Android

Displaying Status Bar Notifications in Android

weimenglee — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:59:05 +0000

Developers of Android are no doubt familiar with the Toast class, which displays a little pop-up containing whatever message you want to display to the user. However, the Toast pop-up will automatically dismiss itself after a while, making it useful as a tool to provide timely feedback to the user (such as informing the user that a file has been saved successfully), but not a really good tool to use for some asynchronous action (such as telling the user that an incoming SMS message has arrived).

Preserving User Preferences in Android Applications

weimenglee — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:32:04 +0000

Often you need to store personalized information for each user of your application. For example, your application may require users to logon to a secure server for authentication. In this case, the user needs to supply his credentials, such as a login name and a password. The first time the user uses your application this information will be entered by the user, but subsequently it would be useful for your application to “remember” this information somewhere so that it can save the user the trouble of entering the same information every time he uses your application.

Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Development

weimenglee — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:49:50 +0000

By now, you should already have heard of Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. And while many developers are busy developing for Android and iPhone, Microsoft is hard at work, developing its killer mobile OS that could give the competitors a run for the money. Before you dismiss Microsoft as a serious contender in the mobile space, think again. The new OS is now a total rewrite of the older Windows Mobile platform, and sports many features that you have come to expect of a modern mobile operating system.

Future of the Mobile Web Whitepaper

mclancy — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:46:11 +0000

We're very happy to publish this paper arising from the The Future of the Mobile Web event held at the Dublin Convention Centre in January 2012. We covered a lot of ground and the paper is a serious attempt to capture all the topics covered from HTML5 to responsive design to device detection and many others. We found it to be a very worthwhile process to listen, validate our ideas and learn from others in the process of writing it. We hope it is useful to a wider readership also.

Future of the Mobile Web

mclancy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:13:12 +0000

Last week we hosted an event loftily entitled "The Future of the Mobile Web" at the Dublin Convention Centre.

Nexus One: Where is Android at?

ruadhan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:02:30 +0000

With the announcement of the new GooglePhone, which promises to be the best Android device yet and by all early reports at least comparable with the iPhone 3GS, it seems appropriate to stop to take a look around to see where Android is at.

We start with the breakdown of Android Platform distribution, based on access to the Android Market.

Android versions (Source: http://developer.android.com)

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 4: Even More Views

weimenglee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:13:12 +0000

In this final installation of the Android Views series of articles, we shall continue our exploration of another category of views - Menu views, and some additional cool views. The views discussed include:

Context Menu
Options Menu
AnalogClock
DigitalClock
WebView

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 3: More Views

weimenglee — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:59:23 +0000

In the previous article, you saw the various basic views such as the TextView, EditText, Button, and how you can use them in your Android applications. In this article, we shall continue our exploration of another three categories of views - Picker views, List views, and Display views. The views discussed include:

TimePicker view
DatePicker view
ListView view
Spinner view
Gallery view
ImageView
ImageSwitcher view
GridView view

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 2: Views

weimenglee — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:31:47 +0000

In the previous article on Android UI you saw the components that make up the UI of an Android application. The basic unit of the Android UI is the View. A View represents a widget that has an appearance on the screen. In this article (and the next two), you will learn about the various common views that you would likely use in your journey of Android development. In particular, I have categorized the views in this series into the following group:

Basic Views - commonly-used views such as TextView, EditText, and Button views

Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 1: Layouts

weimenglee — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:13:47 +0000

So far in my previous few articles on Android I have focused on showing you how to get things done in Android without really spending too much time discussing the visual aspect of Android application development - User Interface design. In this article, and the next, I will walk you through the various elements that make up the UI of an Android application. In this first part of the article, I will discuss the various layouts available in Android to position the various widgets on your screen.