| Dec 8 | 1:50 PM |
| Mark M. | has entered the room |
| Dec 8 | 1:55 PM |
| Mark M. | turned on guest access |
| Dec 8 | 2:00 PM |
| Scott Q. | has entered the room |
| Scott Q. | Hi Mark |
| Mark M. | Hello! |
| Scott Q. | I have a basic layout question for you. |
| Scott Q. | The
layout I'm trying to implement seems like it should be pretty
commonplace, yet for some reason I cannot achieve the results I am
after. |
| Alexadru B. | has entered the room |
| Scott Q. | Basically,
I just want a container inside which I can programmatically add
variably lengthed buttons in rows from left to right - if a button is
too long to fit inside the container in the current row, it should
appear as the first button in a new row below. |
| Scott Q. | View paste
|
| Mark M. | Scott Quinney: no there is no layout that supports that concept |
| Mark | has entered the room |
| Mark M. | Hello, Alexadru B! |
| Mark | hello |
| Alexadru B. | Hi, I just wanted to stop by and see what others are having problems with |
| Alexadru B. | who knows when I may have the same problem :) |
| Mark M. | Hi, Other Mark! |
| Mark | hi Mark M |
| Mark | well, is it cool if I pose a question? |
| Mark | if nobody has started yet? |
| Dec 8 | 2:05 PM |
| Mark M. | @Mark: Scott asked a question, but I am not sure if he is done. |
| Mark | no prob, will wait my turn! |
| Scott Q. | yep, thats about it -- just not quite understanding how to achieve the described layout... |
| Scott Q. | seems like one that should already be written |
| Mark M. | Scott Quinney: Your question has come up on lists before, and there is no out-of-the-box solution |
| Scott Q. | ok -- good to know....just wanted to make sure there was some fundamental misunderstand I had before I write the view |
| Mark M. | Scott Quinney: If you pull it off, consider making it open source! I'm sure others would benefit. |
| Scott Q. | thanks for your help |
| Mark M. | @Mark: did you have a question? |
| Mark | yep - this should be a simple one - it's about Activities and launch modes |
| Mark | was looking through your book to see if there's info on this, maybe you know |
| Dec 8 | 2:10 PM |
| Mark | sorry, don't think my message got posted |
| Mark | my app has two activities, A and B |
| Mark | A can launch B from a simple button |
| Mark | when I install my app from marketplace or from the browser (as a raw apk file), I get a weird behavior |
| Mark | if
market installer or browser installer opens my app, it runs fine - but
if I hit the home screen key, then try to resume my app from the app
tray |
| Mark | i will get two instances of my app running |
| Mark | and this actually happens with all apps I download from market place, that don't use the singleTask flag, I think |
| Mark M. | Hang on a second |
| Mark M. | I
don't have my mail archives at the ready, but I've seen your posts on
this topic, particularly if your last name begins with "Wy". |
| Mark | yep, that's me! |
| Mark M. | Unfortunately, I saw the posts and hoped you'd find an answer somewhere. |
| Mark | I know this is an eclipse "bug", but it seems that marketplace and browser installer use the same intent launching flag |
| Mark | ah ok no prob - that leads me to my follow up question then |
| Mark | do you find it better then to write an application using a single activity, if possible? |
| Mark | because in that case, I could simply use the singleTask flag to get around this issue |
| Mark M. | Uh, well, not really. |
| Dec 8 | 2:15 PM |
| Mark M. | The issue of how many activities to use is much bigger than how the initial launch after install behaves. |
| Mark M. | The last consulting gig I did had about a dozen activities, maybe more. |
| Mark | ok gotcha, thought maybe I was going crazy with that launcher behavior, and maybe everyone else was using single activities |
| Mark | it's just confusing for the user, I guess, but only really happens the first time they run the app |
| Mark | thanks |
| Mark M. | I'm
sure many apps do use just one activity, but probably most of those
don't have enough functionality to warrant more than one. |
| Mark M. | Did you get any answers from any Googlers on the issue? |
| Mark | none,
there's a bug logged for the Eclipse launch issue, and I added a
comment that marketplace/browser package installers use the same exact
launch flags, and exhibit the same behavior |
| Mark M. | Do you have the issue number or URL handy? |
| Mark | yep, one sec let me grab it |
| Mark | someone just added a funny comment to it this morning |
| Mark | |
| Dec 8 | 2:20 PM |
| Mark M. | You
might consider opening a fresh issue on it. Normally, I don't advise
that, but in this case, the market/browser install facet may get
greater attention than the Eclipse facet. |
| Mark | good
point, I'll do that - yeah I think most users don't notice the issue,
they just hit the back button repeatedly and that clears the whole
messed up stack out, then they forget about it |
