I'd really love to know if there are better GIF file creation libraries for Android development. I've already tried this one as well an NDK based one called gifflen (it's really old apparently). Both I've found are slow and produce low colour amount GIFs with incredibly big inflated file sizes with quality settings that don't seem to do anything. Worst comes to worst I could just write the thing myself but it would save a lot of trouble if anyone knows of an existing one, thanks in advance.
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I am developing an Android app which has hundreds of .jpg files (over 300) each one of around 40kB. I would like to know if there is a way of reducing the size of my app. I looked at a similar question here Reducing Android App Size, but the problem still exists. Is there perhaps a way to compress the images and decompress them in real time when needed, or any other way to make my app more space efficient while not sacrificing speed?
If you have used tinypng for every resource you did your best with this kind of solution. In general, it's better to use vector graphics where the general icon will be <1kb. Also, a vector resource can be animated. If it's quite simply bitmaps, you can generate them in code on demand. Also, you can divide your app by dynamic features and each will be downloaded on demand with their part of the resources.
Is there perhaps a way to compress the images and decompress them in real-time when needed?
There is no standard Android solution out of the box. Probably, you can write something on your own. But this looks like too much effort.
Still, the most practical solution: use vector graphics as max as possible, generate in code what you can generate, compress with tinypng the others. That should be enough or you should have a very good reason for making some extra work.
For more info about vector graphics in android. For standard vector graphic import right in the android studio.
Web-site where you can download icons and insert them into the project.
I am new to Android Studio. While working on front end its sometimes easy to take some parts as png file and place it on the particular position instead of recreating it in xml file. I am confused can we use png all the time ? I am worried about memory space . Like the app contains 50 pages and in each page I use 1-2 assets . I don't want my app to have more than 40mb. What will be the best way to do? Can we store the image as a URL and retrieve it whenever we use. What's the drawback in that way?
So many questions :)
I am confused can we use png all the time ?
Use what's best for your picture. For a photo, a JPEG will probably do better. But if you wish, you can use PNG all the time, yes.
I don't want my app to have more than 40mb.
Check and see. Depends on how big your images are; we can't tell.
What will be the best way to do?
Not enough information to tell you that. In general, there's nothing wrong with using images in assets.
Can we store the image as a URL and retrieve it whenever we use.
Yes.
What's the drawback in that way?
You'll need to get some server space somewhere. Also, there will be a loading latency. Also, your app won't be usable while disconnected from the Internet.
While working on front end its sometimes easy to take some parts as png file and place it on the particular position instead of recreating it in xml file.
That's the part that is confusing to me. Android XML layouts usually contain interactive elements, ones that the user can interact with. Images, on the other hand, tend to be static. What kind of XML is there out there that you think you can replace by an image?
I have a question concerning data storage in android and hope to get some help here. I've tried searching for it, but couldn't find anything specific to my question. Please feel free to point me in the right direction, if I missed something.
I'm very new to android programming, having mostly experience in C++ and C#.
For my first project I picked something small. I want to programm an app for my wife and me, which manages the contents of our freezers. ;) It's simple. You create a freezer, define a certain amount of compartments and then add content to those compartments, which contain certain attributes (food type, amount, weight, expiration date etc).
Now, obviously this "database" will not contain a hell of a lot of info. Maybe 50 items tops? So from what I gathered XML might be a good way to go.
However, this data will be modified quite often. Things will be added, removed, modified, moved from one compartment to another. Would sqlite be a better choice in that situation?
I would greatly appreciate any advice you guys and girls might have. Again, small database, lots of modifications along the way ... XML or sqlite?
Thanks a lot in advance. :)
Michael
Although XML will work, but in terms of modification (change the data) and persistence (write to disk), it is certainly not as easy as SQLite.
With XML, you are constantly dealing with the entire document, even when you just want to deal with a little piece of it.
I found the API dealing with XML are quite often not so intuitive.
To be honest, XML has already passed its most glorious time. At one point, people express virtually everything as Xml whenever they had a chance. But that time has passed, and that's clearly not the situation any more.
Growing is a major consideration here too. I understand that it is small, but the size is one side, and the structure is the other side, XML is less flexible in terms how much code change you need to make when the structure of data changes.
I'm a newcomer in development of android apps. But, I'm undertaking what feels like a large project and I'm looking for information on whether it will work or not, before I get to far in.
As I've read, when trying to display very large images in android, it is most useful to use the "webview".
So, I took that advice, split my image into 1024 smaller images, and laid them out in an html table (not quite finished yet). Now, I'm noticing as the table gets larger my phone begins to lag upon scrolling.
My question is, is webview trying to render every single picture at once upon loading? If so, is there a way to make webview only render a set of images at one time? Let's say I'm at 14,000X x 24,000Y on the image, can I set webview to render the next 5,000px in each direction only, or is this necessary at all?
I can't seem to find the information I'm looking for, but will continue to search. Otherwise, any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!
i have exactly same problem and i found use full this library:
https://github.com/nostra13/Android-Universal-Image-Loader
you can configure a lot of parameters and using cache..
As far as I know, swf's and gif's inside WebViews are not officially supported by Android, eventhough they work in my HTC Desire Device.
I'm building an app that it's all based in a WebView. What i did is code the 'app' as HTML, put it into the 'raw' folder and once the app starts, it puts all the htmls and images into a folder on the SD (if they're not there yet).
Now I need display some animations in there. I made them with Actionscript and I was glad that it seemed to work (Animations were 25KB each), but after a while publishing it, i got reports from people that coulnd't see the animation.
Then I patched them into a GIF (raised memory to 400KB-1MB each). At this point, I decided to take the gifs out of the raw folder, and download them from one server in the web the first time the app runs, so my apk doesn't get too big. But I get complaints again that people can't see it (then I found that GIF is also unsupported)
Google-ing and stackoverflow-ing I found that the only solution is to split those GIFs into separate images and show them with javascript one by one to create the animation. I guess this method is OK for small animations (like some face saying hello or something like that), but for whole animations.... It weights about 3MB per animation (when the swf was 25KB...). And I think taking 30MB (possibly more in the future for new animations) from user's data quota is not nice.
So:
Is there any other solution?
Are there lots and lots of phones that don't support SWF? and GIF? If they're not too many, I would consider putting on my app's description that the animations won't work if the phone has low memory (animations are not very important into my app)
Thank you very much,
Víctor
edit: Additional information: Animations are like this one.
So... I found the only way was to use HTML5 canvas animation, since surprisingly it is supported by many devices.
The animation is not as smooth as in a GIF-compatible device, but I rather make it accessible for everyone.
So, CommonsWare answered my 2nd question, but I will answer my 1st one: Yes, use HTML5. It didn't take a huge work, since JS can be Object-Oriented as well, and syntax is fairly similar to AS3.
And the best part is that the base code only weights 34KB (let's say the engine plus all the images), and each animation (in a separate file) weights between 1 and 2KB. That was awesome, I can put them all into my Android's raw folder.
Thank you very much CommonsWare for your comment.