British History Podcast app Support Page

The British History Podcast iPhone app

The British History Podcast iPhone app is a joint effort between the British History Podcast and Snowmoose Software. This app is being offered at no cost and is a volunteer effort to complement the British History Podcast, so please consider that when encountering bugs and quirks in the app.

Send comments, complaints, suggestions, etc. to bhp@snowmoose.com. For more information about the British History Podcast, visit TheBritishHistoryPodcast.com.

Introduction

The British History Podcast (BHP) is a weekly online show that details the chronological history of Britain in a conversational and accessible manner. The BHP app is a companion to the show, which will enable you to stay up to date with episodes, take part in the social media communities, and even keep up with the listener forums!

The BHP app has five views, selected by tabs at the bottom of the display. They are:

Podcasts: A list of episodes from the main feed is displayed in reverse chronological order. Select an episode to listen to it.
Members: A list of episodes from the member's only feed is displayed in reverse chronological order. This list is only displayed if you provide the member username and password (in Settings). Select an episode to listen to it.
Facebook: A web browser view of the British History Podcast Facebook page. Log into Facebook to interact with other BHP members on the page.
Twitter: A web browser view of the British History Podcast Twitter feed. Log into Twitter to tweet back and interact with other BHP members through Twitter.
Forum: A web browser view of the mobile version of the British History Podcast forums. Log into your account to access the forums.

Settings

The BHP app has a small number of settings to configure its use. You can access and change them through iOS Settings. Open the Settings app, scroll down to BHP and then select it.

Wifi Only - Only download podcasts over Wifi connections.
Username and Password - The username and password used to access the Members-only podcasts.

Versions

The current release version of the BHP app is 1.2. The following issues have been found in the app:

On the initial visit to Facebook and Twitter views, you may be prompted to install the Facebook or Twitter iPhone apps. However, these are messages from Facebook and Twitter, not from the BHP app. It is not necessary to install those other apps and it is OK to ignore those messages.
Occasionally the app will crash when the view is changed. This problem is still being diagnosed.
The app is designed to not keep track of your last action and to restart at the Podcast view. In some cases, this can lead to inconsistent behavior when the app has been run and then paused long enough for iOS to unload it.

The following issues were fixed between version 1.1 and 1.2:

On iOS devices running iOS 6, some parts of what is shown on the screen was shown in an incorrect location. This was mostly an aesthetic problem, but it disallowed users from selecting the first podcast in the episode list.
On the Player view, when the podcast is longer than an hour, the remaining time was displayed incorrectly until the remaining time is less than an hour.
The message indicating how to set the member-only username and password was not as easy to understand as it should have been.

Upcoming features

The following features will be introduced in a future version:

iPad "Universal" support. The current version of the app is intended for iPhone/iPod touch only. It will run on iPad, but only in a iPhone capability mode where it can be enlarged for the iPad's larger display. When it is enlarged, it looks like it had been enlarged.
Smarter processing of the podcast feeds. Now, when you go to the Podcast or Members view, the list of podcast available (the feed) is always reloaded. In a future version, the podcast feeds will be used accessed more intelligently to, for example, detect when a new podcast is available and optionally notify you of this.
Cacheing podcasts to be played later. Now, when a podcast is selected to be played, it is downloaded, played and removed when you exit the Player view. In a future version, you will be able to able to select individual episodes to be downloaded in the background so that you don't have to wait for them to be downloaded when you want to listen to them or want to listen to them when your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch does not have a network connection.