| Mark M. | By keeping this mostly as an "Eclipse" issue by title and category, it's going to be routed to a smaller team inside Google. |
| Mark | will-do |
| Mark | thanks! |
| Mark M. | Yes,
it's not a show-stopper for users, which is why I wouldn't design an
app to try to avoid it, but it would be nice to have the recipe to fix
it, if there is such a recipe. |
| Mark | agreed, that's why I was toying with the singleTask flag |
| Mark | but that flag doesn't retain your history stack for some reason |
| Mark | when you resume your app, it always clears back to the root activity |
| Mark | oh well |
| Mark M. | Frankly, I try to avoid messing with those flags to the extent possible. |
| Mark | haha yeah, Dianne Hackbod seemed to agree with that |
| Mark | does anyone else have a question, I have 2 more, but don't want to block out others |
| Dec 8 | 2:25 PM |
| Mark M. | @Mark: I think you can go ahead |
| Mark | ok,
so my app has to let users take a picture with the camera - I read your
chapter on the camera preview, works great. Just wondering, all I want
to do is let users snap a photo, then get that image back to my app |
| Mark | is it worth implementing all that myself, or better to use the camera intent? |
| Mark | one down side with the camera intent: |
| Scott Q. | has left the room |
| Mark | looks like it has two 'buttons' after the user snaps a photo: "attach" or "cancel" |
| Mark | if I can't modify those through the intent, it might not be usable |
| Mark M. | I
haven't used the camera Intent. From the discussions I've seen of
people who use it, I get the sense I'd be enough of a "type A"
personality that I'll want the more direct control over the user
experience. |
| Mark M. | As you can see, for simple stuff, it's not that much code. |
| Mark M. | Note, though, there is a bug in my book implementation. |
| Mark M. | I call stopPreview() before calling takePicture() on the Camera. |
| Mark M. | That's not necessary and actually crashes the DROID (due to a bug in the DROID itself). |
| Mark M. | You
do need to call startPreview() once the picture is taken, though -- the
preview automatically stops but does not automatically restart,
apparently. |
| Dec 8 | 2:30 PM |
| Mark | hmm interesting - yeah I will have to test that out on the droid then, thanks for the heads up |
| Mark | On the Market chapter |
| Mark | when we release an app, versionNumber = 1 for example |
| Mark | if we upload a new version of our app, we increment the version # |
| Dec 8 | 2:35 PM |
| Mark | how will the phone deal with install of the new version - will it erase data we've written to our own sandbox? |
| Mark M. | If by "our own sandbox" you mean local databases or files from getFilesDir() and the like, those will be left intact. |
| Mark M. | If
you use SQLiteOpenHelper, and your schema version # changes, then your
onUpgrade() method will be invoked to let you upgrade your schema. |
| Mark M. | The only time local files/databases/shared prefs are removed is if the user uninstalls the app. |
| Mark | great, makes sense |
| Dec 8 | 2:40 PM |
| Mark M. | @Mark:
rolling back to your first question, if you open a new ticket, shoot me
the URL so I can star it. With luck, I'll cobble together the time to
run some experiments of my own and see if I can noodle out a workaround. |
| Mark | yeah will-do, I'm thinking they're just going to say "this is expected behavior" and close it! |
| Dec 8 | 2:45 PM |
| Mark | I
don't know how the task system works internally -
eclipse/marketplace/browser - they all launch the app with that
NEW_TASK flag |
| Mark M. | Eh, doubt it on that issue. |
| Mark | so *technically* i guess it is, making a new task? |
| Mark M. | Off
the cuff, I suspect it's a case of somebody thinking it was a good idea
at the time, a long time ago, and nobody having really raised the issue
since. |
| Mark M. | That
doesn't mean it'll necessarily get fixed quickly, and it may be there
is some backwards-compatibility reason they will never truly fix it. |
| Mark M. | But "this is expected behavior" seems unlikely to me. |
| Mark M. | Does anyone have any other questions? |
| Dec 8 | 2:50 PM |
| Mark | opening
the issue now, it'll probably take more than 10 minutes to write it up
with examples and all, should I send email to whatever contact info is
on the commonsware site? |
| Mark | (for the url so you can star the issue) |
| Mark M. | mmurphy@commonsware.com will work |
| Mark | ok cool I'll send it out in a bit, thanks |
| Mark M. | Well,
lacking other questions, I will close down this office hours session. I
may not be able to squeeze in any hours next week, but I should have
some in the latter half of December. |
| Dec 8 | 2:55 PM |
| Alexadru B. | sounds good |
| Alexadru B. | bye |
| Mark | cool, thanks Mark, great book too |
| Alexadru B. | has left the room |
| Mark M. | Thanks! |
| Mark | has left the room |
| Mark M. | turned off guest access |