A blog about code, Android and other stuff
Just a quick post. I’ve found a better version of the QuickActions project that I posted about a week or so ago. This new version is a modification of the original one by Lorenz.
The modification adds the same style that the QuickAction dialogs have in the Twitter and Contacts app, as well as how it looks in the Gallery 3D app.
Take a look and make sure to thank the person who modified it.
http://www.londatiga.net/it/how-to-create-quickaction-dialog-in-android/
– July 26, 2010
Everyone always says that backing up work is an important thing. The problem I ran into was when I decided to commit my files to SVN to make sure I always had it copy the SVN client (the one built into eclipse) crashed and somehow managed to delete all the project files with no trace of them via extundelete.
Thankfully I was in the process of rewritting it all anyway so I’ve only lost a few bits of important code that I wanted to keep, the rest I’ve starting rewriting this morning.
If you want to take a look at the project you can find it over here. Nothing much interesting in it at all at the minute though.
Posted in Coding.
– July 15, 2010
If anyone hasn’t had a look at the official Twitter app on Android yet it’s well worth a look. It’s one of the best designed applications on the Android platform and shows what all applications should be like.
There is one part of the app I really like: the Quick Actions menus.
Quick Actions first come about in Android with the introduction of Quick Contacts. Normally you press on the avatar of a contact and a Quick Content box will open listing all the different actions you can take to do with that contact (Email, message, call etc.).
In the Twitter app they are used as a replacement for the long press on list items by pressing on the more arrow on the right of each tweet, and as a replacement for tabs using a drop down menu in the top left.
Unfortunately there is no code in the android SDK to make implementing Quick Content boxes simple, you basically have to roll your own. This is what I thought until I stumbled across a great project on Google Code called simple-quickactions. As should be obvious from the name, it provides a way of implementing Quick Content very simply as most of the code has been written before. The style of the boxes is just plain but this allows you to easily customise it to fit in with the rest of your application.
The best bit is it will work on Android 1.5 and above with very minor modifications. All I had to be was remove the @Override annotations, but I think there will be a better way to modify it to work.
I’ll be using these in an upcoming project of mine and I look forward to seeing how many other apps start making use of this great UI pattern.
Posted in Android.
– July 13, 2010
I’ve finally got round to rooting my HTC Desire and installing a custom rom on it. The one I went for is the newly released DJ Droid, which is based off Android 2.2 (known as Froyo) but also has HTC’s custom Sense UI improvements on top of it.
From what I can see it’s a build that comes from inside HTC itself and has just been modified to get rid of watermarks and the like. This means it’s not a final built and apparently has a few stability issues. I’ve yet to find any though, and it’s been absolutely flying for a few hours now with no force closes.
There are a few new bits in the user interface:
One of the other features I’ve been using is the new Cloud to Device API (C2DM) which was demoed at Google I/O this year. Personally I think this is a great technology. It’s what was lying under the Gmail push for a while, the only difference now is that it has been opened up for any developer to use it. It required Android 2.2 and was the main reason I’ve decided to use this ROM. I’ll likely post something once I’ve had a bit more of a play with it.
If anyone wants to have a go with this ROM (it really is worth it) the first you need to root your device. I used this video guide to make the gold card and do the rooting. You then need to get fakeflash installed and then you need to follow the instructions to install the DJ Droid ROM.
That may seem like a lot of steps but over all it took about an hour and was well worth it. It gave me a ton of new features and has improved the speed of the phone, even though it’s alpha grade software.
Posted in Android.
– July 8, 2010
Found another great resource for android development. Sony ericsson have started releasing tutorials about how to make some fancier UI elements such as one finger zoom and a 3D ListView.
Posted in Android.
– July 3, 2010
I’m really getting into developing applications on Android right now. Here are some great links that I’ve found that helped me greatly:
Posted in Android.
– July 2, 2010
