Juice Up Your Android UI

Recently, I wrote an article for our Mono for Android column about improving your user interface of your applications.  The url is:http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/03/01/enhancing-your-uis.aspx

I hope that you enjoy the article.  I spent a lot of time on the article plus, helping out users and creating applications that are helpful to them is a personal/pet project of mine. 

One thing that I wanted to mention in the article and could not besides a side mention is the part about reverse geocoding.  Reverse geocoding is the process of taking a latitude/longitude and getting back an address.  Users are familiar with addresses, not latitude/longitude.  Unfortunately, I was not able to show the Android reverse geocoding that is built in.  Why?  Well, at the time, I was pre-release tester of what would become Mono for Android 4.6 and all the new stuff inside of it.  I couldn't come out and say that's why this didn't work and I was not comfortable trying to go ahead with the code anyway.  I know that the code worked in previous versions.  Unfortunately, deadlines will sometimes hit you over the head when you don't expect it.  Bottom line: I apologize to you the reader.  I will have an article out on mapping at a later time and I will discuss reverse geocoding there.

Mobile Web Development Featuring jQuery Mobile

Url: http://elearning.left-brain.com/event/mobile-web-development-jquery-mobile?code=EP3234W1

I'll be doing a seminar on jQuery Mobile on April 23.  I hope that you can attend.  Here is the info:

Start: 4/23/2013 11:00 AM (UTC -05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
End: 4/23/2013 4:30 PM (UTC -05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Rates: $199.99

Mobile development is a hot item. Customers are buying iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and many other mobile computing devices at an ever increasing record pace. Devices based on iOS and Android are nearly 80 percent of the marketplace. RIM continues to be dominant in the business area across the world. Nokia's growth with Windows Phone will grow on a worldwide basis. At the same time, clearly web development is a tremendous driver of applications, both on the public Internet and on private networks. How can developers target these various mobile platforms with web technologies? Developers can write web applications that take advantage of each mobile platform, but that is a lot of work. Into this space, the jQuery Mobile framework was developed. This eLearning series will provide an overview of mobile web development with jQuery Mobile, a detailed look at what the jQuery Mobile framework provides for us, how we can customize jQuery Mobile, and how we can use jQuery Mobile inside of ASP.NET.

Sessions (each session runs approximately 75 minutes):

Session 1: Mobile Web Development

Are you wondering what web developers can do in the mobile world?  This session will focus on:
• What web developers need to know about the idiosyncracies of mobile development
• Tools to use for mobile development
  • ASP.NET development options: Webforms v MVC v Web Pages
  • Web browsers
• Javascript language features useful for mobile web development
• Integrating with the Phone
• Meta tags to improve the user experience

Session 2: jQuery Mobile

You are probably aware of the jQuery javascript library. This seminar will introduce jQuery Mobile, a library that will make the development of web applications for mobile devices easy. We’ll look at the basics of jQuery Mobile, including

• Page Setup
• Toolbars
• Navigation
• Integrating basic controls with jQuery Mobile
  • Buttons
  • List components
  • Form/UI components
• Basic options for jQuery Mobile
• AJAX operations with the ListView

Session 3: jQuery Mobile Advanced with ASP.NET

jQuery Mobile allows developers to create an application with a mobile-specific user interface. There are many options to optimize and change the default behavior of jQuery Mobile, as well as how ASP.NET developers can easily integrate with jQuery Mobile. This session will look at

• Creating a Template for ASP.NET developers
• Creating a custom theme
• Build one ASP.NET Page with jQM Themes to target multiple devices
• Offline operation and the application manifest
• Plug-ins and optimizations for tablets
• jQM Events

 

Instructors

Wally McClure graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) with a BS & MS in Electrical Engineering. Since that time, he has done consulting and development for companies large and small. Wally has authored books on iPhone Programming with Mono/Monotouch, Android Programming with Mono for Android, application architecture, ADO.NET & SQL Server, and finally AJAX. He is a Microsoft MVP and an ASPInsider, and a partner in Scalable Development, Inc., where we're ramping up to provide training on iPhone, Android, and HTML5.

 

Customer Service

If you have any questions regarding this event, the registration process or would like to register more than one attendee, please contact us directly.

Email: service@devproconnections.com 
Phone: 800-793-5697 or 913-967-1719

Free Xamarin Studio and Free Chapters 1-4 Professional Android Programming with Mono for Android and .NET/C#

On February 20, Xamarin announced a new version of MonoDevelop called Xamarin Studio. We've been big fans of Xamarin and Miguel de Icaza's work all the way back to the inception of the Mono project so we're especially amped to see Xamarin release a Free Starter Xamarin Studio to bring this great mobile development tool to an even bigger programmer audience.

In the spirit of free then, we're happy to share this free starter from Wrox's Professional Android Programming with Mono for Android and .NET/C#. Download this free starter is a PDF with chapters 1-4 of the book to get you started developing Android apps in the Xamarin tools. While the new Xamarin tools have changed a bit, we do still think these chapters will be useful if you're new to using Mono and Xamarin for Android development. Here's the outline of what's covered in these free Mono for Android chapters. We hope if you find this useful, you'll come back and buy the complete book from Wrox here at Wrox.com or at your favorite book retailer.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Android, Mobile Devices, and the Marketplace

• Product Comparison
• Mobile Development
• Android
• Cross-Platform Alternatives
• Summary

Chapter 2: Introduction to Mono for Android

• Before You Begin Developing
• Visual Studio Development with Mono for Android
• Mono for Android Development with MonoDevelop
• Summary

Chapter 3: Understanding Android/Mono for Android Applications

• What Is an Android Application?
• Binding the Components: The Android Manifest
• Summary

Chapter 4: Planning and Building Your Application's User Interface

• Guidelines for a Successful Mobile UI
• Building an Android UI
• Choosing a Control Layout
• Designing Your User Interface Controls
• Controlling Your Menus
• Resolution-Independent UI
• Constructing a User Interface: A Phone and Tablet Example
• Summary