Transparency – Part 2

In the previous article in this series we looked at some dry examples which demonstrated some important aspects of using transparency in our UI. In this article we shall have a look at some real-world examples of how we can use transparency.

Google TV – Part 3

In the previous article we explored some of the difference in developing for Google TV compared to the Android phones and tablets that we’ve become accustomed to. In this concluding article in this series, we’ll have a look at some UI & UX considerations that we need to take in to account when designing apps…

Google TV – Part 2

In the previous article we got an overview of Google TV and some of the features which offer developers the potential to create some interesting apps. In this article we’ll look at some of the differences between developing for Google TV compared to the Android phone and tablet devices that we’ve become used to.

Google TV – Part 1

Recently those nice folks at Google sent me a Logitec Revue which implements Google TV. Having played with it for a few weeks here are some initial thoughts about how best to design your UI / UX for this platform.

More Drawables – Part 1

In recent articles on Styling Android I have diverged a little from pure UI and covered some more subtle aspects to improve your UX. In this series we’re going to return to something that was covered in the very first post to Styling Android: Drawables. Previously we have looked at how shape drawables can be…

Memory Cache – Part 4

In the previous part of this series we implemented a simple memory cache based upon WeakReference. It certainly improved performance when we were using the same image multiple times within a short period, but it is easy to predict that our cached images would not survive an intensive operation, such as an Activity transition. Also,…

Memory Cache – Part 3

In the previous part of this series we looked at why caching images may help the performance of our app, so let’s firstly look at a technique for creating a short-lived cache. The items in the cache will only survive until the next GC if they are not strongly referenced, but this can sometimes be…