Hello

howdy, Ales!

how can I help you today?

Much better than tuesday :)

Just one quick question. Can I call Toast from a service?

I think so

Dialogs are a problem, but I'm reasonably sure toasts work

I don't do it, personally

I read somewhere that it pops up in front of active activity

But not in my case :)

it has to

it's not part of any activity

are you sure the code block where you are show()-ing the Toast is being invoked?

It should go to queue right

AFAIK, Toasts are not part of the message queue

I think they go straight to the window manager that underlies Android's GUI

they aren't?

oh didn't know that

btw I really like your books :)

certainly, from a display standpoint, no activity shows the Toast -- that's a window manager thing

thanks!

With every update everything gets clearer

Explanations I mean...

If I have a list of news items with images, is it best to download all images to phone first? Because it seems to be very slow if they are downloading concurrently with news stroy for example.

no, I would download them only when needed

not everybody has an unlimited data plan

and unlimited data plans are not really unlimited

show a placeholder image, then swap in the actual image when it is ready

I have a ThumbnailAdapter and ThumbnailActivity that wrap up the pattern

However, I need to rewrite that someday -- the interface is fine, but the underlying caching logic is messy

Is a game hard to programm (create) for beginners?

Beats me

I haven't written a game in two decades

Not my cup o' tea, as it were

I looked on market and games always have a lot of downloads, much more then apps

That's very possible

Still trying to solve than ANR, it's making me crazy :)

did you post an issue to StackOverflow?

Well, not yet. It's hard to explain

ok

My app currently looks like this http://tehnik.mobitel.si/wp-content/upload…

It's my first project :)

nice!

though the green-and-orange theme is not quite my style :-)

did you do the icons and backgrounds yourself, or do you have somebody else who does your graphic work for you?

Not my fault :) Designer did GUI

ah, OK

It's kind of RSS app

So I have like news, weather, traffic on top

for Slovenia, presumably

Those are my main activities.

How do you know

Oh

From image :)

yeah, I can't read much on there, but I figured that Slovenia was a good guess

nicely done

Those are sections like World, Sport, Politics, Tech,...

Below is a RSS icon

There is my problem with ANR. If I start my application and access it with long click it works fine.

"access it with long click" -- what is "it"?

But if I switch between those icons on top and then go to RSS source selections ANR show up

onlong...

"it" is the RSS button?

Yes

I mean activity starts

what happens when you long click on it (and it works -- not the ANR case)?

A list of sources displays

where are those sources coming from: a local database, an HTTP request, or something else?

You don't have emulator handy right?

sure

Database, but there only are like 6 or so

OK, so that shouldn't be the problem

Would you mind trying apk?

often times, with apps like this, you accidentally do an HTTP request on the main application thread, and that can cause problems

trying the APK probably will not help

since I don't have the source

probably the ANR is coming when the sources activity is starting up

the most likely culprits, then, are whatever work you are doing in onCreate(), onStart(), or onResume()

Hmm, maybe image downloading... But as I mention list does show up very fast. I just can't check any of my checkboxes

oh, right

forgot about that

OK, so you long-press the RSS feed button, the sources list is displayed, and then you get ANRs when you try interacting with the list -- right?

correct

then something else is stealing the main application thread after onResume()

otherwise, you wouldn't see the list

And it always works fine if I go to sources list immediately after I start my app.

the ANR dialog will tend to appear when you try tapping on an activity and your touch events are just getting queued up

that may mean that the sources activity is not the problem, but something else (e.g., those images) is

double-check to make sure all of your HTTP operations are done in AsyncTasks or otherwise on a background thread

also, the images that you are downloading -- are they really the right size, or are you downloading full-size images and then having to scale them to be thumbnails?

No scaling in app

OK, then that's not it

Oh one more question

HTTP operations, Thread.sleep(), infinite loops -- those are the typical ANR sources I've encountered

When I say ImageView with android:width="100dp". What happens with image if it's bigger?

it gets scaled

or cropped

see android:scaleType for the options

So there is some scaling i guess

are you downloading really big images that are being scaled? or is it that you are downloading thumbnails but not quite the right size?

No no i do thumnails on web server

But since devices have different resolution

ah, I see

Android probably scales a bit

you have two choices

1. what you're presently doing

2. have different thumbnails on your server, and download the right set

in that case, you wouldn't use 100dp, but rely on the image itself to have the right size (e.g., android:layout_width="wrap_content")

and you'd have different directories or filenames or URL parameters or something to get the right thumbnail for this density

advantages: crisper images, less on-device CPU usage

disadvantages: more server code and complexity

I should do that yes.. still a lot of devices to cover :)

I must learn proper DPI conversion though

Any Gingerbread news yet :)

latest rumors say it'll ship today

hasn't shipped yet, though

Wow only me today :) Was packed two days ago

yeah, these chats are feast or famine

usually they are fairly quiet

the 4pm Eastern time is a new one, and so maybe there is pent-up West Coast demand or somethign

er, something

It's 16:51 here :)

Slovenia

But you are just starting your day

yes, I am surprised you were on Tuesday's chat, as that is rather late in your time zone

It wasn't to bad. It was like 16 right?

So it was about 22 here

right

Those 20:00 are a killer :)

well, yeah

that's why I rotate between times as best I can

to try to give everybody a shot at a reasonable hour

Well Mark, thank you very much for your time.

sure! happy to help!

Keep regular book updates and we'll be more than happy

I do my best

Thanks again, bye