Issue #175

October 18th, 2015

Articles & Tutorials

 
link image   How to create a stunning Android Wear watch face (marcouberti.net)

Marco Uberti recently released a new Android Wear watch face on Google Play, American Sunsets, a watch face inspired by the most beautiful american cities. Here he describes how he built the watch face, including source code.

 
Vectors For All (almost) (blog.stylingandroid.com)

Android Studio 1.4 has just added some backwards compatibility to the build tools so we can actually begin to use VectorDrawable for pre-Lollipop. In this article Mark Allison takes a look at how this works.

 
Android Development Tidbits (willowtreeapps.com)

Did you know that AndroidStudio has an asset generator for stock actionbar icons?

 
link image   Designing Android Apps For Vision Impaired Users (novoda.com)

Making your app suitable for vision impaired users is part of a larger topic on developing accessible apps. This articles focuses on describing approaches to make apps accessible for vision impaired users.

 
A new AppBarLayout flag (plus.google.com)

The new version of the Design Support Library includes a new layout_scrollFlag inside the AppBarLayout component: SCROLL_FLAG_SNAP.

 
Develop a secured Android application (blog.octo.com)

This article addresses three potential vulnerability sources : risks when we communicate with a webservice, potential leak of information when we store data on the device storage and vulnerabilities of having your application easily editable by a third party.

 
Modeling my Android domain layer (panavtec.me)

Since his last post about why he doesn’t use a pure repository pattern in Android, Christian Panadero received some feedback and wants to explain how he organizes my domain layer

 
Beware EditText on API 21 (blog.danlew.net)

Dan Lew noticed some differences in EditText's layout between API 21 and API 22 devices. Here are some tips to mitigate these differences.

 
Android Support Library 23.1 now available (plus.google.com)

Improvements throughout the Android Support Library with the release of version 23.1.0!

 
Why we ditched Jenkins for Circle CI (infinum.co)

While Jenkins is a solid tool, it has its quirks. So when Circle CI announced Android support, the team at Infinium decided to give it a spin.

 

Sponsored

 
link image   New Activity Recognition SDK - 4x as fast/accurate (pathsense.com)

If you use Android Activity Recognition check out the free PathSense SDK that is 4x as fast and more power efficient than Google's homegrown solution. A complete drop-in solution for the Google Play Services Activity Recognition. Join their beta now.

 

Design

 
link image   10 Impressive Uses of Motion and Animations (medium.com)

Here are ten of the most mesmerizing Material Design animations found by the MaterialUp community.

 
The Design Sprint (www.gv.com)

Developed at Google Ventures, the design sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.

 
Effective Prototyping (medium.com)

Sophie Paxton writes about the tools and techniques she uses as a freelance UX designer, and, given the interest in prototyping, she's decided to write a series of short tutorials about the this aspect of her workflow.

 

Jobs

 
Android Engineer - Build an SDK (Anywhere)

Want to work with cutting-edge technology and a motivated, talented team? You speak Java but are not afraid of touching C++ as well? You love reactive programming? You enjoy API design and building something that is used by millions of people? Come work with us!

 

Libraries & Code

 
TextSurface (github.com)

A little animation framework which could help you to show message in a nice looking way.

 
Iosched (github.com)

Google has released the source for the Google I/O 2015 app.

 
Digitus (github.com)

A library that simplifies the use of Marshmallow's Fingerprint API (Nexus Imprint). Falls back to a simple password on older API levels.

 

News

 
Universal App Campaigns and User Acquisition performance reporting (android-developers.blogspot.com)

At Google I/O in May, some new and powerful tools were previewed to help you further grow your business and improve decision making based on smarter insights on Google Play. These features are now live in the Developer Console.

 

Tools

 
link image   Android Studio 1.5 Preview (plus.google.com)

 Android Studio 1.5 Preview is now available in the canary channel.

 
The emulators for Android Wear have been updated (plus.google.com)

The emulators for Android Wear have been updated in the AVD Manager today. They now include emulators for all devices which have public specs, so all resolutions, densities, and chin shapes are represented.

 

Videos & Podcasts

 
Android Developers Backstage: UX Rules (androidbackstage.blogspot.com)

Tune in to hear about interaction design and about how the Android system UI (including the new volume slider UI in Android M) is designed and user-tested.

 
Android Logging with Timber (www.youtube.com)

Learn how to use the powerful, yet simple, Timber logging framework in your Android application.

 
Effective Network Batching (www.youtube.com)

Batch, batch, batch! It’s really all you hear the networking folks ramble on about. Almost like they are trying to tell you something. Well, the truth is, they are.

 
Acquire, Engage & Earn (www.youtube.com)

A series of video tips from Google on how to acquire & engage users to earn more on the Play store.

 
Android Testing Blueprint walk-through (www.youtube.com)

Android Testing Blueprint is a sample project from Google demonstrating their testing tools and frameworks. This is a walk through of the project to learn how to write plain java, integration, Espresso, and uiautomator tests, as well as how to target specific flavors, run a subset of tests, and generate code coverage reports.

 
Android Dialogs: Corey Latislaw (www.youtube.com)

Chiu-Ki catches up with Corey Latislaw after her Droidcon NYC keynote to chat on test-driven development, robolectric, Android Katas and other testing goodness.

 
Effective Java for Android developers : Item 4 (fragmentedpodcast.com)

Singer and Android developer Donn Felker explores Joshua Bloch’s fourth Item: Enforce noninstantiability with a private constructor.

 

Specials

 
link image   Developer Economics State of the Nation report (vmob.me)

Which are the most popular cloud APIs? Does mobile, IoT or cloud development pay better? These are just some of the questions that our friends at VisionMobile tackle in their latest Developer Economics research. Take their 10-minute National Trends survey and help piece together 2015’s hottest developer trends.

 
Enter Philips' Android TV competition (www.yourappontv.com)

If you're a developer who is thinking of making a great app on Android TV, now is your chance. Think about how you can bring your full app experience into the living room.

 

Events

 
Android Conferences List (androidweekly.net)

Don't miss any great Android conference! Check out our conferences list.