Did you know that WordPress for Android runs on both phones and tablets? Sometimes a little extra screen space can help you draft that longer blog post. If you have a Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom, or another Android tablet you’ll find the WordPress app in the Android Market.

Now for the Nook Color/Tablet and Kindle Fire, too!

We’re happy to announce that WordPress for Android is now available for the Nook Color/Tablet and Kindle Fire. The 7″ screen on these tablets make an excellent home for the all-new Dashboard UI that we added in WordPress for Android 2.0.

We paid special attention to the post editor on theses devices, enhancing the layout to make it super simple to edit your post content in either landscape or portrait orientation. You’ll find everything there that you’d want in a WordPress app, including support for editing post content, adding media, viewing your stats, comment notifications, and more.

The app is available today in the Amazon Appstore and Nook Store.

Feedback

How do you like the tablet WordPress app? Let us know in the comments section below, or ping us on Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog to stay up to date with the latest happenings around WordPress for Android.

New UI: Action Bar and Dashboard

The Dashboard

Everything you want to do, all in one place. The Dashboard is the first thing you see when launching the app and it provides one-tap access to the most common things you use such as creating a new post or viewing stats. A new comment count ribbon shows you how many unapproved comments you have in your moderation queue. Want to post some media quickly? We added Quick Photo and Video buttons to take you right to the camera so you can shoot the moment and instantly attach it to a new post.

Also new is the Action Bar, which allows you to quickly switch blogs, refresh content or show the Dashboard from wherever you are in the app at the time.

New Post Editor

The Post Editor

The post editor has been revamped, allowing more control over the post content than ever before. A formatting toolbar has been added above the keyboard that allows for easy rich text editing and adding links.  You can now add media content wherever you like and edit the Title, Caption, Placement and Size of images. The editor also is now full screen, so you can see as much of the content as possible while editing.

We’ve also added support for Post Formats, you’ll see a drop down menu in the post editor that allows you to select the appropriate Post Format.

Tablet Support

Got an Android Tablet? We’ve got you covered! We paid special attention to large screen devices in this release. When you’re viewing Posts, Pages and Comments you will see a scrolling list of items on the left, with a detail view on the right. Many other areas of the app have been optimized for tablets including the post editor and stats.

Browsing Posts on a Tablet

We’ve also added support for the newer 7″ tablets, including the Kindle Fire (app will be available in the Amazon Appstore soon).

More Changes

In addition to these great changes above, here’s what else is new:

• Stats chart improvements
• Background post uploading
• WordPress.com Read feature improvements
• Post Status is now displayed in post list.
• Reliability improvements and more!

Get Involved

WordPress for Android is an Open Source project. Many people contributed to this release, including Anirudh who participated in the 2011 Google Summer of Code program and worked on the app for his project. We’d also like to extend a big thanks to all of the beta testers who helped test the app out on their devices before the release. If you want to help make the app better, check out our developer blog for more info.

Download

WordPress for Android 2.0 is available in the Android Market.

The new Read feature in action.

Today we released Version 1.5 of WordPress for Android to the Android Market, which makes it effortless to keep up with your favorite blogs and sites while on the go.

If you’ve connected one of your WordPress.com blogs with the app, you’ll now see a ‘Read’ button at the bottom of your blogs list. Clicking it will display all the latest posts published on the blogs that you follow, along with the option to like or reblog them. You can even follow blogs and sites that aren’t on WordPress.com, as long as they have an RSS feed.

Sweet! How do I add more sites to my reader?

Tap the “Follow” button while viewing any WordPress.com blog (you’ll find it in the top admin bar while logged in) to add it to your reader. To add a site that’s not on WordPress.com, simply enter the URL of the site at the top of your following list and then click ‘Follow’.

Not following any blogs yet? Check out today’s Freshly Pressed to browse some that you might like.

What else is new?

We’ve tweaked a few things here and there in the app, including using the HTML5 video tag for video uploads instead of the outdated QuickTime tag. There are also a handful of bug fixes in Version 1.5 that improve the app’s reliability.

What’s next for WordPress for Android?

We’re excited to let you know that work has already begun on the next major update to WordPress for Android – Version 2.0. It’s going to have a beautiful new look and will be stuffed with awesome new features. For updates on Version 2.0, check out our Developer Blog. And if you have any feedback on Version 1.5 and the new Read feature, be sure to let us know!

Follow @WPAndroid on Twitter for the latest news.

Post Scheduling

You can now easily set the publish date and time in the app when creating a post or page. The date can be set to the future which will set the post status to ‘Scheduled’ and publish on your blog when the time arrives. You can also edit existing posts and tweak the published date and time if desired.

Post Password

At the bottom of the post editor we’ve added a Post Password field to help protect your content. Simply enter a password here and the post will require that the password be entered for viewing on the blog when published. You can also add or remove a password from published posts as well.

