September, 2008 - Android Community

Congratulations to the AndroidGuys!

By Chris Davies
on 7 Sep, 2008

One of the milestones for any new technology is when the mainstream press finally pick up on the work that the blogging community are doing to publicize, develop and generally promote interest. We'd therefore like to say congratulations to AndroidGuys, who featured today in a New York Times piece about Google's Android and the site's recent spate of insider news. The primary reason we all write - and read other sites - about Android is because we're enthusiasts, and, while we may spend our days racing each other for the next big story, we're also pleased when any of us gain recognition for that enthusiasm. In the end, that's what makes for interesting content for you!

Android Photostream App

By Vincent Nguyen
on 4 Sep, 2008

Google just announced a new open source sample application called Photostream. Photostream has been added to the aapps-for-android project, and it's available for you to test drive.

Photostream is a simple photos browser and viewer for Flickr. All you need to use it is a Flickr screen name or user name (the application offers a default user name if you just want to try it.) This application serves as an illustrative example of several Android features and APIs:

Activity aliases
Adding custom shortcuts to Home
Adding a new wallpaper chooser to the system
Custom layouts
Custom XML attributes
Use of themes
Use of styles
Use of text colors
Use of <include>
Use of bitmap and layer drawables from XML
Use of HttpClient
Proper interaction between background threads and the UI thread
Efficient display rotation (using the new onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() API)
Animations and layout animations
Cropping an image
Image manipulation

My favorite feature is the ability to add a new shortcut type in Home, to create a shortcut to any Flickr account. The shortcut shows a custom icon, downloaded from the Flickr user profile:

If you plan on reusing the source code to access Flickr in your own application, you should modify the Flickr.java file to replace the existing API key with your own. The application source code also contains a very handy class called UserTask.java. This class is designed to help you easily write background operations that interact with the UI thread.

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Google Chrome coming to Android

By Brenda Stokes
on 3 Sep, 2008

The new web browser, Google Chrome, launched yesterday and while it is initially intended for your PC, expect to see it on Android in the near future. Google co-founder, Sergey Brin revealed a few interesting tidbits about the Chrome/Android connection yesterday during the browser's launch event. As both Android and Chrome near their 1.0 releases, it is expected the two will begin to work together, even though they were developed mostly on separate terms. "Probably a subsequent version of Android is going to pick up a lot of the Chrome stack," said Brin and cited JavaScript improvements as an example. And "Chrome-like" is an example of what the mobile version of Chrome would be called in order to indicate both its relation to the full blown PC version and its mobile status. The age of complete mobile browsing is upon us! [via Webware at CNET]