Hi Mark

howdy, Dom!

how can I help you today?

I was wondering, in ICS, are locations cached on the device anymore. (Formerly there was 200 wifi locations and 50 cell locations stored I think)

I have no idea, sorry

ok, no worries

The reason I asked was becuase the location cache viewer in the Play store doesn't work on ICS anymore, which made me think perhaps google isn't storing this info on phone anymore

since they caught a bunch of flak for doing it in the first place, it would not surprise me if they stopped

or at least changed the conditions under which you can get to it

yeah, i agree, ok, thats all really I had to ask

chat to you again!

:)

OK

Hello Mark

howdy, Paul!

how can I help you today?

does audio work? Can you hear me?

audio?

I am not aware that Campfire supports audio

lol, I hear a beep each time someone types. I was hoping I could talk. anyway...

regardless, I definitely cannot hear you, nor would I expect to

sorry, you're stuck with ASCII :-)

I have a main Activity with a TabHost. (this will take me a bit to type the whole thing)

then in the TabHost I have several tabs, each whose content comes from an activity started with an Intent.

I need to be able to programatically add and remove tabs, which I have working. but...

when I remove a tab, to prevent memory leaks, I should call finish() in the Activity that was in the content of the removed tab. When I do so, the main activity closes.

How to destruct the activity that was in the tab w/o closing the main tab host activity?

first, activities-in-tabs has been deprecated for 18 months or so

when they deprecated ActivityGroup

yes, and I may look at other ways to do this project, but right now we have to use tabs

the point isn't the tabs, it's the nested activities

ok

again, it is activities-in-tabs that is deprecated

as I have avoided activities-in-tabs like the plague for a long time (well before they were deprecated), I do not know any particular recommendation for cleanup after removing such a tab

(BTW, howdy, tunneling!)

howdy!

however, I am not the least bit surprised that finish() finishes the TabActivity

the way activities-in-tabs "works" is that the content view is ripped out of the inner activity and moved to be owned by the TabActivity

various behaviors from the inner activity, as a result, will affect the TabActivity instead

rather than calling finish(), just make sure that you are cleaning up the stuff inside the tab as best you can

and really really really consider switching to another model

(ViewPager with action bar tabs, ViewPager with PagerTabStrip, ViewPager with ViewPagerIndicator's tabs, just ordinary action bar tabs sans ViewPager, etc.)

suggestions for another model? We really want something that looks like traditional tabs.

I listed several

there are also ways of using TabHost with views for the contents of the tabs (as shown in my book)

sorry, yes. our posts crossed. Good point - could use views

let me take a question from tunneling, and I'll swing back to you in a bit

tunneling: do you have a question?

OK

if either of you have a question, chime in

I think I'm good for now too Mark. Thanks.

going back to work. Thanks again Mark. Have a good day.

you too!

sorry, had stepped away. i had a question, but I found where you had answered a similar question on stackoverflow. it's in regards to showing a spinner in the actionbar, and having tabbed navigation as well.

yeah, the default implementation of those are mutually exclusive

wanted to use the spinner for major categories, and then swiping for filtering

you could use the list navigation (Spinner) in the action bar, plus PagerTabStrip or something with a ViewPager for the tabs

what had me confused is the documentation for wireframing (http://developer.android.com/training/desi…) seems to show both

the 'storylist'.

well, first, bear in mind that the people who wrote the design stuff didn't exactly spell out whether or not their designs are actually *possible*

there are plenty of suggestions that simply cannot be readily implemented

that being said, the look you see there could be what I suggested (list navigation in the action bar, plus a PagerTabStrip and ViewPager)

ok, didn't know about the PagerTabStrip

yeah, they added that in a recent update to the Android Support package

there is also a tab indicator in Jake Wharton's ViewPagerIndicator library

howdy, Pavel!

Pavel: do you have a question?

Simple one

Hellp

I'm new to OOP and Android.

What book you can recommend to obtain some base foundation of OOP

I learned OOP nearly two decades ago

whatever resources I used back then are long since out of date

any decent Java book should cover enough OOP for use in basic Android development

I am sorry that I do not have a more concrete recommendation for you

Not a problem. Should I start java first?

Then go to android specific?

Hello

yes, I strongly recommend learning the basics of Java before getting into Android

Ok, thank you, Mark.

(BTW, hello, Guarav!)

