Adventures in Android Development – from hobby to play store

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Adventures in Android Development – from hobby to play store

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gdg_android_talk_feb2014

Talk I gave on Android at GDG Feb 2014

On Github brk3 / gdg_android_talk_feb2014

Adventures in Android Development

from hobby to play store

RoidRage

  • Released in July 2011
  • Avg. rating 4.57
  • 493,124 downloads
  • ~ 2 months
- Roidrage is a rage comic maker - First one on Android

Glimmr

  • Released in September 2012
  • Avg. rating 4.36
  • 102,227 downloads
  • ~ 3 months

Now Open Source

- Flickr app - Second to official app on Play Store

Why write an app?

Ever looked at something and thought...

I could do better than that...

Chances are

You can!

because unfortunately

A lot of Android apps suck

- Why - Apps should be a magical experience (Reto Meir) - Not fun to use - Don't integrate with platform - Not on par feature wise with website - Poor UI - Not so much the case as when I started
- But you still don't have to look hard

Getting Started

- What kind of things do you consider when making an app

Initial Commit

  • One Activity
android.app.Activity;
One Fragment 
android.app.Fragment;
Viewpager 
android.support.v4.view.ViewPager
- Bare bones - Playing with flickr colors - Some people do mockups - I had an idea how I wanted it to look

Style Guide

- Style guide - Jan 2012 - Great tips for non designers - Simple things that can make app so much better - Typography - Language stype - Not getting in the user's way - Even the big guys don't get these right!

Development

- At this point using lib called Lazy List to load my images - Images in Android can be a pain - Think of memory consumption - Scaling (memory) - Network - View recycling

Android has great libraries

android-query

https://github.com/androidquery/androidquery - Allowed me to reduce loc by almost 40% - I made some contributions

Picasso

http://square.github.io/picasso/ - Further on Picasso was released - Author of ActionbarSherlock - High quality - Only available on Android 4.0+ 
Picasso.with(context).load("http://i.imgur.com/DvpvklR.png").into(imageView);
- Further on Picasso was released - Author of ActionbarSherlock - High quality - Only available on Android 4.0+

Network Retries

- Lots of areas, but thought this might be of interest - Proud of - Another thing a lot of apps don't do

Tape

http://square.github.io/tape/ - Provides a FIFO queue - Serialise tasks using GSON and store on the queue - Run a service that can execute tasks from the queue, and only remove on success

Shipping

- Note from Brian Acton on their principles for whatsapp - Good guidelines to follow - Look for feedback, if your app is genuine people will use it

Feedback

- Some sites have areas where you can let people know about your app

Localisation

Summary

  • Start Simple
  • Don't reinvent the wheel
  • Have fun
- Start Simple - Iterative process - Take an idea, and go for it - Use the resources available - style guide - Libraries - Twitter - etc - Have fun - Remember it's a hobby - The last 10% is the hardest - If you aren't enjoying yourself you probably won't ship

@brk3

github.com/brk3

brk3.github.io

Thanks

Questions