Office Hours — Today, June 7
| Mark M. | has entered the room |
| Mark M. | turned on guest access |
| Kathy | has entered the room |
| Mark M. |
howdy, Kathy!
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| Kathy |
Hi Mark
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| Mark M. |
how can I help you today?
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| fitz | has entered the room |
| Kathy |
I am working on some checkboxes and would like
circles instead of a checkmark. I saw a reference to btn_circle but
have not been able to find the xml files. Do you know where I might
find them?
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| fitz |
Mark - I just got pulled into a meeting so till next time :)
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| Mark M. |
let me poke around for a moment -- hold on
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| Jun 7 | 7:40 PM |
| fitz | has left the room |
| Mark M. |
Kathy: it is in $ANDROID_SDK/platforms/$VERSION/data/res/drawable
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| Mark M. |
where $ANDROID_SDK is wherever you installed the SDK
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| Mark M. |
and $VERSION is some Android version subdirectory (e.g., android-8)
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| Mark M. |
it is a StateListDrawable
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| Kathy |
I will go look for it now
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| Mark M. |
pointing to a series of PNG files for the different states
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| Kathy |
okay, i found btn_circle, where are the other files it references?
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| Mark M. |
different versions exist in the different density directories
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| Mark M. |
e.g., drawable-hdpi
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| Kathy |
ok, thanks, I found them.
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| Mark M. |
since device manufacturers have a tendency to
tinker with those sorts of resources, you may want to copy them into
equivalent directories in your project
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| Mark M. |
then refer to your local copy as needed
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| Jun 7 | 7:45 PM |
| Kathy |
Good advice, I will do that.
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| Kathy |
View paste
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| Mark M. |
in terms of the "slider", usually people use SeekBar
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| Kathy |
ok, I am trying to find an example of one right now so I know what you are talking about.
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| Mark M. |
in terms of adjusting the brightness of the photo,
if you are really trying to do the photo manipulation on-device, you
probably need to fuss with settings on Bitmap, but I've never done that
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| Mark M. |
yeah, I don't use SeekBar much in my books
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| Kathy |
I am a serious photographer and have wanted to do a
photo app and have been realizing that it is far more difficult than I
first realized and I have a bit of a learning curve.
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| Mark M. |
yes, trying to do photo manipulation on a mobile device won't be trivial
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| Kathy |
A lot of the iphone photo apps use these sliders for adustments.
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| Jun 7 | 7:50 PM |
| Kathy |
I am just beginning to realize what is involved in
doing a photo app, do you have any suggestions on where I might look to
educate myself?
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| Mark M. |
I know very little about photo manipulation
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| Mark M. |
haven't a clue where you'd go learn
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| Mark M. |
sorry
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| Kathy |
I seem to need some basic computer grahics
understanding that I am missing. Any ideas on where I could get started
on just that?
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| Mark M. |
well, Android doesn't have much in the way of built-in APIs for that
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| Kathy |
That is what I am discovering.
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| Mark M. |
so your choices are either to find a Java image processing library...
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| Mark M. |
...or learn C/C++ and integrate something like the ImageMagick library via NDK and JNI
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| Kathy |
I have heard mention of OpenGL, would I be able to use that?
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| Mark M. |
OpenGL is a 3D graphics engine
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| Mark M. |
used mostly for gaming
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| Kathy |
Probably more than what I will need.
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| Mark M. |
not sure how applicable it is to photo manipulation, in large part because I know very little about photo manipulation
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| Mark M. | |
| Mark M. |
if what you were trying to find was what a SeekBar looks like, that's one there
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| Jun 7 | 7:55 PM |
| Kathy |
The seek bar looks like it will work for what I want. Thank you.
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| Mark M. |
users slide the thumb, and you get a value from 0 to whatever maximum you set
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| Kathy |
I have another sort of general question. During
the google question they mentioned using a dashboard to navigate in
apps. Are there any example of code I could look at?
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| Mark M. |
well, the Google I|O app itself uses a dashboard
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| Mark M. |
you can download that on the Market
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| Mark M. |
and the code is available
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| Mark M. | |
| Mark M. |
Roman Nurik (a Googler) also created a custom layout manager for this: https://gist.github.com/882650
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| Mark M. |
that too is part of the Google I|O app
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| Mark M. |
personally, I think dashboards are an OK pattern but not applicable to all apps
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| Kathy |
I was wondering that myself. At the conference they were recommending it, but I am not sure how I feel about it.
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| Jun 7 | 8:00 PM |
| Mark M. |
it's certainly an option for apps that have
multiple avenues for accessing information, with none standing out as
being clearly dominant
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| Mark M. |
but, for example, if I click on a "Contacts" icon, I certainly expect to be presented with a list of contacts
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| Mark M. |
not a dashboard, on which I have to tap something else to get to the list of contacts
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| Mark M. |
so, an app in support of a conference, like the Google I|O app, it may make sense
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| Kathy |
it seems like at times it can become bulky
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| Mark M. |
schedule vs. session listing vs. map of rooms -- none are obviously the entry point
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| Mark M. |
right
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| Kathy |
I am in the middle of designing an app now where I was considering a dashboard, but I think tabs might be better.
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| Mark M. |
that's certainly a possibility
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| Mark M. |
the tradeoff is clicks vs. space
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| Mark M. |
tabs give you both some content and access to a few other areas of the app
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| Mark M. |
but you lose the space for the tabs themselves
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| Mark M. |
if there are only a couple of options, an action bar might be better (if nothing else, smaller and fits better with Honeycomb)
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| Kathy |
I guess I have to be careful about the number of
tabls. Right now I have four. I guess it is possible to drill down
from the tabs also.
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| Jun 7 | 8:05 PM |
| Mark M. |
be careful, though
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| Mark M. |
tabs in Android are not designed to be used for internal navigation
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| Mark M. |
i.e., you click on X and something new opens in the same tab
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| Mark M. |
it's possible but difficult
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| Mark M. |
I'm not a big fan of that pattern
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| Mark M. |
at least on phone-sized screens
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| Kathy |
Well, I will take all this into consideration. That app is still in the design phase, so can be easily changed.
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| Kathy |
View paste
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| Mark M. |
ok, next chat will be Thursday, 10am Eastern
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| Kathy |
I will put it on my calendar.
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| Jun 7 | 8:20 PM |
| Kathy | has left the room |
| Jun 7 | 8:30 PM |
| Mark M. | turned off guest access |
