Archive for March, 2009

Android Layout Tricks #4: Optimize, Part 2

Sharing and reusing layouts is very easy with Android thanks to the <include /> tag, sometimes even too easy and you might end up with user interfaces that contain a large number of views, some of which are rarely used. Thankfully, Android offers a very special widget called ViewStub, which brings you all the benefits [...]


Road Trip 2008: Mesa Sunset

Mesa Sunset


Road Trip 2008: Dust and Light

Dust and Light


Speed up your Android UI

Some Android applications require to squeeze every bit of performance out of the UI toolkit and there are many ways to do so. In this article, you will discover how to speed up the drawing and the perceived startup time of your activities. Both these techniques rely on a single feature, the window’s background drawable. [...]


Android Layout Tricks #3: Optimize, Part 1

In the previous installment of Android Layout Tricks, I showed you how to use the <include /> tag in XML layout to reuse and share your layout code. I also mentioned the <merge /> and it’s now time to learn how to use it. The <merge /> was created for the purpose of optimizing Android [...]