Smart task queue

Do you use background threads (via Thread class, AsyncTask class, a service, etc.) for background tasks? Of course you do. Most of us do. It’s the most popular way of getting things done while keeping the app responsive. But does it mean smooth? Take a look at another approach.

Aligning text on Android

Typography is very complex. Even if we’re talking only about the technical aspects of fonts – metrics, shapes and aligning. Material Design focuses on typography and proposes text alignment as a tool for creating nice layouts. Android doesn’t help much in that matter.

Let’s port Design Support Library to Carbon

Ever been wondering, how to use Carbon with your favourite library? Maybe you have a component, which doesn’thave dynamic shadows or ripples? In this tutorial we’ll port Design Support Library to Carbon and I’ll guide you through the implementation process.

What’s wrong with CardView

I don’t like the support.CardView class. It’s the only backwards-compatible implementation of a generic view with shadows and rounded corners. It’s given for free, so lots of people are using it for FABs, buttons, search bars and all other widgets which should have a shadow and/or rounded corners. But its design is horrible – CardView works and looks different on L and pre-L platforms.

Carbon G+ community

It’s hard to discuss things and share thoughts using GitHub issues. That’s why I’ve created a G+ community for Carbon users. If you have any problems to discusss, ideas how to improve anything or want to share your app with us – feel free to join.

Carbon G+ community

Custom LayoutInflater

Using custom UI libraries has one downside – in xml you have to write the full package name of each View. Android widgets can be used without full name. It’s also possible with custom Views – all we have to do is to replace the default LayoutInflater.

Placing a Floating Action Button on a seam

Material Design guidelines suggest placing Floating Action Buttons on seams. Android layouts doesn’t help much with that. The only way is to measure a layout manually and offset the FAB using margins. Let’s see how to do that in a better way.

Carbon’s roadmap, bugfixing and the future plans

Recently I was asked about Carbon’s roadmap, future features and thoughts about the new Design Support Library. Here are the answers.

Design Support Library vs Carbon

 

Since end of May there’s a new compatibility library available for all interested in using Material Design on older Android platforms. It can be found on the official Android Developers blog. Let’s see what’s new and compare the new support lib with Carbon.

Material Design and designers

Material Design introduced widget tinting, automatic shadows, and vector graphics. The default icons and widgets are nice and the guidelines are very strict. It’s possible to create any app much faster than before. Does it mean that graphic artists and designers are out of job?