Windows 8.1, the overlap with Gospel Library users is insignificant. While this decision has negatively impacted a few holdouts like yourself, I am quite confident it was the best decision the team could have made given our exceptionally limited resources.

As I understand it, because Windows trails in a distant third place in the moble device market, the Windows effort is completely handled by volenteer developers. And as it is, they struggling to keep up.

It's unlikely to happen unless there are several volunteers who are willing to do the necessary coding work. The Gospel Library for Windows team (a small group and all volunteers) doesn't have manpower to also support older versions of the operating system. Having a Windows version of Gospel Library at all is a luxury (there's no Gospel Library for Mac or Linux).

This is more or less true, though historically the lack of communication from the developers of the apps on iOS and Android has been the reason here, not a lack of will. We still lack some features that the apps on iOS and Android have, it's true. However, they also lack quite a number of our features. As soon as we're able to get back to feature development (after the latest massive change to the content structure has concluded and our W10 app has been updated to handle the structure changes), we'll be narrowing the list of features we don't have.

they'd have to resurrect the old code base and update it and either maintain two code bases for 5 years (when support for Windows 8.1 Update ends), or abandon the other devices that GL for Windows currently does support

It wouldn't just be a resurrection of the codebase, we'd basically have to write a new Windows 8.1 app from scratch. Because of how dramatically the content source has changed since our 2.x release, we'd be able to salvage rather little of the code.

So who do we contact for this? I would be willing to link a doodle Poll to gauge the support for an updated Windows 8.1 version of Gospel Library and LDS tools.

Polls aren't going to help here--our analytics are pretty clear. That said, the decision to kill off LDS Tools on Windows was not ours and it died even before Windows 10 released. That won't come back without approval and funding, I'm afraid. The volunteer project was asked to cease development and to delist the app. We did. (See https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 43#p161543 for a whole thread on this topic.)