[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Android Development] Datastream33:
Amazon Fire Toolbox Meets VB.NET

New Year, New Language, New Toolbox

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What's up guys?

First off I want to say that this will be quite the lengthy post. Please bare with me.

If you aren't aware, today is a very special occasion. Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the Amazon Fire Toolbox! :victory:

Let's go back in time to the very beginning and see how the Amazon Fire Toolbox was first developed.

It all started with this post. The removal of ads from the lock screen on all Fire devices. A simple string located in the Android Settings Database governing the lock screen ads was all it took. At that point, I knew what I had found was very important and thus shared it with the XDA community. However, some commands were needed to run and a few permissions for Automate were required to get things up and running. I've always strived to make things as easy as possible. So I sought after creating a batch file complete with a UI and everything... just to automate the permission granting, and automate installation so less tech-savy people could run the adblocker with ease. So, I fired up Notepad and began to write out this script. While I was doing this I decided to see what other things I could tweak on the tablet. So, I began to change things... "What if I could automate the installation of Google Services?", "what if I could automate this... what about this... perhaps this"? and on and on. At this point, I realized I could make the automation script for the adblocker something even bigger.

As a result, I scrapped the automation script I already had and began to develop what I called "The Amazon Fire Toolbox". An all-in-one tool for Fire Tablets that could put the control back in the user's hands. The community over here on XDA reacted quite positive about it and encouraged me to keep going... to make it better. Because of you all is the reason why the Toolbox is as expansive as it is today. You guys made it happen!

Release after release the Toolbox grew, and so did its impact. Today we are on Version 6.5 and so many new features have seen the light of day. it's just so crazy to think that this small project has gotten this big. Sure, we've suffered through some hard times, with a few features not working, the Toolbox being marked unfairly as a virus, and just things, in general, were broken... but you guys stuck with me through it all and I want to say thank you!

Now here is where things are taking a turn for 2020. The Toolbox will now be shifted over from the batch programming language to VB.NET! I'm hoping with this transition the Toolbox will thrive even more. My reason for doing this is because like a gentleman here on XDA pointed out... the Toolbox deserves so much more. In addition, the Toolbox will run on PCs that aren't running English (this time you don't need to do anything special to get it to work), I'm planning on coding it in such a way that the Toolbox may be able to run under Linux using Wine, and best of all, because the UI is made in Visual Basic we no longer need the button injector, therefore, the Toolbox shouldn't alarm AVs any longer.

Now, please note that the Toolbox is still being developed and a lot of features aren't present. However, I will be releasing an installer here on XDA that will allow you to install the VB version of the Toolbox and check out what is/isn't working all for evaluation purposes. When the Toolbox is stable and finished I will release it here on XDA for download.

See how the Toolbox has grown since launch:

Created: 5/27/2018

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Released: 01/13/2019

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Released: 1/07/2020

What do you guys think about this? Is it a step in the right direction? What would you like to see in the new version of the Toolbox? Please share your thoughts with me, I'd love to hear them!

HERES TO A HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE TOOLBOX!

:highfive: :victory: