Hi Mark

howdy, Alex!

how can I help you today?

so I'm working on this app with multiple activities

now I want to create a sort of parent navigation activity which keeps track of state mostly, but also has some convenience methods

what do you mean by "parent"?

what's the best strategy to do that?

do you mean a superclass?

yea

but the problem is my superclass would have to inherit off Activity

correct

or whatever other base class you are presently using (e.g., FragmentActivity)

and if I want to use a MapActivity, I can't use that superclass

correct

which is a problem since I want to use both fragments and maps :)

that is not presently possible, if you are using the Android Support package

leastways, you can't put a MapView in a fragment

I am using the support package

because MapActivity does not inherit from FragmentActivity

I understand that, they would be different activities

then you probably do not want to "create a sort of parent navigation activity"

which is why I'm here

use composition instead of inheritance

(BTW, howdy, Charlie!)

for example I'm listening for screen off events

Hi. First time here.

in all my activities

and creating the same menu in all my activities

put those hunks of code in static methods, then

where you pass in an Activity as a parameter

you would still need to override onPrepareOptionsMenu(), etc. in the activities

and you might elect to create a thin base Activity class that handles those overrides

but, by putting most of the logic elsewhere, copying those handful of callback methods into your MapActivity will not be as big of a deal

I see

and, while you're doing all of this, wish that the core Android team had chosen Ruby instead of Java :-)

ruby has multiple inheritance?

Ruby has mixins

gives you much of the effect of multiple inheritance

interesting, never got that deep into ruby

fun language

it's what I use when I'm not doing Android stuff

let's swing over to Charlie

Charlie: do you have a question?

sure

Have the need to enter time information into a form in mm:ss format

Boils down to TextWatcher vs. some sort of time picker

The time will be entered into a form that is part of an alert dialog. Any issues with launching another dialog like a time picker from that?

I've never tried it, and it would scare the heck out of me

why the AlertDialog in the first place?

The app puts together a list of songs. I looked into launching another activity for a new song ( ala NotePad demo) vs. using a dialog to enter the song info.

generally speaking, avoid dialogs

they limit the user's flexibility in navigation

the more complex the thing in the dialog, the less likely it is that it should be in a dialog in the first place

good point.

heck, even the name/value dialog in my ConstantsBrowser sample, with two whole fields, is a bit more than I'd ordinarily do

See the dialogs alot with tablets though.

Changing to a full screen activity might be too much.

Then there's fragments...

with tablets, using a dialog suggests an underlying navigation issue

I agree that popping a whole 'nuther activity would be overkill

I played around with TextWatcher a bit for the number entry.

Are you familiar with the PhoneNumberFormattingTextWatcher?

not particularly

I'm allergic to long class names :-)

then you must love objective-c heh

never touch the stuff

there's a language that should have died back in the mid 1990's

anyway, I take it you want to create an MinutesSecondsFormattingTextWatcher?

It allows user to enter a phone number and automatically puts in dashes

I was going to modify it to use for mm:ss time entry but it might be more confusing for the user.

if you are going to stick with the dialog for the form, and you don't have room for a pair of NumberPicker widgets, your TextWatcher is about the best you can do

if you switch away from the dialog to an activity, rolling a MinutesSecondsPicker, based on TimePicker, should be doable

but I'd be nervous about popping a dialog from a dialog

Yes, it seems to work in the quick hack but I'm concerned other issues might creep up.

issues tend to do that

wish we could tie bells on 'em

I'm thinking of using the DateSlider widget

that's sexy

not sure how easy it would be to modif

er, modify

Its got what I need.

But has one annoying quirk. Both wheels turn

OK

another question, I was making a widget for google tv devices, for the preferences activity, I'd like to use the built in preference stuff, but how do I "save" them if I use a preference activity

Alex: PreferenceActivity automatically persists preference changes

so the only way for users to exit that is to press back

to exit a PreferenceActivity, the user presses BACK, or HOME, etc.

so for an update frequency preference (update every x minutes) I was using a text edit box for testing

you mean an EditTextPreference?

or your own activity with an EditText?

is there a page though the google docs which shows all the possible preference types?

my own activity with an edit text

look at the JavaDocs for android.preference.Preference

and look at the subclasses

I was wondering about a visual index, to see how they look as well :)

oh

not that I am aware of

they should make something like that, the way they did for the "hello views" page

they don't even really maintain "hello views" all that well

that's true

it's certainly a need, but I wouldn't hold my breath

so what do you think of the google tv?

The same app I'm discussing re: time picker will need have the capability to reorder a list of songs. Then save the reorder in database.