HTTP Authentication Support

Is your self-hosted blog protected with an HTTP Authentication username and password? We’ve added support for entering the Authentication credentials in the blog settings so that you can manage your blog through the app. To access the Authentication settings, add a self-hosted blog to the app and select ‘Optional Settings’ in the setup area.

Additional Changes

We’ve tidied up a few more things in the 1.4 update, including:

• Added secure password storage to the local database.
• ‘Unapproved’ comments now have a yellow tint.
• Added ‘Today’ option in stats.
• Fixed crash when alert dialog was trying to be shown after the app was closed.
• Fixed crash related to large post ID values.

Remember, WordPress for Android is an Open Source project. Most of the features in this release were contributed by volunteer developers in the community. Big thanks to chdorner and jnijhof for their hard work! Get in touch with us on our Developer Blog if you’d like to contribute to the project.

WordPress for Android 1.4 is available in Android Market for free. Download it now!

QuickPress Shortcuts

We’ve seen some great support from volunteer developers in the community. A big thanks to contributor Christof Dorner, who added support for QuickPress shortcuts on the Android home screen. Just long press on the home screen, select ‘Shortcuts->QuickPress’ and then select the blog that you would like to use. You will then have an icon on your home screen that takes you directly to the new post screen to start blogging straight away!

Share Post URL to Other Apps

You can now share a link to posts you’ve published on your blog to other Android apps. Just tap the post title and then ‘Share URL’, and then select the app you want to share the link to.

Bug Fixes

This release contains the following bug fixes:

• Use EXTRA_SUBJECT when adding shared content to a post
• Incorrect comment date if moderating from a different time zone than the WP blog’s set time zone
• Spanish translation updates

Grab the update from Android Market now:

Set Post Status

We had one of those “Should have added that a long time ago” moments when we discovered that you couldn’t set the post or page status from the app. Now when you are creating or editing content, you can choose the post status (Draft, Pending Review, Private or Publish).

Oodles of Bug Fixes

We had a look at some of the error reports we get from Android Market and took care of many of the issues that were causing the app to force close:

• Fixed crash when adding media on Dell Streak
• Fixed crash when attempting to add a self-hosted site with an invalid blog URL
• Fixed local db problem when upgrading from a 1.0.x or 1.1.x version
• Updated Polish translation strings
• Fixed crash when trying to add a second blog from a WordPress.com account or WordPress multi-user install
• Fixed no-name blogs from showing as blank in the multi-user blog selection screen
• Comments Loading progress bar no longer hangs

Visit Android Market to download the update, or scan the code:

Multiple Media Item Sharing

You can now select multiple items in the Android gallery app and share them to a new post in WordPress for Android.  Here’s a quick video tutorial on how to do it:

New Attached Media Display

The media that you’ve added to the post is now displayed in a horizontally scrolling gallery view, making it much easier to view the images that you’ve attached to a post or page.

YouTube Upload Fix

Sharing a video from the YouTube application has been fixed.  When you share a video to a post from the app it will now be correctly embedded in your blog post for viewing.

More Bug Fixes

There’s many more fixes in this release including:

• Removed ‘read phone state’ permission when installing the app from Android Market.
• Improved performance on the new post and new page views.
• New account form now loads correctly.

We’re not stopping here!  Many more great improvements for the app are in the works. Thanks once again to the WordPress and Android community for your support of this app.

*Update November 5th, 2010 – we released version 1.3.7 with some more fixes! Details are in the Android Market ‘Recent Changes’ section for the app.

*update August 25th* – Turns out that the post view fix wasn’t working so well on non Froyo devices.  We found the fix for that and released version 1.3.5 this morning.

First, let’s look at the handy new comment changes:

Now, when you get a new comment, you’ll see the actual text of the comment in the Android notification bar. Also, when you select the comment notification to moderate the comment, it will now be there instantly in the Comments view instead of requiring you to refresh.

And here are the bugs fixed in WordPress for Android 1.3.4:

• A login prompt now asks you to input your password again if you happened to have changed it from the last time you used the app.
• Previewing a blog post should now work better and be more stable.
• Multi-language support is improved, long strings of text won’t make the interface break.
• The image uploader no longer occasionally crashes when dealing with very large images (>8Mb).
• When editing a blog post, extra paragraph HTML tags will no longer be randomly added, which was happening sporadically.
• The option to turn off the Mobile Theme will no longer randomly disappear.
• The app will no longer unexpectedly crash if the data connection type changed during a process. (Switching from, say WiFi to a 3G network should now not make the app crash.)

So that’s about it. If you ever notice anything wonky in the app, feel free to submit a bug report to the WordPress for Android Trac, available here: android.trac.wordpress.org. Thank you and enjoy!

If you find a bug: submit a ticket at android.trac.wordpress.org, or write a detailed comment below explaining exactly what you did and what happened. There are also forums.

For developers out there wanting to get involved, you can browse the source code and check out a copy of the app via SVN: http://android.svn.wordpress.org.

We look forward to your feedback!