Exploration of Thought

Myself and a slew of other folks have been working on getting Android Bootstrap moved over to use Gradle so we can get it working correctly with Android Studio. Also during this process we're moving the app over to use some of the Google libraries. Changes include: Move from Maven to Gradle* Using AppCompat for…

As an Android consultant, I find myself needing to load remote images into an ImageView quite often. Doing this with the Picasso library is quite easy as you simply need to tell the library where the image is located and what ImageView to load the image into. At that point everything else is taken care…

I recently updated Android Bootstrap. The following items are updated/new:  Updated Libraries Dagger Otto Http-Request Wishlist New Features Menu Drawer (aka:Navigation Drawer) by simonvt The reason I did not use the Android Navigation Drawer is because Android Bootstrap is using ActionBarSherlock and right now the support library has not been added to maven central. See…

This is part 2 of the short series of screencasts that demonstrate some common tips and tricks for Android Studio. I'll show you how to create layout files on the fly, generate xml drawables in seconds and how to generate code to save you tons of time in your day to day development process. This…

This video is part 1 of two of a short series of tips and tricks for Android Studio. I'll show you how to quickly navigate quickly between files, create string resouces on the fly, create entire resources (such as dimens.xml) on the fly. This is the third video of a multi part series on Android…

In this video I talk about how the Android SDK is actually stored in a different location than previous Android installations and how you can use Android Studio to set up and start an emulator for development. Enjoy! This video is part 2 of a multi part series on Android Studio Part 1: Getting Started…

Since Google announced an IDE that was based on IntelliJ for Android Development I've received various emails, texts and calls regarding this app and whether folks should use it. My consensus: YES! USE IT! (If you're not already using IntelliJ) I've been developing Android applications with IntelliJ for 2+ years now and I'm very excited that Google…

Sometimes in Android you connect to a third party API and you need to download gobs of JSON data. One of my current clients has an API endpoint that is used for syncing data to the device. One API call returns hundreds of thousands of lines of JSON resulting in a JSON file (when saved)…

Recently I dealt with an issue with Agile Affiliate so I'm going to catalogue it here. Long story short - I was using the 'binding_of_caller' gem for rails. Well, one of my contractors was using it in dev and never took it out of the Gemfile. However, just this sitting in the Gemfile caused all kinds of…

I was recently interviewed by InfoWorld for a segment on Android Fragmentation. Seeing that I get asked about this a lot I figured I'd post my thoughts about why a lot of Android fragmentation occurs in the Android ecosystem. The content below is an edited version of an email conversation I had with an editor…

Around 6 years ago... my wife and I bought a reusable Christmas tree in Danbury, CT. Why? We didn't want to go to the Walmart in White Plains, NY when we lived in the Bronx, NY because its a madhouse. So we drove up to Danbury, CT because they had a Walmart and it was…

Better late than never, they say ... the most comprehensive Android Template Project released to date. The History of the Android Template Project aka: Android Bootstrap About a month ago I released an open source project called "Android Bootstrap". Android Bootstrap is a multi-faceted open source project. It serves a couple of main purposes, namely…