Android

  1. The easy way to ask for runtime permissions: the PermissionDispatcher library

    In this article I'm going to introduce my favourite way to handle permissions in Android, namely the PermissionDispatcher library. We're going to be looking at a simple example and hopefully illustrate why it is in my oppinion the easiest way of requesting permissions. The full code is available here. [TOC]…
    on Android Permissions - Comments

  2. Android Gesture Detection and Animations: creating a Swipe Button control

    In this article we're going to look at how to create a production-grade Swipe Button control that has the following features: tracks the finger with a transparent overlay supports flinging animates to a complete state moves right while swiping and also causes other content on the screen to move creating…
    on Android Animation - Comments

  3. How to improve performance of the Android Emulator on Windows

    In this article I'm going to share a quick tip about how to improve performance of the Android Emulator when running in Windows environment on a machine with a NVidia graphics card. What we are going to do is instruct the NVIDIA driver to use the GPU to render the…
    on Android - Comments

  4. Adding the Support Library through Maven

    In case you've missed it, at the last Google IO, Google announced that you can now add the Support Library directly from gradle without having to download the "support repository" anymore. This should come as good news to those of us who have to keep a Jenkins/Travis CI system…
    on Android Gradle - Comments

  5. An evening of Firebase - event review

    I attended Skill Matter's meetup/talk titled 'An evening of Firebase' and I wanted to share with you (and future me) my mental notes from what was presented. The evening consisted of two talks: one held by Google's Laurence Moroney and another by Beeline CTO Chetan Padia. The event was…
    on Android Firebase Event - Comments

  6. When gradle fails or Android's own version of the dependency hell

    Today I wanted to share with you a "war story" about a problem I encountered in one of my projects. It has to do with the way gradle versions its the dependency libraries and a poor little programmer trying to fix it one late Friday evening. Once upon a time…
    on Android Gradle - Comments

  7. A case against the Hungarian Notation on Android

    In this article we take a look at the Hungarian Notation and why it is in my opinion a bad idea. We take a look at possible causes why this habit started and dispel a few of the common myths about its usefulness. What is Hungarian Notation First of all,…
    on Android - Comments

  8. A look at ConstraintLayout

    Constraint Layout is a new layout system that allows devs to create perfectly flat (not nested) layouts. Think of it as RelativeLayout on steroids. The developer specifies the position of each component relative to the edges of the other siblings or parent (e.g. the top of this TextView aligns…
    on Android ConstraintLayout SupportLibrary - Comments

  9. Android Things - Part 3: Creating a remote control app

    In the third and last part of this series of articles on the Android Things platform, we look at creating a companion app for the Raspberry Pi Android module we created in part 2. This companion app will run on a normal Android phone or tablet and will connect to…
    on Android Things Android Firebase - Comments

  10. Android Things - Part 2: Controlling a LED

    In the second part of this series of articles on the Android Things platforms we're going to continue where we left off in the previous article and get our hands dirty and write a simple program to control the state of a LED and publish its status in the cloud…
    on Android Things Android Firebase - Comments

  11. Android Things - Part 1: Installation

    In this series of articles, we're going to look at the capabilities of the Android Things platform. We're going to start by installing it on a Raspberry Pi and then we're going to leverage the Firebase Database to remotely control a led on the Raspberry Pi from another Android phone.…
    on Android Things Android - Comments