‘Development’ Archives
Android Security Update
Recently, there’s been a lot of news coverage of malware in the mobile space. Over on our Mobile blog, Hiroshi Lockheimer, VP of Android engineering, has posted Android and Security. We think most Android developers will find it interesting reading. Read more @ Android Developers Blog
New Social APIs in Android ICS
With Android Ice Cream Sandwich, we set out to build software that supports emotional connections between humans and the devices they carry. We wanted to build the most personal device that the user has ever owned.The first ingredient in our recipe is to show users the people that they care about most in a magazine-like way. High-resolution photos [...]
Android Developers on Google+
I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with Android since the 0.9 preview SDK was released to developers back in 2007. A lot has changed since then, but one thing that hasn’t is the rapid pace at which new tools, resources, and information have become available for us Android developers. Just look at the last few months. In December Android [...]
Say Goodbye to the Menu Button
Before Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), all Android-powered devices included a dedicated Menu button. As a developer, you could use the Menu button to display whatever options were relevant to the user, often using the activity’s built-in options menu. Honeycomb removed the reliance on physical buttons, and introduced the ActionBar class as the standard [...]
Southern-hemisphere Developer Labs
We’ve just scheduled Android Developer Labs for Melbourne (January 31), Sydney (February 3), and Auckland (February 8). The material is not introductory; it’s aimed at people with existing apps who want to make them better in the era of Ice Cream Sandwich and tablets. You’ll want to show up with the SDK installed, and a couple of [...]
Introducing the Android Design site
Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is our biggest redesign yet — both for users and developers. We’ve enhanced the UI framework with new interactions and styles that will let you create Android apps that are simpler and more beautiful than ever before.To help you in that mission, we’re introducing Android Design: the place to learn [...]
Levels in Renderscript
For ICS, Renderscript (RS) has been updated with several new features to simplify adding compute acceleration to your application. RS is interesting for compute acceleration when you have large buffers of data on which you need to do significant processing. In this example we will look at applying a levels/saturation operation on a bitmap.In [...]
Holo Everywhere
Android 4.0 showcases the Holo theme family, further refined since its debut in Android 3.0. But as most developers know, a new system theme for some Android devices isn’t a new or uncommon event. For developers new system themes mean more design targets for their apps. Using system themes means developers can take advantage of a user’s [...]
Watch out for XmlPullParser.nextText()
Using XmlPullParser is an efficient and maintainable way to parse XML on Android. Historically Android has had two implementations of this interface:KXmlParser, via XmlPullParserFactory.newPullParser().ExpatPullParser, via Xml.newPullParser().The implementation from Xml.newPullParser() had a bug where calls to nextText() didn’t always advance to [...]
Android 4.0.3 Platform and Updated SDK tools
Today we are announcing Android 4.0.3, an incremental release of the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) platform. The new release includes a variety of optimizations and bug fixes for phones and tablets, as well as a small number of new APIs for developers. The new API level is 15.Some of the new APIs in Android 4.0.3 include:Social stream API in [...]
