howdy, Kevin!

Good morning

how can I help you today?

I'm having some problems with ListViews

1. Trying to get the height of an item to be bigger on tablets

2. Custom listview items that have clickable items

1. Use a different rendition for your row layout that is bigger, putting it in res/layout-large/

2. You would need to be more specific

For #2, I have a listview item that has a layout with a checkbox, & 2 textview items. I want to click on the checkbox and/or textview items

Seems as if the setOnItemClickListener doesn't work after that

For #1 I try not to use xml but code in the layout

For #1, then I can't help you

As far as I am concerned, for multiple screen sizes, anyone not using layout XML is asking for pain and suffering

for #2, that is correct

I think that rows should either be clickable or have clickable elements, not both

I think there's some solution that involves making the clickable elements not focusable

but I haven't tried it

I have had so much trouble getting simple layouts working. LinearLayout & RelativeLayout are a pain

Seems like they should just work

LinearLayout is trivial

RelativeLayout takes a bit of getting used to

the new drag-and-drop stuff in Eclipse should help

particularly after this summer's next update

(i.e., the stuff they previewed at I|O)

I watched the google I/O talk and tried the current version in Eclipse and RelativeLayout didn't work well

I've written my own custom layout that works pretty well but has a few kinks (and it is a pain to get working)

yeah, I tried once to create a custom ViewGroup subclass and failed miserably

it's on my list of things to try again someday

I created a GridLayout that for the most part works but every once in awhile when I create a new layout, there are some issues

I could let you have it to look at, see what you think

that SO question should help with #2

For #2, I've tried almost everything. Making the items not focusable, not clickable, writing custom touch events etc

not sure I can help you with either question, then

Nothing works well. I looked at the built in checkbox support and that works by a custom control with 2 items in it

what is supposed to happen if the user clicks on the row?

So, for checkbox items they use listPreferredItemHeight for the layout height. I wonder what that is

listPreferredItemHeight is probably defined in an SDK style

you can find a res/values/styles.xml in your SDK installation

So I want to display the title of a list item when they click on it

yeah, OK, can't help there

So how goes the books?

if your objective was that clicking a row should toggle the checkbox, the row layout would simply have to implement the Checkable interface, IIRC

books are going

wrapping up restoring some of the older tutorials back to that book

gonna need to Eclipse-ify two of the books later this year

I have to say that it seems like I'm always learning more stuff about Android all the time

NFC stuff should be coming to the Advanced Android title soon

I'd like to build a Honeycomb app soon

ideally, you've done some work with fragments and the action bar by, say, October

I suspect that this holiday's phones will mostly run Ice Cream Sandwich

and some of the Honeycomb structures will be coming with it

I started on it but got stuck on the layout stuff

I can understand

howdy, Tarique

Hi Mark!

Tarique: do you have a question?

Heloo everyone

No, not really, Just want to check the chat room and say hello9

ah, OK

the chat room tends to be more focused on people with questions, not so much just for hanging out

but, you are welcome to lurk if you'd like

I may have in the future as I am going to start developing.

Kevin: back to #1, usually the list rows' heights are dictated by their contents

so, you'd need to detect the large screen device (e.g., use Configuration object, or possibly DisplayMetrics) and create the larger structures in Java

Good bye Mark

Tarique: see ya!

I have a ViewGroup that is set to wrap_content

should it be fill_content on the height?

no, wrap_content is correct

but you just need bigger content if you want the rows to be bigger

So, my first screen is a simple listview but on my tablet it is really small

what is "it" that is "really small"?

