Posts tagged Tutorial
Debugging websites on mobile devices with Opera Mobile and Dragonfly
Aug 24th
I have previously written about how you can debug mobile websites with a tool called Weinre. Now I will explain another way to debug sites, this time, with Opera Mobile, and Opera Dragonfly.
I will be demonstrating this on a Galaxy S 2, with Opera Mobile 11.10 on Android and Opera desktop version 11.50.
This is Opera Mobile, not Mini, which is a different browser.
This will not work for iPhone or iPad since Opera Mobile is not allowed into App store since it is too “similar to safari”.
As we developers know, it is quite difficult and cumbersome to inspect a websites source code, css, javascript or layout, from a mobile browser, like you can in a desktop browser with tools like Firebug.
Dragonfly is a tool that can be used to debug and edit websites on your mobile device, from your desktop computer.
I will be showing how to connect to your phone, and start debugging away!
The easiest way to create nice icons for Android apps
Dec 26th
In this article I will show you a very easy way to create nice looking icon drawables you can use in your Android applications.
Using this method we can easily skip through the difficult and time-consuming parts of creating icons.
Yes, I know this method does not work for everyone, some Android developers have their own designer and so on, but for a small and simple app, this will definateley do!
The problem
Creating icons for Android apps may sound simple, but in fact, it is not as easy as it sounds…
There are a number of different icon categories, here are a couple of them:
- Launcher icons – The applications main icon
- Menu icons – The icons on the menu you get when pressing the menu button on your device
- Tab icons – Icons on tabs
- Status bar notification icons – Icons for your apps notifications
When creating icons for Android, you should create icons for different screen densities:
- Low density – ldpi – 36×36 px
- Medium density – mdpi – 48×48 px
- High density – hdpi – 72×72 px
(You can read more about the different icon dimensions here. Note: The dimensions in bold above, are for menu icons)
The Problem: Creating all those different icon types in several densities, with the right gradient color, shadow, borders, selected/unselected state etc, can be a time-consuming and irritating process.
We would like to save us some time!
Stretching and Spanning layouts in Android
Dec 20th
When I was working on my BF2Stats Android app, I had to find out how to place 2 widgets/layout elements on the same horizontal line, while keeping them stretched at the same time so they are filling the width of the screen.
It took me a little research before I found a solution, so I will share two methods with you today.
This tutorial will show you how to create layouts that stretches in the width.
In Eclipse I create a new Android Project by going to File -> New -> Other -> Android -> Android Project. The default project just using the main.xml file for these example layouts will do just fine.
We can create a stretching layout with two different methods; Layout Weights and Layout Spans, I will show a simple example of both, and then I will show how to center an element in a TableLayout with Layout Spans.
How to try out the new Android 2.3 – Gingerbread!
Dec 6th
Gingerbread comes with lots of new nice features and improvements, you can read about them here. Or you can watch the official video, to get a quick overview:
Altough testing the OS in an AVD, does not compare to the real device in terms of speed and awesomeness, It is the closest you can get right now.
Getting Android 2.3 up and running on your computer is an easy task, I previously created a very simple-to-follow tutorial how to get started with Android development. Installing Android 2.3 is much the same thing, so I assume you are coming from that guide, or already has a development environment set up.
Here is what we need to do:
Getting Started With Android – Setting Up The Development Environment
Nov 26th
The reason for using Eclipse is because there exists an Android development plug-in for Eclipse, which makes things easier for us developers. Also, Eclipse is a good and Open Source IDE. Eclipse can also be used for other languages such as PHP, C++ and Ruby, it also has a very good Subversion plug-in for using repositories.
Developing Android applications, and using these tools described here, does not cost you anything.