Android Tutorial 91

Many beginning developers are questioning themselves about the area of the software development they want to build their career in and I was one of them (I'm still beginning, but I did choose already). Today there are several major areas you can focus on. Operation Systems (Windows, Android, iOS etc.) - here you would write pretty low-level code that would handle interaction with the hardware. Game Developing - could be broken down into many subcategories, such as game engines, UI in games, gameplay etc.  Mobile - building apps for mobile devices running Android, iOS, Windows Phone etc. This area is growing really fast nowadays because of new mobile devices. Android is embedded in TVs, cars, VR and IoT (I personally think, that someday Android development would be one of these major areas of software development itself). The Web is growing just as fast as mobile, and the reason for it is online clouds. Almost everything is going to the web, it's convenient, you can access it al...

In my opinion, learning is a lifelong process, and that's a popular point of view today mainly because it's information age. Knowledge now is the most powerful tool, not the only one that is needed for success, though. Furthermore, without it, no other tool can help you achieve it. I think that you already know the importance of learning if you read this blog. So today I'll give you my top 10 learning resources for Android Developers. 1. Udacity Udacity  is my favorite online-learning platform. And I think it'll always be. The enthusiasm and passion with which its' CEO and co-founder Sebastian Thrun develops and maintains the platform are encouraging. First of all, it worth to mention that Udacity is not an Android tutorials platform. There are a plethora of courses and nanodegrees for different professions and specialties, such as iOS, web development, tech entrepreneurship, machine learning, cloud computing and so on and so forth. With his platform, Sebastian Thru...

Kind of strange title for a blog which aims at motivating people to learn, isn't it? But I really think that passion is not moving people forward much. Passion is unstable and inconsistent. It can be helpful on first steps but after that, it leaves you with yourself. What Is Passion To avoid any misunderstanding I want to define what I mean when I say "passion". I personally, see passion as an imaginary friend that I think will do much of the work with me. When you just starting out, it's really great to have that one friend because you think that you can move heaven and earth. But with time passion leaves and you don't feel like doing anything you started with it. Look at this as walking with someone arm-in-arm. You two maybe want to move with different speed, but often this speed defined by the slowest one. And it's sad to admit, but passion is slowing down every day, and one day it just stops. But how to overcome this? How to keep you doing what you was so ...

Android Support Library Android Support Library provides many useful features for android developers and doing it with backward-compatibility in mind. Watch this video where Ian Lake explain why it's so good ( it's just me or his smile looks terrifying? Leave your thoughts in the comment section). As you may guess we'll use design part of this library, actually a small part of the design part. To be able to use it in your project you should add a gradle dependency. compile 'com.android.support:design:23.3.0' Flexible Space With Image is a scrolling technique that was presented as a part of the material design and Android Support Design Library makes it really easy to implement one and also makes it backward-compatible so you don't need to write a code mess to support it on each API. We can achieve this effect with very small amount of java code using XML primarily. We’ll use CoordinatorLayout , AppBarLayout , and CollapsingToolbarLayout . CoordinatorLayout a...

There are so many apps utilizing ListView in Android. Your feed in a social network, your tasks in a to-do app, even your mail in your favorite email app stored in a ListView. Basically, ListView is a container for a collection of items that can be represented as an array. You should be able to get any item from a collection by its index and get the size of an underlying collection. Also, it would be nice to be able to add new elements to your collection unless you want it to be constant. In my opinion, ArrayList  fits this definition perfectly. In ArrayAdapter , they use List as an underlying collection, though, but in some implementations of it ( LinkedList  for example) get operation is linear of index you pass to it, so it can be bad for performance. But it's not a reason to reject ArrayAdapter, just be careful with what implementation you pass to it. Custom List Adapter ArrayAdapter by default adapts only strings to TextViews, but we want someth...

Read 1'st part of this post  where I talk about Learning While Developing. Hi! Today I'll tell you about the second (and I think the right one) way of combining learning and development. This way I call Developing While Learning. Oh wait, sounds like it is the same thing as Learning While Developing, isn't it?  Yes, it might sound like the same thing, but in fact, it's opposite. Let me explain what it all means. The essence of Developing While Learning As I said Developing While Learning is the opposite to Learning While Developing, so you might already guess the essence by yourself. Developing While Learning is about creating some product while learning something. But it shouldn't be your dream project. It should be something appropriate for your level. With time, probably your learning projects will be more difficult, but when you're starting out don't go right off the bat. Even most experienced developers start with "Hello world!" app when they ...

I think there are two ways of combining these two things, today I will tell you about one of them Learning While Developing. The Example of Learning While Developing Consider you have the idea you passionate about, like a web or mobile app that solves all peoples problems at once. So you want to implement it as fast as possible, but you don't have much knowledge about the app development. So you decide to start developing and just learn new things while doing your app. So basically, it's about this approach, you have something you really serious about and you don't have much knowledge about how to do it. Is it a good approach? First of all, let's find out the reasons to do things that way You're really passionate about your idea. You are afraid that somebody can "steal" your idea and implement it while you still learning. You want to do it as fast as possible.  You think it'll be a great success. And now let's find out is it a good approach. I'...