Author Archives: Josh Dale

ActionBar Design Patterns on Pre-API 11 Devices

Posted on by
Reply

The folks over at Android Developers have released some sample code to implement Action Bar design patterns for pre-API 11 devices. The code and concepts have been around for some time now, and many developers have been implementing 3rd-party libraries to achieve this goal (ActionBarSherlock and GreenDroid). Now with the latest code release of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, developers need to consider standardized design elements across all API levels.

The main goal of the ActionBar is to provide vital information to the user about your application. This is also a great place to use your icon or logo for brand recognition and consistent navigations throughout the app. Now the user subliminally thinks about your logo as a specific navigational action. If the user needs to return to the home screen in the app, they have to visualize your brand.

Continue reading →

Everybody Loves Vibrating Toasts

Posted on by
Reply

I came across an interesting idea on stackoverflow.com for Toast notifications on Android.

It’s a simple class that extends Toast. We will modify the constructor to vibrate your device when this new Toast is displayed on screen. Below is the ~5 lined class:

public class VibratingToast extends Toast {
	public VibratingToast(Context context, CharSequence text, int duration) {
		super(context);

		((Vibrator) context.getSystemService(Context.VIBRATOR_SERVICE)).vibrate(300);

		super.makeText(context, text, duration).show();
	}
}
view raw VibratingToast.java This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Continue reading →

RESTclient for Blackberry

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, I’ve ventured out into the Blackberry app development space and found that some documentation is lacking for developers to create awesome applications for that platform. After searching around Google, Stack Overflow, and RIM’s developer zone, I came to the conclusion that there isn’t any good examples of how to implement a REST client effectively in a Blackberry Java-based environment.

REST clients are a mobile app developers best friend. They allow developers to make lightweight network calls to useful APIs such as the Graph API, Twitter’s API, and Google’s family of APIs including Maps, Google+, and Youtube. I came across a great example, RESTclient for Android by Tyler Smith, and used this implementation to create a foundation for a Blackberry REST client.

Continue reading →