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Sideloading Apps on Android
Android allows a little bit more freedom when distributing debug versions of apps than iOS. Instead of requiring a provisioning certificate Android allows you directly to install apps from emails and links. This process is called side loading, and as long as you’re careful it’s perfectly safe. Of course if you’re side loading pirated apps expect them to be filled with malware. While android allows this freedom it disables it by default to stop an unsuspecting user being tricked into side loading an app that might not do what they expect. Re-enabling this is a simple process and requires going … Continue
Handling events in Google Maps
Adding a map to your app can be a great was to display location based information. It also gives your app a nice professional polished feel if done properly. it doesn’t take much to drop in a map and adding overlays is trivial. Sounds like a great framework, that is until you need something a little more advance like listening to panning and zooming events. Unfortunately the basic mapview provides very little in the way of event callbacks, actually it provides no useful event callbacks. Luckily there is a way to add such event handling methods and it’s quite an … Continue
Integrate with Google Navigation
A couple of days ago I explained how to integrate with Google Maps, but what if you want to minimise user clicks and direct them straight to navigation, well you’re in luck. With a few tweaks to the previous code we can direct users straight to Google Navigation using their current location as a start point. String uri = "google.navigation:ll=%f,%f"; Intent navIntent = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(String.format(ur, latitude, longitude); startActivity(navIntent); There is a small issue with using this code, if Google Navigation isn’t installed or an equivalent app isn’t found to handle the intent your app will force close. A … Continue
Integrating with Google Maps
Sometimes it makes perfect sense for an app to have map based functionality, and on Android the usual way to proceed is to use the Google Maps api library and embed a MapView directly into your app. This is fine If the mapping functionality the app requires is relatively simple, but what if you require more complex functionality like directions and route plotting? While these requirements are possible with the library there is quite a bit plumbing that needs to be undertaken. So what else can you do? Well what better way to handle mapping functionality than to offload the … Continue
Why I Chose Android Development?
This post was supposed to be about moving from a hobbyist Android developer to a professional Android developer and the challenges faced, but as I started writing I realised that there was nothing revolutionary about the topic. Sure it’s a little more pressure and a little less freedom, but it’s still just as fun and beats developing outdated desktop apps. So with that idea all but buried I had to come up with a topic fast. so for my first post under the B2Cloud banner I will go out on a limb and address a bit of a controversial topic. … Continue
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