Issue #145

March 22nd, 2015

Articles & Tutorials

 
link image   Tips and Tricks for Android Material Support Library (code.hootsuite.com)

The focus of this post is to help you put some polish on your design, and move closer to the Google Material design guidelines. The best part: none of these tips will require a designer or new assets.

 
Android UI Automated Testing (googletesting.blogspot.com)

This post reviews four strategies for Android UI testing with the goal of creating UI tests that are fast, reliable, and easy to debug

 
RecyclerView FastScroll – Part 2 (blog.stylingandroid.com)

This concluding article in this series shows how to add touch and scrolling behaviours.

 
link image   Navigation Drawer styling according to Material Design (medium.com)

In this article the author discusses styling the navigation drawer control similar to Google apps.

 
A Blurring View for Android (developers.500px.com)

Blur effect can be used to vividly convey a sense of layering of content. It allows the user to maintain the context, while focused on the currently featured content, even if what’s under the blurring surface shifts in a parallax fashion or changes dynamically

 
Archive additional Android artifacts with Gradle (wiebe-elsinga.com)

When building Android applications or libraries common practice is to save your artifacts to a local file storage or repo. Wiebe Elsinga shows you how to do this with Gradle.

 
The mysterious case of the Bundle and the Map (medium.com)

Because putting Maps in a Bundle is harder than it looks.

 
The introduction to Reactive Programming you've been missing (gist.github.com)

So you're curious about this new thing called Reactive Programming, particularly its variant comprising of Rx, Bacon.js, RAC, and others.

 
Postponed Shared Element Transitions (part 3b) (www.androiddesignpatterns.com)

This post continues Alex Lockwood's in-depth analysis of shared element transitions by discussing an important feature of the Lollipop Transition API: postponed shared element transitions.

 
Parameterized testing with Robolectric (www.jayway.com)

Recently the author needed to write a test case that performed an operation several times, but with different test data. It turns out Robolectric has a ParameterizedRobolectricTestRunner,

 
Hello Places API for Android (android-developers.blogspot.com)

The Places APIs for Android (and iOS) bridge the gap between simple geographic locations expressed as latitude and longitude, and how people associate location with a known place.

 

Sponsored

 
link image   Free App Testing + Optimization for Android (software.intel.com)

Discover FREE app testing services available to test your apps created for Intel-based Android devices. Help your app perform its best. Click for details.

 

Jobs

 
Android Engineer - Storehouse (San Francisco, CA)

Storehouse is looking for a sharp, creative engineer to pioneer our Android efforts. You will lay the foundation for the project and decide how our app works in fundamental ways. Our team is small and you’ll play a key role in shaping our company, our product, and our culture.

 

Libraries & Code

 
Jackdaw (github.com)

Jackdaw is a Java Annotation Processor which allows to simplify Java/Android development and prevents writing of tedious code. Jackdaw was inspired by Lombok project, but in comparison with Lombok: it does not need to have an extra plugin in IDE and it does not modify the existing source code.

 
Open-Source-Android-Apps (github.com)

This is a collection of Android Apps with Open Source.

 

News

 
link image   Creating Better User Experiences on Google Play (android-developers.blogspot.com)

Google is introducing a new age-based rating system for apps and games on Google Play. They have also begun reviewing apps before they are published on Google Play to better protect the community and improve the app catalog.

 

Tools

 
Victor (github.com)

With this Gradle plugin, you can define source folders for SVGs and they will automatically be rasterized/included in your build without messing with your source code.

 

Videos

 
Introduction to Groovy and Gradle (www.youtube.com)

An introduction to Groovy, Gradle and the Android plugin by Daniel Lew.

 

Specials

 
link image   AnDevCon, July 29-31, Boston (www.andevcon.com)

AnDevCon is the leading technical conference for software developers building Android apps. Choose from more than 75 classes and tutorials and visit with more than 40 top exhibitors, all 100% focused on Android development. Use code ANDROID for a $200 discount off the prevailing rate.