hello, scottttttttt!

how can I help you today?

hello! i haven't attended in a while, but finally have a question that isn;t easy to just search-for in s/o

go for it!

so i'm doing a demo app and have a rather ambitious layout

ambitious in terms of being pretty wide

no big deal, just use a wXXXdp resource folder or another layout that has things a bit more vertical

my question is this: what's the easiest/best way to determine XXX?

i resorted to the brute force way of just making the layout and all its children wrap_content and then measuring

and then dividing by the density

I suspect more people just choose a typical value, then try it on a few environments and see if that holds up well

but is there an easier way? some magic mathod such as "getMinimumRequiredDpWidth()?

not really, because there is no definition of "minimum"

for example, the minimum width needed for a TextView, to avoid word-wrap, would vary by locale

and the framework doesn't know if word-wrap is fine or not

and so on

curiously, this will be a slight fringe benefit of the Android N freeform multi-window mode

as we should be able to arbitrarily size windows

and therefore can do the same thing Web developers do: play with the window size and see what feels good

yeah, i was afraid of that. i never think this part through until after i have all the weights defined, etc.

lol. i did something similar by defining arbitrary screen sizes for the emulator

but then, i had to alos keep in mind the denisty

I am not aware of a scientific-ish approach to the problem

thanks, anyway

i was considering using one of the new mini-presentations built into the APK version of the book, but ran into a snag...

"using"?

w/o an easy way to jump back 10 seconds (or the like), i don't think that would work for one of my meetups

yeah, that's kinda difficult to do, given the fact that this isn't a simple video

too often there's a minor distraction or question and it would be nice to be able to repeat the last few seconds

clearly, you need to enact more severe punishments for distractions or questions

:-)

true. but then, it;s usually me that causes it

the best I can offer you now is going back to the beginning of the current "scene" (slide, video, code snippet), not in-scene navigation

ok. consider this a feature request. i'll just use other resources for now

you're not the first person to ask for this, so it's on my to-do list

that's all i had

OK, sounds good

I'll swing back to you in a bit, in case you come up with another question, but for now...

Moe: hi! welcome to the chat! how can I help you today?

btw, i've decided no forgo the boston andevcon again this year, but should see you in the west coast one later in the year (assuming you're there)

Hi Mark, hi Scott

hello Moe, he's all yours

Thanks, I wanted to ask if this is a good place to ask a question about getting a job as an Android dev?

(scottt: I probably won't be at AnDevCon Santa Clara, but have fun!)

um, you're welcome to ask, but I don't know how much use I'll be

just general stuff, like level of competence things employers looking at nowadays, just general advice

mainly about SF bay area though

yeah, I haven't the foggiest notion of that

and even less about the West Coast

:-D

I get the impression that they've gone past their early "if you can spell Android, you're hired" phase

but I couldn't give you any idea of what level of depth they seek, what topic areas are hot, etc.

yeah, i've noticed companie

...companies being more selctive

yeah, I've noticed that too

well yeah, just landed an interview, just trying to be ready

at one time, i would get a lot of calls with apparently guaranteed gigs just because i ran the local android developers group. now i'm finding i have to sell myself more and provide ref's, etc.

and if you're already at the interview phase, "cramming" for Android knowledge probably won't help

you know what you know, and either that's a good fit or it isn't

i agree with mark. the android ecosystem is so very large that cramming is unlikely to help much

it's gonna be a discussion about the app task I've created for them as part of the selection phase

but you're saying that today there's more competition

that being said, many of the interviewers dont know the topic very well, so making sure you have a solid grasp of the basics (and some past work to show) is likely enough

ok

salary wise I'm seeing 80 to 140, is that what you hear too?

if you've gone through the beginning parts of mark's book and understand it, then you should be fine

no clue, sorry

Yeah, I know this is not this chat is meant for, but I appreciate trying to help, thanks guys

will let you know in aweek

you're very welcome, and best of luck!

thanks, have a great evening

you too!

time to grill some steaks, good night.

have fun!