The Android L Developer Preview introduced a plethora of new APIs for developers to take advantage of, including Material Design, notifications, and new animations, to name a few. Xamarin developers can access these new APIs right now with our recently announced preliminary support in Xamarin.Android. With Google expected to release Android L fully this fall, it will be increasingly important to take advantage of these new APIs and get your app up-to-date. In the slides from our Android L and So Much More webinar on Tuesday, September 16th, Developer Evangelist James Montemagno walks through the top new and updated APIs in the release. In addition to everything new in the Android L Developer Preview, he also covers everything new in the Google Play Services, Support Libraries, Android Wear, and Android TV SDKs.

1. Android L and So Much More
James Montemagno
Developer Evangelist, Xamarin
@JamesMontemagno

2. New in Android
– Android L Developer Preview
– Android Wear
– Android TV

3. Android L Developer Preview

4. Android L Major Features
 ART Runtime
 Material Design
 Widgets, Views, and Shadows
 Animations
 Notifications
 Compatibility

5. Android L Major Features
ART
Runtime
 Ahead-of-Time compilation
 Improved Garbage Collection
 Improved Debugging Support

6. Android L Major Features
Material
Design
Material metaphor Bold, graphic, intentional Motion provides meaning
google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html

7.  Brand new style for
applications.
• Theme.Material
• Theme.Material.Light
• Theme.Material.Light.
DarkActionBar
Material Design

8.  colorPrimary – App
Branding Color
 colorPrimaryDark – Status
bar & contextual bars
 colorAccent – Theme UI
Controls (ie. checkbox)
Material Design – Color Palette

9. Material Design – Color Palette

10.  Extract Prominent
Colors from Image
 6 Palettes Generated
Material Design –Palettes
Generate a color pallet from an image
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Support.v7.Palette/

11. Material Design – Drawable Tint
 Bitmaps as alpha maps
 android:tint=“@color/blue”

12. Demo

13. Android L Major Features
View and
Shadows
 CardView
 RecyclerView
 Elevation

14. CardView
Wrap any view in a CardView
https://www.nuget.org/packages Xamarin.Android.Support.v7.CardView/

15. RecyclerView
 High speed efficient ListView
 Includes layout manager for positioning items
 Default animations for common item operations
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Support.v7.RecyclerView/

16. Elevation
 android:elevation=“2dp”
 View.SetTranslationZ method
 Z = elevation + translationZ

17. Demo

18. Android L Major Features
Animations
 Touch Feedback
 Reveal
 Activity Transitions

19. Animation
Surface reaction

20. Animation
Surface reaction
Material response

21. Animation
Surface reaction
Material response Radial action

22.  Default Touch Feedback Animation:
RippleDrawable
 Set Background to:
• ?android:attr/selectableItemBackgro
und
• ?android:attr/selectableItemBackgro
undBorderless
 Create custom RippleDrawable using
the ripple element
Animation – Touch Feedback

23. Animation – Reveal
 Easily create
clipping circles

24. Animation – Activity Transitions
 Custom animations for enter and exit transitions
of activities
• Enter: How views in the activity enter
• Exit: How view in activity exit
• Shared Elements: How views that are shared
between 2 activities animate

25. Android L Major Features
Notifications
 Lock Screen Notifications
 Notifications Metadata
 Unified Notifications

26. New APIs – Lock Screen Notifications (Android L)
 Android.App.Notification.Builder.SetVisibility()
• Private: Shows basic information such as icon, but
hides full content
• Public: Show the notification's full content
• Secret: Show nothing, excluding even the
notification’s icon

27. New APIs – Notifications Metadata (Android L)
 SetCategory(): Tells the system how to handle
notifications when the device is in Do not Disturb
 SetPriority(): Set to Max or High to appear in a
small floating window if the sound also has a vibration
or sound.
 AddPerson(): Add a list of people to notification.

28. Unified Notifications – Standard and Extended

29. Demo

30. Android L Major Features
Compatibility
& More
 New APIs
 Android L Small Features
 Google Play Services via NuGet

31. New APIs – Compatibility
 Material Theme
• Only available in Android L
Developer Preview
o Define theme that inherits from
older theme (like Holo) in
res/values/styles.xml
o Define them with same name that
inherits from Material in res/values-v21/
styles.xml
o Set theme as your app’s theme in
manifest file
 Layouts
• Do not use any of the new XML attributes from
Android L Developer Preview, they will not work
with previous versions of Android.
• You must provide alternative layouts if you wish
to use them
o L Preview Layouts: res/layout-v21/
o Alternative Layouts: res/layout/
o Do avoid duplication of code, define styles in
res/values/
o Modify the style in res/values-v21/ for new APIs

32. New APIs – Compatibility
 UI Widgets
• Support v7: RecyclerView & CardView
o Limitations (pre-L Preview):
o CardView falls back to
programmatic shadows
implementation using additional
padding
o CardView does not clip its children
that intersect with rounded corners
 Animations
• Following are Android L Developer Preview ONLY:
o Activity Transitions
o Touch feedback
o Reveal animations
o Path-based animations

33. Android L Small Features
 Camera
• Enhanced image and
video capturing. Capture
Raw sensor data.
 Multi-networking
• Dynamically scan for
available network with
specific capability and
automatically connect.
 BLE Peripheral Mode
• Apps that connect to devices
such as pedometer or health
monitor and transfer data to
another BLE device.
 Document-Centric Recents
 Job Scheduler

34. Google Play Services via NuGet
 Play Game Services: event –based challenges, saved
games, and game profiles
 App Indexing API
 Google Cast: Media tracks for closed captioning
 Wallet: Save to Wallet, geo-fenced in-store notifications,
split tender between wallet & card
 Analytics: Measure product impressions/product clicks
 Mobile Ads: in-app purchase ads
 Dynamic Security Provider

35. Android Wear

36. Android Wear – Extending Apps
 Enhance Existing Apps
• Support v4 Notification API
o WearableExtender
 Inbox Style Cards
 Voice Input

37. Android Wear Notifications + Expanded

38. Android Wear Notifications - Actions

39. Android Wear – Building Apps
 Companion App
• Android app that runs on a wearable
 New Themes
 New UI Widgets
• BoxInsetLayout
• CircledImageView
• WearableListView
• More…
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Wear/

40. Android Wear – Sync Data
 Exposed via Google Play Services
• Data API
o Sync datastore between phone and wearable
 Message API
o Send small payloads and simple
o communication
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.GooglePlayServicesJellyBean/

41. Android Wear – Templates + NuGet
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Wear/

42. Demo

43. Android TV

44. Android TV Features
 Made for TV
• Pre-built fragments for browsing & interacting
with media catalogs
 In-App Searching
• Voice input for searching content
 Recommendations
• Suggest content from your app
 Chromecast Built-in

45. Android TV ADT-1 Development Kit
http://developer.android.com/tv/index.html

46. Android TV + Xamarin
 Available via NuGet
• https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Support.v17.Leanback
 Samples:
• https://github.com/xamarin/monodroid-samples

47. Android Recap
• Android L Developer Preview
• Material Design
• Views & Animations
• Notifications
• Android Wear
• Notifications & Companion Apps
• Android TV

48. Resources
 Tips for Your First Wear App
 http://blog.xamarin.com/tips-for-your-first-android-wear-app/
 Android L Documentation
 http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/platform_features/android_l/introduc
tion_to_android_l/
 Samples
 http://developer.xamarin.com/samples/android/

49. Dive Deep into Mobile Development with the Experts!
xamarin.com/evolve

50. Q & A
James Montemagno
Developer Evangelist, Xamarin
@JamesMontemagno