Comments on: My First Android App, “Fancy Clock” https://zentastic.me/blog/2011/11/04/my-first-android-app-fancy-clock/ I can scarcely move or draw my breath // Let me, let me freeze again to death Wed, 06 Jan 2016 03:58:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Darrin https://zentastic.me/blog/2011/11/04/my-first-android-app-fancy-clock/comment-page-1/#comment-16855 Darrin Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:31:42 +0000 https://zentastic.me/blog/?p=11500#comment-16855 That’s actually one of the big advantages I had coming into Android after not programming for 10 years or so. I learned programming back on 8088 and Z80 systems, so keeping my code and data compact and efficient comes naturally to me. My trail/map apps, even with somewhat huge amounts of data, still only take a meg or so, and some quite a bit less.

You can actually turn off the title bar, etc, at will. Screen size is best to just let the OS figure it out for you. You’d pick it up in no time with your experience.

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By: Shannon https://zentastic.me/blog/2011/11/04/my-first-android-app-fancy-clock/comment-page-1/#comment-16851 Shannon Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:11:20 +0000 https://zentastic.me/blog/?p=11500#comment-16851 I just watched one of the videos and it looks like the only reason you can’t upload to the store is that the apps are not properly digitally signed and don’t have an appropriate manifest… The “fixer” apps seem to decompile, correct this, and then hand you back a new APK file. Seems like just a couple clicks to make the AppInventor apps publishable, plus some of the limitations (screen size, forced title bar, etc.) are addressed by the fixers.

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By: Shannon https://zentastic.me/blog/2011/11/04/my-first-android-app-fancy-clock/comment-page-1/#comment-16850 Shannon Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:00:06 +0000 https://zentastic.me/blog/?p=11500#comment-16850 ** But that said, I don’t think that these aps are ready for primetime so even if you could push them into the app store, it would be disingenuous.

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By: Shannon https://zentastic.me/blog/2011/11/04/my-first-android-app-fancy-clock/comment-page-1/#comment-16849 Shannon Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:59:14 +0000 https://zentastic.me/blog/?p=11500#comment-16849 I’d read that too, and the official answer is that it’s a temporary hitch, and the unofficial answer is that you can tweak them to be uploadable (there are some youtube videos that show up as recommendeds on the above showing how I think).

I am comfortable programming in Java… And since I started my life with “slow, memory and disk space limited” computers perhaps I have the right mental foundation.

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By: Darrin https://zentastic.me/blog/2011/11/04/my-first-android-app-fancy-clock/comment-page-1/#comment-16846 Darrin Sat, 05 Nov 2011 03:14:08 +0000 https://zentastic.me/blog/?p=11500#comment-16846 Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, I’m not sure) app inventor apps can’t be uploaded to Android Market, or really even distributed very well.

I’ve been doing some mapping/trail/exploring type apps (search for Exploration Guides on Android Market and look for the golden sextant). If you know Java, you’re not in bad shape to pick up Android programming. The biggest challenge is the single-threaded, very time-limited UI thread, which likes to kill your program if you do any foreground processing. Just think back to the days when computers were slow, memory and disk space limited, and program like that.

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