Issue #130

November 30th, 2014

Articles & Tutorials

 
link image   Polishing Your Overview Screen Entry (www.bignerdranch.com)

Looking for a way to further polish your Android app on Lollipop? One option a lot of developers overlook is the Overview Screen

 
Installing Chrome for Android on an emulator (paul.kinlan.me)

While it's difficult to get Chrome installed in an emulator, you do have access to Chromium Test Shell, which is Chromium without Chrome’s Chrome.

 
What’s Your Intent? (ryanharter.com)

Ryan Harter looks at one of the most powerful, yet sometimes overlooked, features of Android: the Intent system. Android’s Intents allow apps to interact with each other, without intimate knowledge of each other.

 
link image   Grid Spacing on Android (cyrilmottier.com)

Grids basically consist on splitting the user interface in a bunch of aligned squares that can be merged together to create blocks . This article by Cyril Mottier gives you some tips and tricks to better manage dynamic grid-base UI.

 
Unit testing with Mockito (plus.google.com)

This Android testing protip from Stephan Linzner is about unit testing your code using  Mockito.

 
Material – Part 5 (blog.stylingandroid.com)

The previous article began the migration from ListView to RecyclerView by moving the Adapter implementation to RecyclerView.Adapter. This article completes the migration and resolves an easily fixable problem along the way.

 
Comments window transition (frogermcs.github.io)

This post is part of a series of posts showing Android implementation of an app with Material Design concept. This articles implements a transition between feed and comments Activities.

 
Coding Android TV games is easy as pie (android-developers.blogspot.com)

Google announced Pie Noon, a simple game created to demonstrate multi-player support on the Nexus Player. Pie Noon is an open source, cross-platform game written in C++ which supports: Up to 4 players using Bluetooth controllers, Google Play Games Services sign-in and leaderboards and more.

 
Migrating to RecyclerView from ListView (andraskindler.com)

Google introduced RecyclerView as a part of the support library as the next-gen ListView. This step-by-step guide will show you how to migrate from an existing ListView (or GridView / StaggeredGridView / ExpandableListView), replacing the implementation with a RecyclerView.

 
Building a Widget to Silence a Phone (ptrprograms.blogspot.com)

This tutorial goes over creating a widget to silence a phone with one click, and in Lollipop it will place the phone into priority mode and silence the ringer, allowing the user to still get their notifications without a vibration.

 
Android Stacked Fractions (blog.sqisland.com)

Android Lollipop now has CSS-style fontFeatureSettings, aka arbitrary OpenType features, in TextView and XML. Chiu-Ki Chan shows how to take advantage of this in code.

 
I don't need your permission! (blog.danlew.net)

Dan Lew shows that you don't always have to ask for permission to do some actions.

 

Design

 
link image   Tips for designers: from a developer for Android (vinsol.com)

This article discusses some useful techniques that the author has learned over time that will that ease the painful design implementation for Android devices

 
Material Navigation Drawer sizing (medium.com)

Sebastiano Poggi tries to find the patterns in how to best determine the width of the navigation drawer in your apps.

 

Jobs

 
Android developer (Berlin, Germany)

Our Android app launched last month and now has 100K downloads. Help us make it even better! We're a 14-person team based in Berlin, VC-backed, and working to make a dent in the history of family planning. You're an Android dev that dreams in Java and is obsessive about great UX. Come play with us.

 
Android @ Expensify (San Francisco, CA)

We've created a cross-platform mobile framework, YAPL, that uses native controls. The Android implementation isn't quite up to our standards and we'd love your expertise to help it get there! With over 2M users, we're looking for an Android developer to help us scale!

 
Sr. Software Engineer @ Etsy (Brooklyn, NY)

Join our growing, collaborative team that’s responsible for the end-to-end development of our Android apps for smartphones and tablets — supporting our long-term vision of bringing Etsy to every mobile device. This full-time position is based in Brooklyn, NY.

 
Android Developer @ Trello (New York or Remote)

Trello is looking for brilliant developers to help us make our Android app even more awesome. Trello for Android is fully native, minSdkVersion is 15, and we are an Editors' Choice. If you're a RxJava addict with experience making highly interactive applications, come join us!

 
Android Developer (Zürich, Switzerland)

Centralway is looking for experienced Android Developers to join our team in Zurich, as part of Numbrs. Come and help us to revolutionise the banking industry. If you thrive in intense, rapidly-changing environments and are fascinated by technology then we look forward to hearing from you.

 

Libraries & Code

 
link image   Galgo (github.com)

A tiny Android library for those moments when you want your logs to be displayed on screen

 
AndroidProgressLayout (github.com)

If you're tired of wrapping your Views with RelativeLayout to add ProgressBar then this small view will help you.

 

Tools

 
Android Maven Plugin 4.0.0 ships (www.simpligility.com)

If you are using Maven as your build system, it is time to celebrate the Android Maven Plugin 4.0.0 release.

 

Events

 
Mobile+Web Dev Con Returns to San Francisco in 2015 (mobilewebdevconference.com)

Mobile+Web DevCon is a 3-day event dedicated to helping developers and software engineers like you master the latest development tools, trends as well as best practices in design and UX. We want to help you make awesome apps and websites. Save 10% with discount code TDWEEKLY10.