This Weeks Links
Fragmented Podcast Episode 028: Tips and tricks we picked from 2015
Feast yourselves to a grand bonanza of tips and tricks with this episode! Donn and Kaushik talk about the tips and tricks they’ve picked up over the course of 2015.
Create a Standalone Gradle plugin for Android – a step-by-step guide
This post by Darren, from AftereEcho, was partly inspired by last weeks Caster.io episode ‘Gradle Plugin Basics’ and accompanies this weeks ‘Creating a Gradle Plugin’ episode nicely.
Google releases new People API
With the People API you can retrieve data about an authenticated user’s connections from their Contacts. We hope that these new features and data along with simplified access to existing data inspires you to create the next generation of cool web and mobile apps that delight your users and those in their circles of influence.
Building Custom Lint Checks in Android
There is great power in the Android Lint API, as you can create your own custom Lint rules. In this post, we will go through an example of building a custom Lint check that identifies when an Enum is being used and how to unit test your new Lint check.
Designing alternative interfaces: a Tweet view with custom actions
In this post, Ataul Munim explains one of his favourite features of TalkBack, custom actions, and how you can implement it.
Understanding Android’s LayoutInflater.inflate()
It’s easy to get comfortable with boilerplate setup code, so much so that we gloss over the finer details.Sean Farrell is here to help you avoid crashes, misbehaviors and misunderstandings when using LayoutInflater.
Intercepting everything with CoordinatorLayout Behaviors
You won’t get far in exploring the Android Design Support Library without running into CoordinatorLayout . While each individual part of a Behavior is interesting, when they all come together , that’s where the magic happens. This article takes you from Creating a Behavior through to Intercepting Touch Events.
Customizing CoordinatorLayout’s Behavior
CoordinatorLayout is more powerful than it first seems. Here is another post which covers Custom Behavior and includes a great example of creating a Behavior that shrinks the FloatingActionButton instead of moving it up the screen when the snackbar shows up.
3 unit tests to avoid bad surprises on Android
Unit tests should be short, quick and reliable. This article presents 3 unit tests whose goal is to avoid bad surprises by focusing on key aspects of an Android application: Permissions, shared preferences and SQLite database. Check them out and avoid bad surprises on release day !
JobsSenior Android Engineer at Onefootball GmbH – Location: Berlin, Germany We are proud about our Android app, which is Google’s Editor’s Choice and one of the 65 best Android Apps worldwide used by millions of football fans around the world. Come join our international team from 25 countries as Senior Android Engineer. [Apply Today] Senior Android Engineer at Vital Enterprises – Location: San Francisco, CA (On-Site) Vital creates software for smart glasses to empower surgeons saving lives, technicians building spaceships, and anyone doing critical complex manual tasks. We’re a seed-funded startup inventing the future and we need the smartest minds on the planet! [Apply Today] Looking to hire an Android Dev? Look no further, post your job in the Android Dev Digest for one to four weeks. Reach over 15,000 Android professionals. Learn More |
Avoiding cold starts on Android
Cold starts, splash screens and launch screens on Android, are they necessary or not?
Saúl Molinero looks at this and how to offer the best user experience when onboarding users.
5 Android Studio plugins every Android developer should use
Ikocijan provides his Top 5 plugins for Android Studio he could not live without. These plugins will save you time, frustration and boredom.
Styling Android: Indeterminate – Part 1
Indeterminate ProgressBars are a useful tool for communicating to our users that an operation is in progress when we cannot predict how long it is likely to take. Part-1 of this series dives into the Lollipop+ implementation of this control to understand precisely how it works!
What is the Design Sprint method and why do I think it’s interesting?
Verónica Traynor says this framework allows us to think up a solution to solve almost any problem, together and being focused. So what is the Design Sprint method? Take a look..
Get the guide to family app success on Google Play..increased installs by 50%
Today Google Play Books is sharing (Free), The Family Playbook, which includes information on developing high-quality apps and games for kids and families, along with advice from other developers.
AdapterCommands
Hannes Dorfmann is here to introduce AdapterCommands. So what is this library all about? AdapterCommands basically implements the command pattern in which a Command object is used to encapsulate all information needed to perform an action. Here are the details..
Android testing using Dagger 2, Mockito and a custom JUnit rule
Dagger 2 is the dependency injection library used in many Android projects, in this post we’ll see how to take advantage of it to test an Android app.
Tips on updating to Retrofit 2
In this blog post, Daniele Altomare gives you a few tips about common tasks like logging, adding request parameters or using JSON objects in Retrofit 2.0.
Using Dagger 1 and Kotlin
We have all seen there’s a lot of information around for using Dagger 2 with Kotlin, but If you are still a fan of Dagger 1 this article may be just what you need to get it to play nicely with the Kotlin compiler!
World-Class Testing Development Pipeline for Android – Part 4
Part 4 is the last piece of the World-Class Testing Development Pipeline blog post series by Karumi Blog, which covered all aspects of a world-class testing development pipeline for Android.
Videos
Caster.io Episode 39: Dagger 2 Scopes (Part 1)
In this episode you will learn:
- What a Dagger 2 Scope is
- What a Dagger 2 Subcomponent is
- How to create a custom Scope
- How to create application scoped injectable dependencies
- How to create scoped injectable dependencies
- How to configure the application component to handle subcomponents
Caster.io Episode 40: Dagger 2 Scopes (Part 2)
In this episode you will learn:
- How to manage a Dagger 2 Scope Lifecycle
- How to identify different Dagger 2 instances when injected by memory address
- How to create multiple scopes in the same application
- How an application scoped object (Singleton) is the same instance across various sub components (child scopes)
Caster.io Episode 41: Creating a Gradle Plugin
In this episode you will learn:
- What is the ‘buildSrc’ directory
- How to create a Gradle Plugin in ‘buildSrc’
- How to add multiple tasks to your plugin
- Retrieving user input for your plugin
Android Dialogs: Jesse Wilson: HTTP, Rounds, Diversity
Chiu-Ki and Jesse talks HTTP, how rounds work, technical difficulties encountered when implementing design and hiring diversity.
Open Source
Carbon
Material Design implementation for Android 2.2 and newer. This is not the exact copy of the Lollipop’s API and features. It’s a custom implementation of the most useful things as shown in the design specification. The library also features some additional non-standard extensions, like rounded corners for layouts or a Divider view for easy divider creation.
Frame-gradle-plugin
A gradle plugin to automate framing android screenshots with devices frames in multiple languages and with multiple screen sizes.
Nearby
Foursquare client written in Kotlin.