Recently, while working on a mobile project, I found myself spending a lot of time connecting a device, uninstalling the previous version of the Application Under Test (AUT), installing the new one, and then disconnecting the device, just to do it again on another 3 or 4 devices (I would like to talk about why it is better to test on actual devices than in a simulator, but that topic…
There are more wireframing tools these days to choose from than ever. It seems to be getting quite a crowded market. Being in software development for many years, and now primarily focused on Android and iOS device software, wireframing is an essential step with client requirements, defining the structural layout and flow of the screens and defining how the app will work, before you write one line of app code. Clients need to understand how…
With a specific client application, we had to apply the customer’s “brand” font for all controls of the UI. It was quite a custom project, a heavily branded UI request. Seems to be a common enough font request right? Yeah, I was thinking the same. But then I was surprised that Android doesn’t provide simple and elegant way to do this. So, in this blog post, I’ll show you what option we have by default on…
Do you need a better understanding of the steps considered when creating an app, with updates and the ongoing advertising and marketing? Well you wouldn’t be on this page if you weren’t. Let Visual Design give you a little insight into the steps and phases we implement on every app project that we are commissioned to undertake. Have a read… Each app is completely different, however our tried and tested mobile app development process is…
ViewPager scrolling downside. I truly like Android ViewPager component. It can be used in so many ways: from app navigation to gallery like screens. On the other hand, ViewPager is not very useful whether or not it’s nested right proper into a container with vertical scrolling. For example ViewPager within ScrollView or ListView with ViewPager as a listing merchandise view. Say for instance: you drag the ViewPager‘s internet web page to view the next one, and aghhh the horizontal scrolling is disrupted and parent vertical scrolling begins. Why is it that…
We often consult on Android projects that need bugs and issue fixed, or more advanced features developed. When doing this, we often pull from some repo’s (SVN Repositories), and when adding these to your IDE workspace, (Eclipse IDE, in our case) an issue sometimes occurs when checking in a large or heavy sized Android project. One Android Dev: Eclipse IDE setting issue I often see is: Unable to execute dex: GC overhead limit exceeded Have you…
In addition to the many user-facing improvements in the latest incarnation of Android announced yesterday, there are a number of interesting security improvements, which seem to indicate that Google have not totally neglected platform security in this new release. This article will run through what’s new, and what it means for you. SELinux in Enforce Mode In Android 4.4, SELinux has moved from running in permissive mode (which simply logs failures), into enforcing mode. SELinux, which was…
Targeting screen size and resolution
Here are some personal tips collected over the last while for making Android apps more slicker, and less buggy when it comes to UI & layout design. There are currently over 100 different screen sizes on Android, and an even greater profusion of resolutions. To make your app look good on different screen configurations there are two things you’ll need to make sure of: You have a good layout or structure…
Google announced multiple APK support on Google Play, which allows you to transfer various forms of a APK file for a single app posting, instead of having to upload a single APK for each adaptation of your app. Explained in more detail below, is how this new feature can help solve some of your development issues when publishing to Google Play. At Google I/O, Google had announced plans to add several capabilities to help developers…
Graphic designers aren’t programmers and sometimes don’t know how to best prepare graphic assets for developers. This simple cheat sheet should help them to do their job better and should simplify developers’ lives. Petr Nohejl has released the following under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Covering from: Dimensions Screen densities and icon dimensions Google Play asset dimensions Size buckets Views dimensions and spacing Action bar…