SimplifyReader

SimplifyReader is an Android app built in Java, designed to be a clean, multi-function reader following Google's Material Design visual style. It was written around 2015 and the author notes upfront that many of the third-party libraries it depends on have since been updated, which means it may not compile or run without some effort. The code is shared as a reference rather than an actively maintained product.

The app has five sections. The first is a news reader that pulls article lists and detail pages from a news API and displays them in a scrolling list with a web view for full articles. The second is an image browser that queries a search API and displays results in a waterfall-style grid, with support for pinch-to-zoom and smooth transition animations between the list and detail views. The third is a video player section built around a third-party SDK, where passing a video ID is enough to start playback. The fourth is a lightweight music player with a custom turntable-style UI, pulling track data from a music platform's API. The fifth is a QR code scanner the author built as a custom library using two open-source decoding engines; after testing both, the author recommends ZXing for decoding due to fewer false reads, despite ZBar being faster.

The project uses an MVP architecture, which is a way of organizing Android code that separates the display logic from the data-fetching logic. The author describes it as an exploratory project and acknowledges that the implementation may not follow every best practice.

All included third-party libraries are Apache 2.0 licensed. The project itself is also Apache 2.0 licensed.