2018/06/30

Top tips for refreshing Android skills with the Little Miracle prototype

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a prototype of a pregnancy contraction tracking app and wanted to share some tips from my experience so far.

Go native with Android

Android has a number of native solutions for problems you may experience during your development. One really good example of this is using java Threads vs TimerTask vs Handlers for updating the UI based on clock or timing events. In this case I was using the timer to schedule asynchronous events to update the user interface which is an anti pattern. When updating the user interface the best practice is to use Handler solutions. If you are seeing leaked context warnings or experiencing issues with thread scopes then there is probably a better way.

Compat[ibility] is main route

The compatibility libraries are not so much extras as the normal way to build things. When prototyping they can help hide a lot of the complexity of the ever evolving Android ecosystem. Unless you are developing for a specific device then the compatibility libraries are a must!