Category Archives: Programming

It is relatively easy to show a toast (a short message that appears on screen for a few seconds and then disappears) with the following code: Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), “hi”, Toast.LENGTH_LONG ).show(); The trick is trying to understand how this short hand method was created. This is what it looks like written the long way: Context context;… Read More »

There is a bit more to it when trying to create a button in Android and setting a listener to it. The new way hides a lot of the complexity but it also hides a lot of the understanding. The “traditional” way was: btn = (Button)findViewById(R.id.firstButton); btn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View v) {… Read More »

This site has a very high quality android tutorial. Old school versions: Make Your First Android App: Part 1/3 Android Tutorial for Beginners: Part 2 Android Tutorial for Beginners: Part 3 Updated versions: Beginning Android Development Part One: Installing Android Studio Beginning Android Development Part Two: Using Android Studio It is well worth reading both.… Read More »

The official definition is: An Intent is an object that provides runtime binding between separate components, such as two activities. (taken from: https://developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp/starting-activity.html) In plain English, if you want to pass variables or parameters between screens (activities), use Intents

If you are running into this problem, it will be because Android Studio has this quirk where the constraint folder is not in the android directory structure but outside it. Let’s start from the beginning. The libraries are all in the /User/<username>/Library/Android/sdk/extras/android/m2repository/com/android/support/ However, constraint sits in a slightly different place. It is at /User/<username>/Library/Android/sdk/extras/m2repository/com/android/support/ Note the… Read More »

If you are running code like this: try { PackageInfo myInfo = getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(),0); versionName = myInfo.versionName; verCode = myInfo.versionCode; } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } TextView myText = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textView2); myText.setText(versionName + ” – ” + verCode); but the output is not what you are expecting, the chances are you are using gradle to build… Read More »

If you are using Android Studio and want to emulate on a Galaxy S6 or any other phone in the S range, you can download the skin from http://developer.samsung.com/galaxy/emulator-skin/s To install it, check out this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSc9D4rrOxw Go to 3:24 of the video to see how to install it in Android Studio.  

To rewrite history (not usually a good thing to do) you can do the following: git reset –hard <commit hash> git rebase -i HEAD~2 (the 2 goes back 2 commits) git push origin +master refresh github and you should see your commits disappear.