TheSmiling-Blog

Last night, Android SDK 1.6 was released!

As a good developer, your first official act should be to check your current applications against the new Android version.
Concerning my apps, Metricdroid is good to go for Android 1.6, but my Rundroid+ Widget unfortunately isn’t.

My first interest was the known issue in 1.5 that the AppWidgetProvider won’t call the onDelete()-Method so you had to come up with Jeff Sharkeys workaround code for the onReceive()-Method (check my Widget-Tutorial for more information). Well, as far as I can tell (tested with my widget), this bug belongs to the past.

Unfortunately, it seems that the update periode (the one you configure in your xml-metadata with android:updatePeriodMillis) is not called any more. I tested my widget with a Toast-Message that should pop up every 5000 millis and was placed in the onUpdate()-Method. Same code worked fine on 1.5.

Well, using the update mechanism with updatePeriodMillis isn’t a convenient way at all because you don’t have the chance to reconfigured it, but still: Shouldn’t this still be working?
I planned to change my code so the user can configure the update periode, but now I’m a little bit under pressure to get this up and running. The first android 1.6 phones are announced for the beginning of October.

I’ll keep you updated on my research with 1.6.

I finally made it, my first Android widget ist available on the android market.

As you might have seen already, I have the “Nike+ Coach” (available in your nikeplus acount) on my website. A little flash that connects via the nikeplus XML-Service to the public interface and downloads my public running data, such as total runs, total distance, total running time and total calories.

My Rundroid+ Widget is using the XML-Service to bring this data to your Android desktop after entering your Nike+ ID. I’m not quite sure, but I think you have to configure the public interface to be active on your nikeplus account, before you can connect to your public running data. You can try it out by using this link
http://nikerunning.nike.com/nikeplus/v1/services/widget/get_public_run_list.jsp?userID=YOURNIKEID


Rundroid+ Widget

Display your public running data on your Android desktop.

For the direct link to the application on the market click here.
If you find any bugs or suggestions, please contact me here: android [ at ] thesmile.de

Even though the app was almost ready, it took some time to get the meta stuff straight.

1. finishing up the last tests
2. versioning
3. signing with own keystore (the ADT-Eclipse Plug-in is really helpful with it’s export wizard)
4. creating google developer account and pay 25 bucks for an android market account (per account, not per app)
5. uploading your app which includes the following steps:
   1. uploading your signed file
   2. creating screenshots of your app (2 is max.)
   3. entering name & description for your app
   4. find out which category of your app is appropriate (found travel and think that’s the one)
   5. read another 2 agreements to make sure it is really ok to upload

It’s finally done and my first Android application is now available on the android market.

Metricdroid

Calculate US-Units to Metric-Units and back. Also includes temperature conversion and measuretables for shoes, cloths and chemise seperated for women, men and kids.

The idea for this application was already born in 2005 when I had my 7 month internship in california. At that time I developed this application for windows mobile devices and now ported it to android.

For the direct link to the application on the market click here.
If you find any bugs or suggestions, please contact me here: android [ at ] thesmile.de

I just managed to update my HelloWidget Tutorial after Andreas Kompanez review (thx 4 that).

Go to Android: HelloWidget Tutorial to get the updated turorial and sourcecode. I consider writing a small eBook. I will probably add every new step I make to Android widgets and hopefully get some kind of eBook out of it. I keep you in the loop.

I spent a lot of time looking for an android hello world widget how to but I couldn’t find a simple example so I had to spend some time on cutting an existing one into pieces and then start from scratch with a HelloWidget tutorial.

I hope this will help you to get started on android desktop widgets. Please give me some feedback about the tutorial and/or any errors or wrong explanations.

Download the tutorial here. Get the source code here.