9.00 Keynote: The long road
Speaker: Sandro Mancuso
Inspirational talk about how to find the job that will be the next step in your career.
Your personal career goals can be very different from a career within a company.
10.30 RxJava – Get Reactive
Speakers: Pascal Welsch and Wolfram Rittmeyer
RxJava
Beware of backpressure (items emitted too fast) discussed on Wiki as well. Possible solutions:
- Throttle
- Buffer
- Request(n) upstream items
Testing: Use TestSubscriber.
RxAndroid
RxJava bindings for Android.
RxBinding
RxJava binding APIs for Android’s UI widgets.
Type and make network request handling, i.e. type and search. Add the following:
- .throttleLast(100, MS) – Emit the most recent items emitted by an Observable within periodic time intervals.
- .debounce(200, MS) – Only emit an item from the source Observable after a particular timespan has passed without the Observable emitting any other items.
- .onBackPressureLatest() – Is there are still too many, take latest input.
RxLifecycle
Lifecycle handling APIs for Android apps using RxJava.
Other recommendations
- Mosby – A Model-View-Presenter library for modern Android apps.
- Nucleus – Nucleus is a simple Android library, which utilizes the Model-View-Presenter pattern to properly connect background tasks with visual parts of an application.
11.30 Gradle (performance)
Speaker: Etienne Studer
Gradle is more than just building. It can also be used for releasing, documentation, etc.
- gradle build --rerun-tasks
Rerun tasks even if they are up to date.
Performance improvements:
- Incremental build feature. Define inputs and outputs for custom tasks.
- Continuous build feature, faster compilation.
- gradle test -t
(Relies on inputs and outputs being defined.)
MOOC: Gradle for Android and Java.
12.30 Land’s End: Creating the flagship mobile VR adventure
Speaker: Peter Pashley
Getting started: Install Unity! and the Oculus SDK.
Nausea
- Frame rate
- Texture
- Don’t highlight lack of positional tracking (Don’t put objects close to user so they won’t try to step / look around it.)
- Acceleration is bad!
Input
- Gamepad (Reminds user of the world they are not in.)
- Gear VR
- “Gaze” (Look points)
Things that didn’t work
- Moving things on rails or predefined paths. Limits the user’s freedom.
- Buttons. Too easy, too little player reward.
- Unconstrained exploration. Take a wrong route, takes a long time to get back.
- Path hinting. Focus becomes on following the path and not exploring.
- Levitating huge objects. Obstructs points of reference and makes players motion sick.
Lookpoints
- Focussing, aim and hold.
- Motion, knowing where you’re going to stop moving.
- Placement, not too many near each other.
14.15 ClassyShark Attack
Speaker: Boris Farber
Fast decompiling/debugging for Android APKs.
Ctrl + s – Save Java file.
Supports 5 binary formats
- Jar
- Dex
- APK
- Manifest
- Java class
Project site: https://github.com/googlesamples/android-classyshark
15.15 $N tips for building better apps.
Speaker: Wojtek Kalicinski
Stop running your code
Don’t cram too much into Application.onCreate(). ContentProviders and BroadcastReceivers can cause the method to be invoked.
Solutions:
- Defer work, lazy load.
- Stop Services.
- Disable BroadcastReceivers.
Permissions
- Use ContentProviders to share files and/or get rid of permissions.
- Use Intents to get rid of even more.
- Runtime permissions. <uses-permission-sdk23>
- AccountPicker.newChooseAccountIntent()
Low memory devices
ActivityManager.isLowRamDevice(), available in M, use
- android:extractNativeLibs="false"
Native library cannot be compressed and need to be zipaligned (zipalign -p). Write a small bash script to repackage .so when APK is built.
Accessibility
Accessibility is important, you get a bonus for it.
- Settings > Accessibility -> Talkback
- Add android:contentDescription tags. Set it to something meaningful. (For decorative elements, set to @null.)
- onTouchListener, don’t insert click logic, use View.performClick()
Bonus: No extra work when integrating with the accessibility assistent.
16.15 Democamp Community Demos
- Lumi Social News – Tinder for news.
- SendTo – Send messages, text, links, etc to your own devices.
- Myntra – Fashion / Shopping app. Preloading content for fast user experience.
- Infinity Loop – Game
- Sharp SVG lib
- Lunchbreak (Belgium only) – Order lunch online
- UI testing in your browser – ??
- Frisbee GDG – All GDG content in one place.
17.15 Keynote: Managing Expectations: A Manager’s Guide for Managing to Manage Unmanageable Teams Manageably
Speaker: Chet Haase
Hilarious talk about management.
Other
- Lands of Ruin – Lands of Ruin is a tabletop game where tablets replace classic rulebooks, character cards, stat sheets, and pen-and-paper calculations.
- Land’s End – Mobile VR game.
- Vysor – Lets you view and control your Android on your computer. Easy peasy.
