I have been doing some research on the upgrading my app (android:maxSdkVersion = “10”) to Honeycomb and would like some advice.
First, one of the activities in my application is a List Activity. Once the user selects an item from the listview, a new activity/layout starts that gives information about the item selected from the listview. The user must then back out of the info screen to get back to the listview. (Simple)
If I move this application to Honeycomb, then I can use Fragments. Using Fragments, I can use both of the above mentioned activities on the screen at once.
Now the dilemma. If I use Fragments to get the functionality I would like, but then I will have to use the Android Compatibility library in order for my FROYO users to use the application. And by using the Android Compatibility library I will bind my application to a lower level of honeycomb OS.
So, if I want to continue upgrading my application past ICE CREAM, then the best thing to do might be to create one application that remains maxSdkVersion = “10” and a second application using minSdkVersion=”11”.
So, for a paid app, users will have to buy two versions of the application?
What am I missing here?
Thanks in advance!
So, for a paid app, users will have to buy two versions of the
application?
If you are using Google Market then, no, you can upload multiple apks and target different configurations using some constraints.
You can read this post from the official android dev blog
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So I am using the Home sample to build an application that creates a second home screen for the user. The idea is to be able to have only one user account yet restrict certain access to chosen applications. I have managed to ensure that all of the applications are invisible in the XML yet I am struggling with how to change this to make certain apps visible.
Is it possible to write a whitelist of accepted apps for instance the preinstalled apps or child friendly apps for children who game using the android device and then put in a Java method to access this white list? This is the only way I can think to make it work.
If anyone knows the correct way can you please help.
Thanks.
Ok so I discovered how to do this.
In the home sample they provide a for loop in the Home.java file that covers all apps and displays them. It take a simple if statement to restrict the apps that can be viewed -
// for loop is here
if (info.activityInfo.applicationInfo.packageName.contains("com.android"))
//then the rest of the home sample is here.
Still very basic but provides me with a good enough UI so that kids cannot see apps I don't want them to.
I want to develop an android application which has to run two other applications on the device with one app on upper half of the screen and the other in lower half of the screen. Any clues/suggestions to start developing this ? Thanks in advance !
it's not possible multi-pane-layout two other apps.
if u want your app with multiple activities follow this tutorials for your references:
it's called named as multi-pane-layouts and offical introduction about multi-pane-layouts below link:
http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/multi-pane-layouts.html
and it's shows how to implement multi-pane-layouts on your project below link from android official side:
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/tablets-and-handsets.html
and you can download example project from github below link:
https://github.com/faisalgeek/MultiPaneAndroidApp
This is not possible, except via custom device firmware or ROM mods. In standard Android, only one app can be used at a time.
However:
You are welcome to support multi-window apps on some Samsung devices, as they have extended their firmware to support this concept
You are welcome to have an activity's theme set up to not fill the screen, though anything else around the activity will at most be visible and will not respond to touch events
If all of these applications are yours, combine them into one app, and then you can display elements of that app alongside other elements of that app however you wish.
If you are looking for a feature for your app which supports multi-window then Latest Android version N has a new cool feature called Multi-window support, you can let your app support multi-window which can be resized and scaled which is exactly your requirement. you can find the reference link here
What is the best way to show help (or user guidelines) to the user when application is launched for the first time. Some applications show overlay text and arrows to inform about the various features available in the application. What is the best way to implement it ? Do I need separate activity or do I modify my homescreen xml or something else ?
Please suggest some good approch as well as specific query to search on google (I couldn't find any specific result on Google)
You can try this lib and have a look at how it's done: https://github.com/Espiandev/ShowcaseView
The ShowcaseView library is designed to highlight and showcase
specific parts of apps to the user with a distinctive and attractive
overlay. This library is great for pointing out points of interest for
users, gestures, or obscure but useful items.
The library is based on the "Cling" view found in the Launcher on Ice-Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, but extended to be easier to use.
Just switching from Android to iPhone. In Android I can make several apps and use a tabView to call each app as intent.
In iPhone, I can make several apps. I need a tab to call each apps or app views. Is there similar concept as intent in iPhone? Just switched to iPhone, copying all the other projects into the tabbar does not work out. If you have other methods to solve, I really appreciate. Thanks,
Android and iOS are very different in this regard. Android is very open about letting you use intents to mix and match activities from other apps. iOS isn't like that; each app runs in its own private space and generally cannot even see other apps' data, let alone use their services. It is possible to cause other apps to run via custom URLs, but that's not the same thing.
What you'll need to do is to copy or move the code for the view controllers, views, etc. of your various iOS apps into your tab bar app project. You'll build them all into a single application, and the tab bar will switch between the view controllers.
With iOS 8 you will have something similar to Android Intents. Using App Extensions you can reach similar behavior.
In a close future Apps will start expose their "extension" (as you do in Android Framework declaring Intent Filters in the manifest) that will be used by application who need.The extension areas allowed in this first version are:
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It's great finally apple release this functionality!
Intent in Android covers a lot of functions. There is no iOS equivalent to that.
But if your objective is to launch a different app, and pass parameters to it, you can try out URL Schema.
Let's say you have app AAA with URL schema aaa:// and app BBB with URL bbb://
You can launch app AAA, and call bbb://v=1&c=2 for example, to launch BBB and get the parameters. you can even take these parameters to control what view to show, so you can have a similar concept in Android, to call different Activity with Intents.
You have to register URL schema in Info.plist
The closest concept to an Intent on iOS is the handling of certain URLs by the system applications. See here. It was possible to register your own application URL schemes at one point (see this article), but I must admit I haven't tried this in recent SDKs (IIRC Glympse links can be opened in the Glympse app, so this technique probably still works).
As of 2016, Apple has added an Intents framework that is similar to Android's, albeit much more restrictive. Expect Apple to add more Intents in the future, but for now it is quite limited. https://developer.apple.com/reference/intents
Since iOS 8, you can use App Extensions.
When you normally want to add an AppWidget in Android there is a list where you need to pick one widget and it binds it to the home screen.
I'm trying to build an app which has its own appWidgetHost and specific App Widgets that I built for it.
I have two problems:
I would like to be able to automatically bind a widget to my AppWidgetsHost without the user picking from the list.
I want to make my own 'pick widgets list' and to load only widgets that I have created.
To make it simple; There is my app with my AppWidgets and I want full control in terms of binding a appWidget to the appWidgetHost etc.
3 people asked similar questions in Google forums:
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
The only answer I found to be a possibility is in link number 2. Paraneet (one of the repliers) said that you can install the app under /system/app instead of /data/app because some security issue. but I'm not sure if it is a reliable solution for production, and I would like to know more about the pros and cons of doing this.
Thanks, Shai.
Unfortunatlly for you (and me), Paraneet is right.
binding appwidget is a sensitive action and thus, to avoid malware it requires the user's consent for the most part however if you install your app into the /system/data folder then you considered part of the OS and you are given a system permission which lets you decide to bind appwidget that you created without any user's involvement.
In Android O, its possible to pin app widget programmatically. Just watch at example here
Also check out Google official documentation