Charlie: TouchListView could handle that

Alex: I watch so little TV, that the notion of running apps on a TV just isn't a use case for me personally

professionally, it's intriguing, and I have a chapter coming out on it in a week or two

Yes. But concerned about how to update the database. There is a stackoverflow question about this that I need to dig into.

ah nice

which book is it going to be in?

Paul Carf from Google is speaking about Google TV at a meetup here in CA tomorrow.

Charlie: I'm assuming your database has some sort of sequence number column that you would need to update, in a bunch of UPDATE statements, in a tranasction

Alex: The Busy Coder's Guide to Advanced Android Development

makes sense

yea, I wish they'd put more of the talks videos online

like the ones from AndDevCon ||

Mark I think you suggested two approaches to the touchlistview database issue. Trying to find the question on stackoverflow.

it's possible -- I don't remember the question, and, well, I've answered enough that finding a specific one of mine is a wee bit challenging

I think one of the suggestions was using an array and doing the sort there before updating the db

oh

TouchListView needs a mutable adapter, like an ArrayAdapter on an ArrayList

so, you can't really use it directly with a CursorAdapter

the two approaches were:

1. schlep the data from the Cursor into an ArrayList and use an ArrayAdapter

2. create a ReorderingCursorAdapter that maintains its own internal sequence information and maps everything from list positions to their corresponding current positions in the Cursor

the plus side of #2 is that it would be faster at runtime and generate less garbage

Option 1 sounds easier

the minus side of #2 is that #1 is easier :-)

The list that needs to be sorted won't be too long, about 10 to 15 items

that won't take long to convert into an ArrayList, then

Mark are the chat logs for the office hours available online?

Thanks for the additional info. I'll dive into the list sorting after I get the time picker worked out.

Alex: I email a link to the transcript to the cw-android Google Group, for any chat with a meaningful transcript

I don't have an RSS/Atom feed for them at this time

nor a centralized archive page

as I am laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy

ok

heh, I thought campfire might offer that sort of functionality

not publicly visible

I can see them

but I don't see where I can make that something that anyone can access

though it's been ages since I looked, so I'll check again

I remember I searched for something on google once and it took me to a chat transcript of one of your office hours

Alex, that's rare

yea, I wish I'd have saved it

I rarely get hits on the google group. Stack Overflow usually dominates the search results

well that's all for me tonight guys

have a good one

see ya!

What are your thoughts on NFC's adoption in US?

well, the NFC, having won the last two Super Bowls, is fairly popular

oh, no, wait

you aren't talking about football

Yes, probably again this year

no.

right now, there are too few devices

I attended the WIMA conference in san franscisco earlier this month

including precisely zero from a certain fruit-flavored device category

The head of the NFC forum had the same joke!

heh

even if 100% of new Android phones shipped with NFC, it would take a long time for critical mass to be achieved

and 100% of new Android phones will not have NFC, as I understand it

so, it's the sort of thing that has interesting long-term potential

Yes, the 2 year contracts on the phones slows things down.

Hard to tell if the indie developer will have a shot at a piece of the pie.

which pie?

all the potential revenues from NFC

the banks will get all the payment $

:: shrug ::

Developers may have a shot at non-payment revenue.

that's like asking who is getting all the potential revenues from cameras

Have you tested NFC with more than one NFC app on your phone?

yes

had a couple of existing NFC apps plus my one sample

haven't done a ton with it outside of the sample, but I don't know where I'd encounter an NFC tag

It kind defeats the no tap that google touts

now that my Nexus S has the ICS upgrade, I need to play around with Android Beam

You have to select which app to read the tag. Which results in a tap

How did you get ICS on the Nexus S?

OTA update happened... yesterday? day before?

regarding the tag and taps, that depends on how you set up the tag and filters

preference is given to more specific matches

I haven't turned mine on in a few days. Thanks for the heads up.

yeah, I don't know how the OTA rollout is happening

So I may be able to disable another app and pick the one that I want to read?

also, mine is a T-Mo Nexus S, not a Sprint one, and I think that matters

not so much "disable" as "have a tag that targets your app better"

for example, take a tag with a URL encoded on it of http://commonsware.com/nfctest

an app that says "I handle NFC tags where the URL is http://commonsware.com/nfctest"; will be invoked with no chooser

even though other apps on there say "I handle NFC tags that have anything on them"

Great. Thats what I was hoping for.

so, I think it is a matter of choosing a tag structure and <intent-filter> combination that works right

I have the NXP app and a couple of others installed that all come up in the chooser.

for example, a tag with a vCard should pop all apps that are NFC-aware and deal with contacts, but not arbitrary NFC stuff

right

again, it depends a bit on the tag and the <intent-filter>

over time, we'll work out all the rules and patterns to follow

Ok. Thanks for the great info. Have to get rolling now. happy holidays.

you too!