Issue #97

April 13th, 2014

Articles & Tutorials

Link Bild Bluetooth LE – Part 1 (blog.stylingandroid.com)

Mark Allison is starting a new series on how to program Bluetooth LE on Android. This article has just a little code but gives you a great overview and background about the technology.

 

Handling bundles in activities and fragments (blog.petrnohejl.cz)
This article explains how bundles are used with activities or fragments.

Wait for It…a Deep Dive in Espresso's Idling Resources (stefanodacchille.github.io)
Here's anarticle on how you can tell Espresso to wait for an async computation to finish before performing any actions on a View.

Generating preloaded sqlite data (mytechaddiction.blogspot.com)
This article shows how to prepare a pre-built sqlite file, ship it along with your app and load it the first time the db is opened

Integrating an Android Github repo with Travis CI (gmariotti.blogspot.com)
Gabriele Mariotti shows how you can build your Android library on GitHub using Travis continuous integration services.

Better VideoView loading indicator (plus.google.com)
Arne Stockmans shows a better way to show a loading indicator while waiting for a video to start streaming from a remote server.

Handling bundles in activities and fragments (blog.petrnohejl.cz)
Here are some nice techniques for passing initialization data among activities and fragments.

Protip: Syntax highlighting everyw (plus.google.com)
Here's a tip from Lisa Wray to help copy code with syntax highlighting.

Sponsored

Link Bild Defining Custom Pre/Post-Processing Tasks in Gradle (www.crashlytics.com)

At Crashlytics, we're passionate about building the most powerful crash reporting solution. With Ant & Maven, our build tools automatically manage ProGuard mapping files -- telling you the exact line of code that causes your app to crash. See how we integrated Gradle & made it just as easy to use!

 

Design

Link Bild Android Popup & Dialog UI (medium.com)

Here's an article with a collection of screenshots which examining the various approaches to popup dialogs in Android.

 

A Look at Avatars in Google Play App (plus.google.com)
Kirill Grouchnikov from the Google Play team dissects the decisions and development that went into the new Google Play social sharing.

Jobs

Sr. Android Engineer @ Etsy (Brooklyn, NY)
Etsy is seeking Senior Android Engineers to join a small, 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.

Libraries & Code

Infinite ListView (github.com)
DobLis is an Open Source Android library that provides to ListView adding ProgressBar (or any view) to the footer of ListView to be shown in loading more, and callback that is called when reaching last item in ListView.

Android Bluetooth SPP Library (github.com)
This library includes all important methods for serial port profile on bluetooth communication. It has built-in bluetooth device list.

ChromaHashView (github.com)
Chroma-Hash is a concept for visualizing secure text input using ambient color bars. Password entry can be frustrating, especially with long or difficult passwords.

GmailLikePullToRefresh (github.com)
What can we say more: It's a Gmail like pull to refresh implementation.

RefreshMenuItem (github.com)
Menu item to show an indeterminate progress in the Android ActionBar.

StartPointSeekBar (github.com)
StartPointSeekBar is a custom view for the Android platform that makes it possible to have a SeekBar to have custom start point.

UpdateChecker (github.com)
Increase your app's updates by showing a modal dialog when an update is available.

AndroidStudioTemplate (github.com)
A small collection of Android Studio templates for Android development.

News

Link Bild Droidcon Berlin 2014 (de.droidcon.com)

The call for papers for droidcon Berlin 2014 is out. The motto: "Android everywhere". Buy a ticket and be part of this awesome event! Sebastian and Martin from Android Weekly will also be there on saturday.

 

Business

The Fallacy Of Android-First (techcrunch.com)
A failstory on how a developer did Android first with their app. Lots of the problems are specific to their use case (SMS / MMS integration) - but nonetheless it's an interesting read if you're deciding Android or iOS first.

Videos

Learn how to performance tune an Android application (youtu.be)
This presentation gives a hands on lesson on how to use all the android tools available in order to performance optimize a badly performing application.

Specials

AnDevCon Boston (andevcon.com)
AnDevCon, May 27-30 in Boston, is the world's top Android apps event. Free expo. Use code ANDROID for $200 discount

Link Bild Developer Economics 10-minute survey (www.vmob.me)

VisionMobile has launched a new app developer survey and is looking into opportunities and challenges in the app market. The results of the survey will be available as a free research report in July, while respondents can win great prizes, including an iPhone 5s, a Galaxy S5, a Sphero, a Lego Mindstorm robot, a Raspberry Pi Ultimate Starter Ki, a Das Keyboard - and more!