Articles & Tutorials

Use Nearby.Messages to add cross-platform proximity to your Android and iOS apps. Works up to 100 feet (or restrict it to just 5 feet using "earshot" distance). Works even if users have Bluetooth off. No new manifest permissions and back-ported all the way to Gingerbread.

Ryan Harter comes from the consulting world, where it’s common to try to make everything a library. Here are a few tips to help you decide if you should make something a library or not.

Chris Lacy and guest JR Raphael discuss all the week's news. They break down M's official name, as well as discussing the potential implications for future Android version numbers and logos, and of course discuss the updated M Preview release itself.

A short post about how to tint drawables and bitmaps to match the current theme.

Google introduced the new Percent Support Library. Its PercentFrameLayout and PercentRelativeLayout provide an easy way to specify View dimensions and margins in terms of a percentage of the overall size.

Each time Google releases a new SDK platform, Mark Murphy rummages through the various bits of information to see if there are things that warrant more attention from developers.

With the Google beacon platform, you can associate information with registered beacons by using attachments in Proximity Beacon API, and serve those attachments back to users’ devices as messages via the Nearby Messages API.

Colt McAnlis explains why it’s not “premature” it’s “preventative”.

Creating a plugin for Android Studio is pretty much the same as creating a plugin for IntelliJ IDEA, with a few additional steps.

The new TextInputLayout adds some nice additions to a standard EditText control to provide improved hint and error text handling. In this article Mark Allison looks at how to use it, and avoid the one gotcha with error text.

This post started as an internal email thread when Pierre-Yves Ricau was building LeakCanary. He found a strange memory leak and started digging in order to figure out what was happening.

In this in-depth blog post Hannes Dorfmann shows how to use RecyclerView to build an user experience that is not interrupting the user’s flow.

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Write once, publish everywhere. The easy-to-use Intel® XDK provides a simplified development workflow to help you get your HTML5 app to market—fast. Design, debug and deploy HTML5 apps across many form factors and app stores. Details here.

Design

For some unfathomable reason Google decided to add Splash Screens to their design guidelines. While they now call it a "Launch screen" it's the same thing. A screen that is shown to the user while the app is loading.

Jobs

We're providing the engine for thousands of apps like Dropbox and are used in the Cockpits of Lufthansa or the London Underground. PSPDFKit will be be one of the most interesting and complex projects you've worked on so far. We have a talented team and are looking to grow.

Now, to strengthen our Team, we're looking for enthusiastic Android developers to build native apps in our headquarter in Cologne and our new location in Dortmund. We offer an exciting setting and comfortable working conditions.

We are building PSPDFKit for Android using RxJava & C++ 14. It's a challenging project that is used in many apps and there's plenty of work to be done. We have a talented team, who enjoy the benefits of working in a remote environment. If you're up for a challenge, send us your resume.

Constant Contact, Inc. is seeking a senior Android Developer who will help us build the next level of SMB Android apps. You will be working closely with our team of Android and iOS mobile developers, building some of the core technologies that we integrate in the app using RxJava, Dagger and more.

Libraries & Code

A simple boilerplate application which demonstrates the downloading, persisting and syncing of data - displayed with a common layout used amongst applications. It features the use of the Design Support library, data caching and the new Test Modules, separating the functional tests from production code.

This example tries to replicate the profile animation of Hangouts 4.0 to show how a CoordinatorLayout.Behavior could be used.

News

This report details the changes in the Android Support Library API between 22.2.1 and 23.

Here's a list of issues fixed with the latest v23 release of the support libraries.

Videos

A live webinar showcasing Android Instrumented testing and continuous integration using the new Genymotion 2.5

Chiu-Ki hangs out with Katherine Kuan, Google Developer Advocate, and talks about teaching Android.

Events

Bringing together developers, leading brands, telco's, start-ups and investors, Apps World still offers the only platform to meet, partner, party with the entire global app community! With 11 conferences, 300 + awesome speakers, 250+ exhibitors, Start Up Zones, The Appsters Awards; this event looks set to be a hive of interaction and excitement.