Facebook Home, Google and Android: who wins and who loses?
After the Overview of Facebook Home and how to install it on Android, it's time to have a look at Facebook Home from a business and developer perspective. From a strategic point of view, Facebook Home certainly has the potential to capture Android users, divert them away from Google’s services and draw them closer to the Facebook platform. So it is certainly a threat to Google in that it reduces Android’s flexibility, and therefore the strength of Google’s position. more...
Overview of Facebook Home and how to install on Android
Facebook Home made a big splash late last month, but early indications show that users are far from considering this a "revolution" despite smartphone users around the world spending 18% of their time on Facebook. more...
Consuming JSON services in Android apps
Unless you are writing a Hello World Android application, chances are your application would need to connect to the outside world to fetch some data, such as live currency exchange rates, weather information, records from databases, etc. One of the easiest ways for your application to connect to the outside world is to use web services. For the past few years, XML web services have dominated the arena for web services, as XML was touted as the ubiquitous medium for data exchange. However, using XML as the medium for your data payload suffers from the following problems: more...
Preserving User Preferences in Android Applications
Often you need to store personalized information for each user of your application. For example, your application may require users to logon to a secure server for authentication. In this case, the user needs to supply his credentials, such as a login name and a password. The first time the user uses your application this information will be entered by the user, but subsequently it would be useful for your application to “remember” this information somewhere so that it can save the user the trouble of entering the same information every time he uses your application. more...
Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Development
By now, you should already have heard of Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. And while many developers are busy developing for Android and iPhone, Microsoft is hard at work, developing its killer mobile OS that could give the competitors a run for the money. Before you dismiss Microsoft as a serious contender in the mobile space, think again. The new OS is now a total rewrite of the older Windows Mobile platform, and sports many features that you have come to expect of a modern mobile operating system. more...
Displaying Status Bar Notifications in Android
Developers of Android are no doubt familiar with the Toast class, which displays a little pop-up containing whatever message you want to display to the user. However, the Toast pop-up will automatically dismiss itself after a while, making it useful as a tool to provide timely feedback to the user (such as informing the user that a file has been saved successfully), but not a really good tool to use for some asynchronous action (such as telling the user that an incoming SMS message has arrived). more...
Nexus One: Where is Android at?
With the announcement of the new GooglePhone, which promises to be the best Android device yet and by all early reports at least comparable with the iPhone 3GS, it seems appropriate to stop to take a look around to see where Android is at. We start with the breakdown of Android Platform distribution, based on access to the Android Market. Android versions (Source: http://developer.android.com) more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 4: Even More Views
In this final installation of the Android Views series of articles, we shall continue our exploration of another category of views - Menu views, and some additional cool views. The views discussed include: Context Menu Options Menu AnalogClock DigitalClock WebView more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 3: More Views
In the previous article, you saw the various basic views such as the TextView, EditText, Button, and how you can use them in your Android applications. In this article, we shall continue our exploration of another three categories of views - Picker views, List views, and Display views. The views discussed include: TimePicker view DatePicker view ListView view Spinner view Gallery view ImageView ImageSwitcher view GridView view more...
Understanding User Interface in Android - Part 2: Views
In the previous article on Android UI you saw the components that make up the UI of an Android application. The basic unit of the Android UI is the View. A View represents a widget that has an appearance on the screen. In this article (and the next two), you will learn about the various common views that you would likely use in your journey of Android development. In particular, I have categorized the views in this series into the following group: Basic Views - commonly-used views such as TextView, EditText, and Button views more...
