Android Studio Tips
Settings…Editor…General…Auto Import…Optimize imports on the fly
Be sure to add Smart Step Into in your debug toolbar. When there is a chain of function calls, this will prompt you which function you want to step into
Android’s Fragmentation Problem
I like what Nick has to say about the complaints of having to support multiple devices/OSs/screen sizes on Android.
…Just like developing for iOS had an initial adjustment period, it takes time to learn the Android way of doing things. Developers and designers who are unwilling to invest that time just end up creating crappy clones of their iPhone apps.
To those folks, I can only say: remember when you bristled at seeing second-rate Mac ports of popular Windows apps? Remember how you felt about companies that treated your choice of OS as an also-ran?
Sure if I had a choice I’d prefer not to have to worry about different configurations, but that is the appeal of Android. Just like Windows gave users more choices compared to Mac, so does Android compared to IOS.
Android REST client applications
The Qliq Android application uses an architecture described in this Google presentation.
A ContentProvider gives access to data retrieved via REST services and cached in a SQLite database. It is a pretty elegant solution though at times it seems to suffer some performance issues in terms of timely screen updates.
There is a lot to learn about Android. There is more than one way to solve a problem and the Android SDK provides many patterns and components to get the job done. The best way to learn is to see how others have solved problems and to simply dive in and try things out.
I recently came across ORMLite as an alternative to SQLite. Don’t know much about it. I wonder how much use it has on the Android platform.