- Can you share with us your plans to bring this application Honeycomb devices?
I switched over to a Honeycomb build target last night and didn’t get any red flags, so technically, it will run on Honeycomb as it stands right now. That being said, there are no layouts or images there to support it, so it will probably look very stretched out and certainly won’t utilize the entire screen. I plan to address the layouts in version 1.3.
After I have all the features implemented I want and get things running on standard devices, I may branch off to a Honeycomb only version. The problem is that a lot of the fancy new features are not backwards compatible at all and require that you specify 3.0 as the minimum SDK in order to use them. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to build a version specifically to take advantage of this, but it’s definitely back burner right now.
- What can you tell us about the development tools available in Android? Strengths, weaknesses, gripes, likes, etc.
I’ve done all my development in Eclipse. It’s an ok IDE, but it ain’t no Visual Studio. The newest Android SDK and ADT plugin added a lot of great new functionality to it. It responds pretty slowly, but it beats wordpad and the command line. J
I started out running all my development stuff on an Ubuntu Machine. Eclipse and the SDK work a lot better this way, but carrying around a linux box everywhere is less than convenient.
One thing I strongly recommend is setting up a source repository. I’m using Microsoft TFS with Team Explorer Everywhere. Eclipse tends to freeze and crash, so it’s a great idea.
- Any lessons learned from this project for budding developers out there?
Java is evil. First and foremost.
Seriously though, start small. Look at the android sample applications that come with the SDK. They’re an awesome resource. Don’t worry about looks either. Just make it function first. Graphics are easy enough to add-on later.
As a software tester, I kind of developed backwards. I set out with a function I wanted to add and worked it until there were no bugs with it before I added more. I know a lot of developers just start typing tons of code and then go back and try to fix it, but this approach didn’t work that well for me. I literally tested every method as I wrote it.
If you run into trouble, don’t give it up. Google is your friend. I found tons of great examples and code samples on stackoverflow. Stick with it. Remember, I’d never written a single line of code when I started this project a few months ago.
Oh, and make sure your significant other is onboard with lonely nights.
Thanks, Reid! I’ve been using this Android application with my Droid 2 for a few weeks and I really like it. Having access to PDF files on my server has been very handy. If you have a Windows Home Server and an Android phone, give it a shot.
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