Monday, December 7, 2009

Dealing with orientation change in Android Widgets

As you know, i had some issues with the MineSweeper Widget in G1 devices (and, indeed, in all Android mobiles with physical keyboards).

This issue was related to switching between portrait and landscape modes.

First, i trusted in Android auto-resize, and it resulted in an acore crash when people switched to landscape mode (for example, putting out the physical keyboard), although it didn't crash in the Android emulator (it did a weird resize though).

In this particular case, it was no point on supporting landscape mode (too small buttons = unplayable), so i decided to show an error advice when landscape mode was activated. And this wasn't as easy as expected.

First of all, i realised that i needed buttons references in both portrait and landscape layouts, why? Because the user could add the widget while being in landscape mode, and MineSweeper's data and buttons needed to be assigned to their PendingIntents, otherwise it'll result in an unexpected behaviour, and user would see how widget didn't response when switching to portrait! So i left the buttons part of the layout in the "error layout" setting visibility to "gone".

Then, next problem appeared. Each time the layout changes from portrait to landscape, the view is re-inflated, so you need to re-assign PendingIntents to all layout elements before each updateAppWidget call (and reassign all viewResources too!).

And that's it!

And remember, don't trust Android Emulator and test your app in all devices as posible.

I suppose there are better ways to solve this issue, you can share them with us in the comments!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Mine Sweeper Widget

NEWCOMER! Mine Sweeper Widget!

A couple of weeks ago we released a new app in the Android Market: Mine Sweeper Widget. We've been really busy these days so we couldn't post it here!

I was really interested in experimenting with widgets and seeing how far this concept could go. So i decided to start developing some game widgets (yes, more are coming :P).

With this widget, you can play the classic game "MineSweeper" right in your homescreen, since we believe this is a "fast-play" game, we don't want you to open an app each time you want some quick fun :)

There're still some problems with this app while running in landscape mode (crashes in G1 when opening phisical keyboard while being on homescreen), but we're working hard to solve this issue. Fixed!

So let's show you how it looks!


Can you see any Halo reference? :P

Enjoy!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Contest

Los chicos de and.roid.es han organizado un concurso!

Se trata de sortear unos fabulosos terminales Android y este post es para participar en ese concurso!

Deseadnos suerte!

--

The guys over at and.roid.es just organized a contest where you can win a fabulous HTC Magic, and this entry in our blog is our participation,

Wish us luck!

Friday, November 6, 2009

New Features in Volume Widget Pro

We've recently updated our Volume Widget Pro to the 1.4 version in the Android Market.
We told you we had a big surprise for you, and well, here we go!

Yes! A completely new Blood Splatter Theme! It changes each time you press the + or - buttons, giving you some bloody action! And the answer is yes, we are huge Dexter fans :)

We've also updated with new colors, hope you like them, and if you don't, feel free to give us some feedback!

Special thanks to: BloodyCorpse (a.k.a. Andrea) for the bloody stuff and the new colors :D (Watch out her design blog!)

Enjoy!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Android 2.0 UI changes Preview


This is meant to be a short preview in pictures (and a couple video captures!) of some new things featured in android 2.0. Most of the things covered being just UI rather than new core functionality.

Here we are with the new lock screen:



Nice! But see that thing that looks like a wheel? No, its not just a copy of the Sense UI style, you don't actually slide it up/down, but rather like a wheel.

Scroll the lock to the right to unlock the device:


Or scroll the volume icon to the left to silence/unsilence the phone:


Just a small preview of the new settings menu, we got new kewl icons!





What have we got here? A task manager!
This actually only displays running services. No need to display processes which are not consuming CPU :-)


A slightly different dialer


This is looks like some sort of credentials system, you can set a password, install encrypted certificates from SD card and specify whether applications are able to access credentials. I am not sure what this is for.


I also took a video of the new unlocking. Please pardon the lag, this is due to my old PC not being powerful enough to handle android emulator + video capturing and encoding + other stuff I had running. This is not due to android 2.0 being slow, other versions run just as bad on my PC =P

New Unlock Bar



Some new browser UI stuff:








I hope you enjoyed the early footage!
Android 2.0 will bring much more than this to our devices, these were just some of the things present in the just-released 2.0 SDK version!

By The Way, we will be updating our Volume Widget Pro with some VERY COOL new skin in the near future,
you should check it out, especially if you like blood-splatter skins! :-)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Radiohead Banners Widget

Well, we know there are many Radiohead fans
out there (SpartanCoders included :P), so
i decided to help you custom your home screens
with a bundle of Radiohead banners.

By now, you can choose between 11 of them,
all the album's covers are included, plus
other cool Radiohead designs.

Take a look to some screenshots (sorry for spaming with our other widgets in them :D )


Thursday, October 8, 2009

HALO Medal Widgets


Let's get some HALO rolling! Shall we? :-)

Enjoy the following HALO Medals as widgets:
Put your favourite Halo medals right in your home screen, and
they will output the corresponding sound when touched!

I can't resist touching some of them when I am on my way to some other application, because its so much fun!

Try it out!

Included Medals with sound:

  • Running Riot
  • Double Kill
  • Triple Kill
  • Over Kill
  • Killtacular
  • Killjoy
  • Killimanjaro
  • Killing Spree
  • Killionaire
  • Extermination
  • Killing Frenzy
  • Killpocalypse
  • Killtastrophe
  • Killtrocity
  • Perfection
  • Rampage
  • Untouchable
Screenshots:



Download QR Code:

Mario Widgets

Enjoy the following 8bit widgets.
Each of them will output a peculiar sound when touched!
  • Mario
  • Coin
  • 1UP Mushroom
  • "Grow" Mushroom
Here is a preview:




Try it out! Its FREE!





Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Volume Widget Pro

We've published our first Android application!

Description:

Adjust your phone's Multimedia, Ringtone, Alarm, In-Call voice and Notifications volume in an easy way right from your home screen!

Choose between 20+ widgets of different size and color with a polished design! Black, red and white.

Now you can create your own widgets:


Updates details:
v1.3 (16/10/2009): In-Call voice volume widget added.
v1.2 (12/10/2009): Custom Themes!!
v1.1.1 (8/10/2009): Bugfix
v1.1 (7/10/2009): Alarm and notifications volume control, 9 new widgets added!
v1.0.1 (6/10/2009): Bugfix
v1.0 (6/10/2009): Initial release

Updates roadmap:
1.2.1 (ETA: ~1 week): New backgrounds and buttons.

Special thanks to:
-Andrea (a.k.a. Bloody Corpse :P) for the button design!


Download (QR Code):