31
Jan
image

Blackberry's Playbook OS 2.0 Will Support Android Apps After February 6th, RIM Provides Helpful Tips On Assuring Acceptance To App World

Posted by in Android OS, Applications, Development, News, RIM

RIM, in the official BlackBerry developer's blog, announced today that Blackberry Playbook's OS update to version 2.0 will bring compatibility with Android applications. RIM's post has several helpful tips for developers looking to bring their creations to the Playbook, offering some recommendations for ensuring your approval into BlackBerry App World:

  • Before submitting your Android application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to remove all mention of the word “Android” from your application. Both in the application description and the application itself.
  • Please remove all links to Android Market from within your application.
  • When submitting your Android application to BlackBerry App World, please make sure to select a minimum BlackBerry PlayBook OS of 2.0.

15
Nov
image

Developer Goodies: Eclipse ADT 16/Tools r16 Will Introduce Android Lint To Help You Automatically Catch Those Pesky Errors Early

Posted by in Development, News

To help Android developers automate some things and catch certain errors early on, the Android Tools team is pushing ahead with a new dev tool called Android Lint. Android Lint will be available in the next release of ADT (16) and Tools (r16).

If you're not familiar with the "lint" paradigm, a lint tool generally helps you validate your code using a certain set of rules in order to avoid common pitfalls. For example, PHP has PHPLint, JSON has jsonlint and so on.

As for Android Lint, its features at launch will include the following:

  • Missing translations (and unused translations)
  • Layout performance problems (all the issues the old layoutopt tool used to find, and more)
  • Unused resources
  • Inconsistent array sizes (when arrays are defined in multiple configurations)
  • Accessibility and internationalization problems (hardcoded strings, missing contentDescription, etc)
  • Icon problems (like missing densities, duplicate icons, wrong sizes, etc)
  • Usability problems (like not specifying an input type on a text field)
  • Manifest errors
  • and many more

You can find all the current checks Android Lint performs here.

14
Oct
hi-256-1-f9bec014fba3478d09ff2886fa562fc9b1af68ef

Screencast Video Recorder Gets 2.0 Update, Adds Audio Recording, 25% More Oomph

Posted by in News

Screencast is quickly becoming the ultimate app demo tool.

Today Screencast added a new weapon to its arsenal: audio recording. You can now record and narrate right from your phone. They've also made the recording 25% faster, so you can do all that and still have a decently smooth video to show off.

For those who don't know, Screencast allows rooted users to capture shockingly good video of their on-screen antics - definitely check out our review if you haven't heard about it.

The 2.0 update also brings a home screen widget, search key activated screenshots, and everyone's favorite: bug fixes!

22
Feb
honeycomb

Google Releases Final Honeycomb SDK, SDK Tools r10, And ADT Plugin 10.0.0

Posted by in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

It's definitely an exciting day for Android developers - first, Motorola confirmed that their XOOM tablet will be open for development, and now the the final Android 3.0 SDK is available. Additionally, the SDK tools and ADT plugin have been updated to versions r10 and 10.0.0, respectively, with the following improvements and additions:

  • UI Builder improvements in the ADT Plugin:
    • New Palette with categories and rendering previews. (details)
    • More accurate rendering of layouts to more faithfully reflect how the layout will look on devices, including rendering status and title bars to more accurately reflect screen space actually available to applications.

26
Jan
camera_full

Android 3.0 Honeycomb Gets Huge Feature Breakdown, Preview SDK Released

Posted by in Android OS, Development, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

The Android Developers Blog just announced the availability of a "preview" of the upcoming Android 3.0 SDK. Developers can start getting their Honeycomb on immediately, as the preview is available via the Android SDK and AVD manager as part of the Android SDK.

But even more exciting is the fact that the Android Developers page has been updated with a plethora of information regarding Honeycomb and its features. Where to begin?

What You Can See

The brief breakdown of Honeycomb's new elements according to Google:

  • New "holographic" UI
  • Bottom "system bar" for global status and notifications
  • Action bar for in-application controls
  • Redesigned home screen customization
  • Revamped "recent apps" menu
  • New keyboard
  • Improved text selection/copy/paste (multiselect, clipboard, and drag-and-drop)
  • Streamlined USB file transferring
  • Completely updated set of standard apps, including: Gmail, Calendar, Browser, Gallery,  and Contacts

Under The Hood

Developers have reason to be hugely excited about Honeycomb, as it's bringing some major (awesome) changes to the Android OS.

06
Dec
image

[Updated] Google Announces 2.3 Gingerbread! Here Is Everything You Need To Know

Posted by in Gingerbread 2.3, News
Last Updated: December 10th, 2010

The moment we've been waiting for so many months - it's finally here! I can hardly contain my excitement as I'm writing this, but both Gingerbread and the Samsung Nexus S were officially announced 30 minutes ago. As expected, the new OS bears the version number 2.3 and brings updates to the SDK and the NDK as well SDK tools and the Eclipse ADT plugin.

As expected, a lot of the OS improvements are under-the-hood, which will result in better gaming, responsiveness, and overall Android experience.

New Features/Enhancements

OS/SDK/NDK

The new OS features and enhancements include:

  • enhancements for game development, including a new concurrent garbage collector, more native APIs, faster event distribution, updated video drivers, and new sensors (gyroscope) - this is amazing for developers; expect gaming to get a lot more responsive and versatile
  • lots and lots of attention in the above bullet point has been given to the NDK - the Native Development Kit.

Page 2 of 212