Sir I am a masters student In auburn university in Alabama

My adviser Dr. David Umphress suggested to take the subscription

Hello Mr. Mark

Pavel: I have some Java topics you should learn here: http://commonsware.com/blog/2010/08/02/jav…

Guarav: thanks for subscribing!

but, do you have a specific question?

Yes . My master's thesis is based on assessing software process in android apps getting published in Google Play store

Is there any tool which I can use in order to assess the kind of software process followed by Android Application developers

what do you consider a "software process" to be?

Currently the strict mode has been introduced

(BTW, tunneling, if you have a follow-up question, chime in)

Oh, I see, thank you, Mark! Now I know where to start. Bye-bye.

software process is kind of discipline which you follow while developing a software. Effort analysis, keeping a time log, keeping a check on the bugs which are there in the Android app.

Guarav: and what sort of "tool" would you expect to be able to "assess the kind of software process" *anyone* would use

?

a software process is something done in one's head

there is a rigorous testing procedure used by the App store for Iphone apps

you cannot look at a new building and determine if they used AutoCAD or hand-drawn blueprints in its construction, for example

and that "rigorous testing procedure" has little to do with the "software process" followed by iOS developers

is there anything similar used by Android Play store for testing the authenticity of Android apps

no

at least, not up front

there is Bouncer, which does some automated scans for malware

where would you suggest me to start

but there is no known human intervention between when an app is uploaded to the Play Store and it is distributed

to at least assess the kind of software quality of the apps getting published in the Play store

how do you define "software quality"?

you toss these terms around like there is an industry standard definition

I understand. We can see the difference between android and Iphone apps

Android apps continously have problems

they hang or get closed suddenly

I am reasonably certain that there are buggy iOS apps as well

In comparison there would be less

and your proof of this is... what, exactly?

(BTW, tunneling, if you have additional questions, chime in)

I do not have any proof only personal experience of two years

for example the simple app of temple run game used to continue hang on my galaxy s2 and galaxy tab but it used to run so smoothly on IPAD

So through my thesis

I want to discuss regarding all these issue

I wanted your guidance

i have apps crash all the time on my iPad, but they just disappear versus letting me know that they have stopped

I understand the flexibility which we get while developing android apps

Guarav: if you have questions regarding developing apps with the Android SDK, that is what the chat is for, and I can offer "guidance" on such topics

but I cannot provide guidance on unrelated topics like measuring "software process"

Sir I am developing an app for measuring the height of a device using the camera of the phone

mark, the last time i was here we spoke a little bit about cleaning up threads

Guarav: wouldn't such an app have to make assumptions about the location of the camera on the device?

tunneling: I remember a bit of that discussion, yes

I completely understand your point also Mr. mark

if I have a listview item, that runs off and tries to collect data, and then the User scrolls away, leaves the activity etc. what happens when i try to update a UI element? could that cause intermittent FC?

tunneling: typically not, though it would depend a bit on what specifically you are doing and the actual exception that triggered the force-close

Guarav: the only way I can think of to use the camera to estimate device height would involve taking a picture of a ruler, and if you have a ruler, you may as well just measure the height directly :-)

Yes the app will have to make assumptions regarding the location of camera but how to use scaling in such an app

so for example, i have list view with an icon on the left. i adjust the drawable based on a % value. I get the % value from a remote source, so I launch a thread to go off and collect the data when the listview's getView() is called.

Guarav: I do not know what you mean by "scaling" in this context

tunneling: what exception are you getting

?

To show scale or a ruler along with the camera when I try to use this app in order to measure the height of a device

it just hit me that I may not be posting my updates to the UI thread

tunneling: that should result in a fairly specific exception

Guarav: if you mean showing a scale alongside the camera preview, just put one adjacent to your SurfaceView

in terms of how to draw such a scale, that probably would need to be a custom widget

there is no Ruler widget in Android for creating that sort of UI, and I am unaware of any third-party libraries for it (though I have not been looking for one)

Are there any tutorials based on developing such a kind of widget

you might try to get away with an ImageView and a repeating background

I am sure that there are tutorials on it, but not in my book, as it would involve the 2D graphics API, which I have not covered

Ok I would look into 2D graphics API

and the tutorials with respect to that

that would be the Canvas class

I will also look into using an ImageView

you would create an image for one segment of the ruler, and repeat that for as many segments as needed to fill the space

and that's a wrap for today's chat

the next one is Thursday 7:30pm Eastern

have a pleasant day, all!

Thanks for all your help sir.