Constant Contact Labs Developer Blog

Android

• Mobile Apps - Native or Web? Posted Friday, March 5, 2010 Reneldy Senat 4 Comments

  

  There’s been a lot of debate on the web and in the blogs over mobile apps and which are better: native device-driven apps, or its counterpart, mobile web apps. I’ve always thought this to be a totally fair question, because they both offer real benefits to the user and sometimes serious drawbacks for developers. The truth is, although I believe they both have their own measurable benefits, I don’t believe there could ever truly be a real winner in this debate. The question is too subjective for a user, and for a developer, it ends up being completely requirements driven.

  In this post I step away from a user’s perspective and focus on some of the decisions developers will have to make when determining which is right for their project. For developers, this decision should be driven by requirements, but for those occasions when you’re just not sure which is right, feel free to refer to the following analysis.

   
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  Android • Apps • Iphone • Mobile • Software Development Process

• The Best Android Developer Resources Posted Thursday, January 21, 2010 Brendan White 2 Comments

  

  If you aren't aware already Constant Contact Labs is developing a version of the QuickView iPhone App for Android.  Check out the blog post: QuickView for Android Preview for more details.  I have been helping work on this Android application for some time now and over the course of development I have used various resources to get started, work through common problems, and become more familiar with the framework.  Rather than just leave these resources "favorited" in my browser I thought I would share them.  So here is a list of resources I believe no Android developer should be without.

   
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  Android • Mobile • Open Source • Resources

• QuickView for Android Preview Posted Friday, December 18, 2009 Jim Garretson 16 Comments

  

  We’ve written in some detail here about QuickView, Constant Contact’s iPhone app. It’s providing our customers with a quick and convenient way to interact with their email campaigns, contacts and lists while on-the-go, and we’re hearing from iPhone-owning customers that they really appreciate the value it adds to their Constant Contact accounts.

  We’ve also been hearing from customers of the nation’s largest wireless carrier, though, and they’re wondering when they’ll be able to take advantage of a mobile Constant Contact experience. The answer is: soon. Very soon. Labs is happy to pull back the curtain a bit today and talk about the upcoming QuickView for Android.

   
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  Android • Interface Design • Mobile

• Android: Don’t Overlook ViewSwitcher Posted Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Brendan White 8 Comments

  Switching between views in Android is a recurring requirement.  Loading screens and background processing is a prime example.  The process usually goes:  show a loading or splash screen, load data in the background, and when the data has been loaded switch to a view showing the loaded data.  The first instinct of developers, especially those new to Android, is to use a view's visibility attribute to achieve this. Set View1 to Visible, View2 to Invisible until processing is done then reverse.  Numerous code examples online use this clumsy procedure and after using Android for months now I have only just come across ViewSwitcher by chance.  ViewSwitcher provides the capacity to switch between two views using simple logic that produces more readable code.  In this short post I will highlight this often overlooked class with a brief description and example code demonstrating its use.

   
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  Android • Mobile
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