This Week’s Links
Fragmented Podcast – Ep #94 – Design Patternitis – 5 Tips to Help You
In this episode of Fragmented, Donn (@donnfelker) talks about a common problem almost all software engineers face in their career – Design Patternitis. So, you’ve read the books on design patterns and now you’re applying them everywhere. Just because some code can be put into a pattern doesn’t mean you should. Or should you? How can you apply them when needed? Donn shares 5 tips with you that you can use to help combat Design Patternitis.
Updates to Google Play Policy Promote Standalone Android Wear Apps
The Android Developers blog announced a policy change for the Play store that multi-APKs will also work for Android Wear 1.0 watches, so developers can now reach all of their users without needing to bundle their Wear app within the phone app’s APK. Additionally, the Google Play Store policy will change to promote the use of multi-APKs and standalone apps.
Launchpad Accelerator is Open to More Countries Around the World! Apply now.
The Launchpad Accelerator program is expanding, and is now accepting applications. Check out the post to see if what countries have been added to the list. Applications are due October 2.
Using Word2Vec to Power a Recommendation Engine
Square hosts an Intern Hack Week every summer, allowing interns the opportunity to implement our ideas for new features or tools. As part of their project, Nicole Mitchell & Joy Wang created a marketing insights tool for Square. Now, users can can enter their user ID and view a customized marketing report.
Hardening the Kernel in Android Oreo
The hardening of Android’s userspace has increasingly made the underlying Linux kernel a more attractive target to attackers. As a result, more than a third of Android security bugs were found in the kernel last year. In Android 8.0 (Oreo), significant effort has gone into hardening the kernel to reduce the number and impact of security bugs.
Boostnote for Android and iOS Apps Are Coming!
Boostnote is an open source note-taking app for programmers. Currently, it has expanded to more than 190 countries and regions and loved by many programmers. This week they released their mobile apps. Check out this post for links to download.
Exploring the Android EmojiCompat Library
Emojis are everywhere — it’s hard to visit a website, app or have a conversation without emojis popping up somewhere along the line 😀 Because of this, it’s important that all users who are involved in these kind of activities are able to see the emojis being used. If not, textual content can be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Luckily for us on Android, Google has released a new library known as the EmojiCompat library to help solve this issue and bring a better experience for both ends of the conversation.
Learn to display current time in English Words on Android
In this tutorial, learn how to correctly display the time using words instead of numerical values. As a developer, you know probably how to get the current time via the standard SDK but do you know how to display this time in English words to let the users to read directly the time on the screen? Learn how here.
Android 7.1.1 Nougat Kernel Source Code is Out for Moto Z and Moto Z Droid
While Android Oreo is all we’ve been hearing about for the past week or so, it’s important to remember that virtually every phone is still on Nougat. That includes the Moto Z and its Verizon sibling, the Moto Z Droid. Both phones have just had their 7.1.1 Nougat kernel source codes released by Motorola on GitHub.
Jobs(these are pulled from Androiddevdigest.com/jobs) Smarthome Android Developer at Umbrela Smart Inc. (Winnipeg, Canada)Umbrela (umbrela.co) is a startup building smarthome devices that replace conventional light switches and outlets. Our devices support built-in home security, multi-room audio, voice control, video intercom and wall wash RGB lighting to name a few. [Apply Today] Android Developer at WillowTree Inc. (Durham, NC)We’re a digital product agency in Durham, NC. We design and develop native Android apps for some of the world’s largest brands, such as HBO, GE, and Johnson & Johnson. We enjoy pushing the envelope and building experiences that users will love. [Apply Today] Android Developer at Devhouse Spindle (Groningen, The Netherlands)Spindle is looking for an Android developer to help us achieve our purpose of bringing open and free communication to the mobile world. We are an organization without management hierarchy, so there is plenty of room to shape your work. [Apply Today] Senior Android Engineer at Juvo (San Francisco, CA)You will be building a suite of mobile applications that help unbanked and underserved individuals access financial services via their prepaid mobile phones. You will be architecting and developing engaging applications for the Android platform. [Apply Today] Principal Android Engineer at Granular (San Francisco, CA)Granular is a software and analytics platform that helps farmers operate more efficiently and make better business decisions. We are a mission-driven enterprise SaaS. [Apply Today] Need to hire an Android professional? Post a job here |
Hide Your Crashes Gracefully (and still report them)
A couple of months ago at Hole19, their team dedicated some time to improve the overall experience of the users in our app. Since our app is meant to be used by golfers, any crash that happens during their round of golf should be considered very serious. Learn how they improved the user experience through gracefully hiding their crashes.
Understanding Activity.runOnUiThread()
When developing Android applications we always have to be mindful about our application Main Thread. A good developer knows she/he needs to off load heavy tasks to a worker Thread to avoid clogging the Main Thread and allow a smoother user experience and avoid ANR. Learn how to accomplish this through this tutorial.
Videos
Caster.IO Changelist Basics in Android Studio
Let’s explore Changelists in Android Studio! There are multiple reasons why we might want to create a new Changelist: grouping of code changes, selective shelving of changed code, and moving code between branches to name a few. In this lesson, we’re going to look at how they can help us to group our code changes.
Caster.IO Espresso Test Recorder – Using “Test Fragment Recording” to Exclude Specific Actions
This lesson will show you how to use Test Fragment Recording, which is available in Android Studio 3.0 and higher and is accessible via the advanced settings of Espresso Test Recorder. Test Fragment Recording allows you to pause and resume your test recording to skip over events that you don’t want to record. This setting could be used to record flows that are deeper in your app, where you already have Espresso code that will navigate you to that screen. By using this feature, you can work around the limitation that Espresso Test Recorder can only launch your app’s default Activity.
Open Source
Argus
Argus Android makes it hassle free of managing all onboarding related tasks such as Signup/Login/Forgot Password and Social Logins.
droid-vizu
Droid-vizu aims to provide customized visualization effects by easily swapping Renderer to get cool effects