androidweekly #71 by android weekly

ARTICLES & TUTORIALS

Creating a Navigation Drawer (hmkcode.com)

This tutorial shows you how to implemented the navigation drawer UI pattern.

 

Pushing AARs to Maven Central (gmariotti.blogspot.com) 
So you've created a very cool Android library. Why not sharing it via Maven Central. Gabriele Mariotti has written a blog post how to do that. Also be sure to checkout Chris Banes article that is linked by the post.

Marketing Your Game In A Rush (blog.gambrinous.com) 
This month Colm is combining his One Game A Month addiction with something new and exciting: the October Challenge. It is a simple challenge: 'Finish a game — Take it to market — Earn $1'. Here he shares some ideas to help achieve success.

Improved App Insight by Linking Google Analytics with Google Play (android-developers.blogspot.com) 
A key part of growing your app’s installed base is knowing more about your users — how they discover your app, what devices they use, what they do when they use your app, and how often they return to it. Understanding your users is now made easier through a new integration between Google Analytics and the Google Play Developer Console.

Android is almost impenetrable to malware (qz.com)

Google’s Android Security chief Adrian Ludwig reported data showing that less than an estimated 0.001% of app installations on Android are able to evade the system’s multi-layered defenses and cause harm to users.

 

Android ListView: Endless adapter (www.survivingwithandroid.com) 
This post explains how to create an endless adapter for a ListView. An endless adapter is an adapter that loads more data when user reaches the ListView end.

Poll Results: What are you using for intra App communication? (twtpoll.com) 
Last week we've started a poll about what software components are used for intra app communication. The poll is now closed and the results are quite clear: LocalBroadcastManager is the popular solution (probably because it ships with the Android OS). Place 2 goes to Otto (34%) and place 3 goes to EventBus (25%). In our opinion the last two are better than LocalBroadcastManager since they produce much leaner and more readable code.

DESIGN

Android UI Design Kit for Photoshop and GIMP 4.3 released! (plus.google.com) 
Taylor Ling has updated his Android UI design kit to the latest UI changes. The design kit supports both Photoshop and GIMP (many designers are using it as well), and it has the design template for both Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 (2013).

Tiny Impacts: The Case of the Accidental Archive (getpocket.com) 
The impact of implementing the Up Button in Pocket's Reader: An Android case study.

Minimalist interface design and the data-pixel ratio (medium.com) 
Roman Nurik writes about the why and how much of minimalist user interface design.

LIBRARIES & CODE

Secure preferences (github.com) 
The data of shared preferences is not safe and can be extracted by root users. Android secure preferences is a wrapper that encrypts the keys and values of the Shared Preferences object.

NEWS

AndroidTO 2013 (www.androidto.com) 
AndroidTO is Canada's Premier Android Development Conference on October 17th, 2013. Highlights of this years conference include: Collin Wikman, Senior Designer, Square Inc Adam Shutsa, Senior Designer, 500px Chris Haseman, Mobile Engineering Manager, Tumblr Dave Robinson, EVP of Emerging Business, Rogers Communications Inc …and many more!

Droidcon London 2013 (uk.droidcon.com) 
Droidcon covers all things Android, from mobile devices, to TV, to cars, to gaming, and so much more. October 24-27th, 2013. They’ll be hosting leading innovators and creators of Android technology like Hans Dockter of Gradleware fame; Eric Lafortune, the creator of Proguard and Dexguard; rising indie game star Nicoll Hunt; and Dan Lew and Chris Arvin from Expedia - these are just a few of the big names you'll see at Droidcon London!

appsworld Developer Conference & Exhibition (www.apps-world.net) 
Developer Conference & Exhibition: Now in its 4th year, Apps World has grown to be the leading global multi-platform event in the app industry. With 12 targeted workshop tracks, speed meeting, one-to-one meetings, parties, and awards the event will be tackling a spectrum of issues across the app ecosystem.

TOOLS

Mini Mobile Device Lab (github.com)

There is a real problem testing web pages across multiple devices and the browsers that run on them. The best solutions today are to either enter a url to a tool to manage the devices or use applications across the devices, keeping them open and testing in a WebView. This project is a Virtual Device Lab. It allows you to quickly launch url's across all of a configured devices in an instant, selecting which browser to launch. This is still in early stages of development, which means you can probably expect things to break, but we'd love help, bugs and feature requests.

 

Launching Crashlytics for Android Studio (www.crashlytics.com) 
Crashlytics, a light weight and cross-platform crash logging solution, has just released their plugin for Android Studio. The plugin automates setting up your application to report all exceptions to their web app.

Android Studio 0.2.11 Released (tools.android.com) 
Several great changes have been included in the latest Android Studio release.

SPECIALS

3D Printed Android Jelly Bean and Kit Kat (www.etsy.com)

Always wanted a 3D version of the Android Jelly Bean or Kit Kat? Well here's your chance! This etsy store has it in various colors.