Martin's random and not so random knowledge

My blog about C#, Delphi and Android development

Android: Wish l!st update v1.3

New version of Wish l!st is released.
An important bug has been fixed. You can now set the sorting of your items and a share function has been added.

Here’s the change log:
- Added message to items list when list is empty
- Add share option to context menu and view item screen
- Add sort option the the item list, you can now sort by category, title or priority
- Changed the layout of items list
- Changed the layout of the about screen
- Fixed: Corrupt (invisible) records could be inserted into database, update will clean the database and the bug is fixed.
- Minor tweaks

Downloads are here:
Google Play (Android Market)
SlideME

Android Top Tip: Hide the title bar in your application

Default your application will come with a title bar. But you might want to hide it.
In this Android top tip I’ll show you how to do this.

The first approach is done in your activity class in the oncreate method:

this.requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);

The second and third options are done by using styles. You can set the style in your application manifest.
Here’s how to hide the title bar for all activities:

<application android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar">

And last option is to set the style of the activity in the application manifest:

<activity android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar">

Happy Queen’s Day! Here’s a free Crown icon.

In my country today is Queen’s Day, a holiday were we celebrate the birthday of our queen.
If you have never heard of this holiday be sure to Google it, because Dutch people go crazy on this day.

For this special day I made a crown icon.
Click here to download.
Package contains 512, hdp, mdp and ldp versions.

You may use it in your commercial or non commercial applications or websites. Royalty free!
Resale is not permitted.

Free audio cassette icons

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic today, so I decided to create a tribute to the audio cassette.
And I’m sharing it with my blog followers.

The icon that I created is a realistic looking cassette in early/mid 80′s style.
I have also created a oversized square variant.

Click here to download the icon package.
In the zip archive you will find 512×512, hdp, mdp and ldp formats. Also both variants are in 512×512 format without writing on the label.





Terms of use:
(c) 2012 Cubeactive.
You may use this icon in any commercial or non commercial software product or website, royalty free.

Android top tip: How to make your app look better

Here’s a new category for my blog, top tips.
In these short posts I will give a helpful tip for developers.

We all know users like apps that look nice.
As result we developers make use of gradients and other enhancements to pimp up the look of our app.
Now you may suffer from banding in your gradients, this is because default your app is rendered at a low color pallet. This helps the app lower the memory usage, but also gives these banding problems and other artifacts.

Just put the following code in your oncreate methode of your activity and gone are those nasty problems.
Note that this will increase the memory usage of your app.

getWindow().setFormat(PixelFormat.RGBA_8888);
getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DITHER);

Android: Tablet GUI template

In past post I have shared phone templates for sketching Android phone user interfaces:
Android: UI design template 2
Android: Template for designing UI concepts

Here is my thirth template. This template is based on tablets interfaces.
It features a navigation bar, a list section and a content section.
Scaled at A4 format the template has an accurate screen size ratio.

Click on the image to download the full size version.