Should I check the DisplayMetrics and divide the height to get the row height?

probably not

The text in the row

then use a bigger font

I would still probably need to check how much space I have

detect large-screen devices and change whatever font size you are using with your TextView and CheckBox

you should not care "how much space" you have, just the general class of screen size

Is there a call that says that this is a large screen?

yeah, I was just looking for that

the screenLayout member on Configuration is what you'd want

you get a Configuration object from getResources().getConfiguration() in your activity

Yes, there is a screenlayout

Ok. So if I have a large screen, just set the font to a larger size

large or xlarge

Great

with the screenLayout, you'd need to check for both

another possibility is for you to use a dimension resource

res/values/dimens.xml for the normal case

res/values-large/dimens.xml for large

then use the dimension value when you set your font size

only tricky thing here is that I've never used a dimension resource from Java, so I don't know how easy or difficult that will be

On another topic: I have an app out there that doesn't seem to be found by people. How do I get people to find it?

marketing

what's the target user base of the app?

User's of podcasts/music

OK, check with various Android blogs for their review submission guidelines, and find out places where podcast listeners hang out and advertise

Did you enjoy Google IO?

I found it informative but crowded

actually, to some extent, I was pleased as to how crowded it was

Wish I could have gone. Couldn't get in

I was afraid too many of the people who registered were there for HW giveaways

I work down the street from the center

well, you had plenty of time to scout out where to use the grappling hook to climb into an unsecured entrance... :-)

When I went to sign up, it was already booked

FWIW, two Android conferences coming to your area in October/November

Android Open will be at some Hyatt downtown, IIRC

AnDevCon 2011 II will be in Burlingame

OK. Will try and go

Another question. Can I continue an activity when I hit the back button?

define "continue an activity"

So I have a music program that when I start playing, I don't want to shut down when I return to the previous screens

your music playback should be in a service

It is

then the activity should not be affecting the service

did you start the service with startService()?

I guess I just need to not force it to stop when the activity quits

I think that is the problem. I'm binding to the service from the activity

binding alone won't work well for the music player pattern

either use the command pattern with startService(), or use binding but *also* use startService()

then, only call stopService() when the user presses the Stop button (or equivalent in your UI)

I illustrate this in the service chapters of _The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development_

a (fake) music player is one of the samples

So I can bind when I resume but also startService to start the music

I need to bind so that I can pass parameters

you can pass parameters via extras in the Intent you use with startService(), too

that's part of what I illustrate in those chapters

personally, I haven't used both bindService() and startService(), so I don't know if there are any gotchas

I do things like skip, rewind, next song etc

in theory, startService()/stopService() would be tied to UI requests to begin and end playback

you can still use startService() for such commands

but, if you want to stick with bindService(), you can do so, perhaps using most of your existing logic

binding just gets to be a pain with configuration changes

So I use startService to start the music. stopService to stop and binding for the rest

that's one approach

in theory, it should work fine

be sure to use startForeground(), with a Notification that leads the user back to whichever activity has the stop button

got that

I'll give that a try

I found listPreferredItemHeight in themes.xml

ah, OK

64dip

I can never remember which are defined in styles.xml vs. themes.xml

morning

howdy, fitz!

fitz: do you have a question?

ya quick one - how can we program so our stuff in not infected with this new virus stuff - is there a process we can take to assure we are not targeted?

I assume you're referring to stuff like DroidDreamLight?

ya

not really

the perps are pirating apps, injecting their own class, modifying the manifest, and re-releasing them

or is that all programmed to infect and we do not need to worry as long as our code is complied correctly

you can monitor the Android Market for your own app names to see if others show up that look like they might be pirated copies of your app

the act of injecting the malware is probably automated, not sure if they're automating the uploading of the infected stuff to the Market

if you are using LVL or something similar, that *might* help

insofar as they'd have to monkey with the LVL stuff, since it'd be out of sync with their revised package name for your app

ok great thanks - just wanted to confirm and see if we needed to do any more steps - and all sounds good

similarly, you might add smarts to your code that compares the local signature with one stored on your server, but they could disable that, just as pirates who are interested can disable any defenses against LVL

beyond that, I can't think of any defenses off the top o' my head

ok thanks have a great day

you too!

we're running out of time -- any last questions?

That's it from me

ok

bye

have a pleasant day!

You too