Issue #153

May 17th, 2015

Articles & Tutorials

 
link image   Google Play Services: Using the Places API (code.tutsplus.com)

In this tutorial, you will learn how to present your users with the Place Picker component, use the Places API to guess the user's current place, search for a place by its ID, and allow the user to type into a text field to present them with predictive results.

 
Boosting the performance for Gradle in your Android projects (medium.com)

There are a number of improvements you can do to speed things up in your Gradle build. Some of these are still experimental and could be unsafe, but it is probably worth a try in case you’re suffering from long build times.

 
link image   The bumpy road of BLE on Android (speakerdeck.com)

Slides from Hugo Visser's talk at the Android Developer Days in Ankara.

 
Layout-based Watch Faces for Android Wear (sterlingudell.wordpress.com)

If you’d like to use a standard Android layout for your watch face, then this post shows you how.

 
The Ins and Outs of Gradle (code.tutsplus.com)

This article gets you up and running with Android's new build system, from the basics of what Gradle is and what it does, to an in-depth look at some of the most important Gradle files, to learning how to execute and monitor Gradle tasks.

 
Hardware-accelerated disk encryption in Android 5.1 (nelenkov.blogspot.com)

This post looks into the implementation of hardware-backed disk encryption on the Nexus 6, show how it improves performance, and finally describe some of the problems of the current implementation.

 
Manual Layout Transitions – Part 1 (blog.stylingandroid.com)

In this series of articles Mark Allison starts to look at how we can implement some nice transition animations even when we don’t have access to the transitions APIs.

 
RxPresso (novoda.com)

RxPresso is the result of an effort to build a framework that would let developers achieve the simplicity of unit test syntax in presentation layer tests. It’s a simple way to mock data while testing and synchronise Espresso view actions with Rx pipelines.

 
Frame Animations in Android (www.bignerdranch.com)

Animations add vivacity and personality to your apps. Let’s take a look at how to implement a subcategory of animations called “Frame Animations,” meaning that they’re drawn frame by frame.

 
Automating Android Screenshots (medium.com)

An article about how to automatically take screenshots (by writing ui tests and a Gradle build script) and publish them to play store

 
link image   Survey: Which tools do you use? (vmob.me)

The Developer Economics research program tracks developer sentiment across platforms, revenues, apps, tools, APIs, segments and regions. This is the most ambitious developer survey to date, spanning across mobile, IoT, desktop and Cloud. The key insights from the survey will be given back to the community as a free download in late July.

 

Sponsored

 
link image   Get 5+ Job Offers in One Week! (hired.com)

Android developers are in demand. Join Hired & get 5+ job offers in one week! You'll see compensation figures up front & you'll be able to decide what opportunities interest you. No risk. All reward. Join Hired today!

 

Design

 
link image   The Android Clock App Clinic (cyrilmottier.com)

Cyril Mottier takes a deep dive into the Android Clock app's UI and analyses small issues that add up on an otherwise polished app.

 

Jobs

 
Post a job in Android Weekly (androidweekly.net)

You need an Android developer for your team? Post a job in Android Weekly and reach more than 24000 Android developers!

 

Libraries & Code

 
Bookends (github.com)

A UI widget that allows for headers and footers on lists backed by RecyclerView, for Android

 
Remember (github.com)

An in-memory data store backed by shared preferences, for Android.

 
Anko (github.com)

Anko is a library which makes Android application development faster and easier. It makes your code clean and easy to read, and lets you forget about rough edges of Android SDK for Java.

 

Videos

 
link image   Rich Android Notifications (www.youtube.com)

Paul details the notifications, pages and actions that show up on Android Wear and explains from a technical perspective how to customize and take them to the next level.

 

Specials

 
AnDevCon, July 29-31, Boston (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.