Articles & Tutorials

In this article, Mark Allison looks at creating a speech bubble effect, similar to those used in some messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

Ever wanted to show an example of your Android app on a website but it only supports image upload. Or you want to tweet a gif of your latest app feature. Now you can!

This tutorial will show you the skeleton of an Android application that uses the Gradle build system and runs Robolectric JUnit tests on Android classes.

If you're developing a content rich application that synchronizes data from server to smartphone and needs to work offline, Couchbase Mobile might suit your needs. Here's an article to get you started.

Here's an article on using DDMS to benchmark which is optimal: view inflation versus showing a view with visibility set to GONE.

Now that the full Android Wear SDK is available, it’s time to port your existing wearable-enabled notification code from the Developer Preview.

Design

Taylor Ling shares his custom shapes file for Photoshop.

Here's a list of some useful design tools & plugins that you can use with Adobe products.

Jobs

At Venmo, we build products that make payments easy. We view engineering as a craft, and want our software to be as elegant as the end user experience. We're looking for Android engineers to help make our app become the easiest way to pay anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Libraries & Code

Here a little gist to get details from your battery in your wear device.

Here a little gist to get the heart rate on the Samsung Gear Live.

This library enables you to color a view, image icons, and text in a very simple way.

This is an easy to use custom preference, which opens a dialog with a number picker. The value gets automatically saved and you can set the default-, min- and maxValue conveniently in the XML.

This is an easy to use custom preference, which opens a dialog with a list of available fonts. The selected font gets automatically saved and you are able to set the font directory as well as the defaultValue.

An open source clone of a famous flappy bird game for Android using the AndEngine library.

The Maskable Layout is a simple frame layout that allow you to easily mask views and viewgroups. Simple Drawables are accepted, as well as AnimationDrawables.

News

The Android UX team is conducting usability studies to explore ways in which we can improve our existing tools, as well as determine what kinds of new tools would help you the most.

Developing Android Apps: Android Fundamentals is an online training course featuring Google Developer Advocates Reto Meier, Dan Galpin, and Katherine Kuan, working with the team at Udacity that’s advanced and technical enough for experienced developers who are new to Android — maybe even new to mobile — but not new to programming.

Tools

Here's a simple bash script for easily installing and uninstalling APKs with multiple devices connected to a computer.

A quick script for pulling all relevant files from all attached devices when testing debuggable apps.

Events

"We have two excellent speakers lined up for the evening to teach you a few topics on Android development. Of course cold beer and great food will be provided!"