Tips and tricks to make your Android development with Titanium as painless as possible. Android can be as functional and (almost) as performant as iOS with less 'if' statements. From #ticonf Australia, August 2013.

1. Jeff Bonnes
twitter: @titaniumdev
http://www.titaniumdevelopment.com.au
Easier Android
Development

2. Agenda
• Android Market and Behaviours
• Planning your App
• Smarter Defaults
• Tips,Tricks and Advice

3. Background

4. App Download Culture
0
25
50
75
100
iOS Android

5. App Download Culture

6. Android by the numbers
• Australian Market Share (Dec 2012)
0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0% 90.0% 100.0%
iOS Android

7. Android by the numbers
• Australian Market Share (Dec 2012)
• US Market Share
• Why?

8. X-platform Examples

9. X-platform Examples

10. X-platform Examples

11. X-platform Examples

12. Before you code
• Target API?

13. Before you code
• Devices / Screen Sizes?

14. Coding Approaches
• Different Apps
• Different UI Code
• Different CommonJS Modules

15. Project Setup
• dps vs pixels
• density specific images

16. Project Setup
• Other tiapp.xml values

17. Development Workflow
• You are using TiShadow, aren’t you?
• fastdev
• Android 2.3 in Emulator, 4.x on device
• Intel x86 Atom System Image: no Google APIs :-(
• VM for Emulator
• tracer.js

18. Navigation

19. Action Bar
• Android 3.0+ only
• Must use Heavyweight windows

20. Alternate Navigation
• TiXUI
• title
• titleControl
• barImage
• rightNavButton
• leftNavButton
require('xui').createWindow();

21. Light vs Heavy Windows
• Activity
• Back Button
• Animation
• activityEnterAnimation
• activityExitAnimation
• Memory?
• fullscreen
• navBarHidden
• modal
• windowSoftInputMode

22. Images
• Don’t allow
Android to
stretch images
• Don’t use
images for
backgrounds
(especially
windows!)

23. Show only what you need
• Things are S L O W E R
• JSON Parsing
• SQLite Updates
• event firing
• Load things only as you need them

24. Freeing Resources
• Close Windows
• Memory Debugging
• Instruments first
• then DDMS

25. Intents
• Do less work - use less frameworks
• See Titanium.Android.Intent

26. Packaging Tricks
• Image Compression
• uses-feature
• Icons - drawables (http://ticons.fokkezb.nl/)

27. ThankYou!
• twitter: @titaniumdev
• http://www.titaniumdevelopment.com.au
• https://github.com/jeffbonnes/TiXUI