This post is inspired by Cyril Mottier’s post about Dart for Android. If you haven’t read it already, please read it first. Mostly I think Cyril’s arguments are valid. I wouldn’t object to another language besides Java. Especially since the ability to use the new features of Java 8 might still be far away on […]  Continue Reading  “About Cyril Mottier’s “Shaping the Future of Android With Dart” – Some Additional Thoughts”

This is a new series about programming blunders I make. Stuff that keeps me looking for solutions in all the wrong places while the answer most often is glaringly simple. If only I knew that right away! I am sorry for the generalization in the headline – of course it’s only me doing stupid stuff […]  Continue Reading  “Stupid mistakes devs make, part I: Taking app messages at face value”

In this post I am going to write about the server-side of upstream messages with Google Cloud Messaging. This is the second part of my three-part series on this topic. If you haven’t read the first part about the flow of events and the Android implementation of upstream messaging, please read that one first. The […]  Continue Reading  “An XMPP Server for Google Cloud Messaging”

Google announced a new messaging model with Google Cloud Messaging on last years Google IO. This model allows for upstream messaging and for user specific notifications. This post is the first in a three-part series in which I am going to look into both these changes and to show you how to use them. I […]  Continue Reading  “Upstream Messages With Google Cloud Messaging”

Google announced a new set of tools this week to help developers publish their Chrome apps on iOS and Android. That’s the next logical step by Google to win over more developers for Chrome apps. In September Google already announced that from then on developers could publish their Chrome apps as offline apps, allowing users […]  Continue Reading  “Chrome-Apps on mobile devices – a good idea?”

Quite a while ago I ordered a Peak+ FirefoxOS phone at geeksphone.com. Alas after some delay it finally was cancelled – so I settled for the smaller version, the normal Peak. About a week or two ago it finally was delivered. After some very short initial testing I had more pressing things to do. But […]  Continue Reading  “FirefoxOS – my Initial Impression”

In July 2013 Google announced ActionBarCompat as part of its support library package. This library makes it easy to use the Action Bar that have to support older devices. Many have waited for this to happen ever since the Action Bar was introduced with Honeycomb. I, though, didn’t expect that to happen. After all the […]  Continue Reading  “Migrating from ActionBarSherlock to ActionBarCompat”

The sample app for my post about ActionViews is on Bitbucket. Besides Actionviews it serves also as the sample app for how to add ActionBarSherlock to projects, and for adding action items from within fragments. Here’s a screenshot of the demo: I plan on generating the scaffold for my demo apps so that I only […]  Continue Reading  “ActionViews Sample App is on Bitbucket”

SQLite is at the heart of Android’s database support. This database was developed with embedded environments in mind – and is used not only by Android but also by Apple’s iOS and Blackberry’s system as well as lots of other systems with low memory footprint and comparatively little CPU horsepower. Why SQLite in the first […]  Continue Reading  “SQLite in Android”

This year the German IT trade show CeBIT tried something new: A conference for mobile developers, called moosecon (mobile operating system conference). The conference lasted three days, of which I was present at two, Wednesday and Thursday. Here’s a short recap of the talks, I visited. Wednesday – March 6, 2013 / day one Thanks […]  Continue Reading  “Two Days at the moosecon Conference”