Memory Cache – Part 1

Previously on Styling Android we have discussed how important it is to make your app as fast as possible because making your user wait for things to happen is a sure way to drive them away from your app. Also, you have to be quite careful when it comes to using images within your app…

Background Tasks – Part 6

In the previous article we discussed the Android Service architecture and looked at how to properly implement your Service to both behave well and avoid being killed by the OS or a TaskKiller. In this concluding article in this series well look at IntentService and look at ways that we can trigger UI updates from…

Background Tasks – Part 4

In the previous article we had a look at AsyncTask as saw how it simplified the process of performing background tasks, but saw some potential pitfalls to the newbie, and also saw how it leaves the potential to leak a Context. In Honeycomb Loader was introduced and in this article we’ll have a look at…

Background Tasks – Part 3

Previously we looked at using standard threads to keep things off the UI thread and also covered various mechanisms for getting execution back on to the UI thread for when we need to update View objects. However our code was beginning to get quite messy with us having to define lots of Runnables in order…

Background Tasks – Part 2

In the previous article in this series we looked at the UI thread and explored the reason why it is important that we keep any slow, intensive, or blocking tasks off the UI thread. In this article we’ll begin exploring the tools available to help us to achieve that.

Background Tasks – Part 1

Regular readers of Styling Android will understand that it is dedicated to improving the look & feel (UI) and User Experience (UX) of Android apps. One particular area in which we can really frustrate our users is when the app does not respond to their touches / clicks, and it is vital that we keep…

VerticalText – Part 2

In the previous article in this series we began looking at how we can creat vertical text on Android. When searching for a solution to this problem I found was another approach that appealed to me because it is just plain sneaky! Also, it uses a vanilla TextView control and doesn’t break any of its…

VerticalText – Part 1

Recently I was working on a project where I had free reign over the UI, and felt that it would be very nice to have some vertically oriented text. On searching through the Android API docs, I found that rotating Views isn’t supported directly, but a quick Google search found a number of approaches. In…

Compound Drawables

I recently learned about a small feature in Android which has been there since API level 1 (the variant that we’ll use has been in there since API 3, but others appeared in API 1): Compound Drawables. In this article we’ll have a look at what they are and see how we can use them…