Monday, July 09, 2012

Making Good Apps Great: The What and the How

Once again the 1,300-seat main Android session room at Google I/O was consistently jam-packed, with attendees sitting on the floor and lining up to get in. As such, it was a real thrill to deliver my sequel to last years Android Protips presentation -- Android Protips 2: Electric Boogaloo.

It's now on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.


If you want a closer look at the slides, I've created this gallery, which features speaker notes as the captions.


If downloading is more your thing, they're also available for downloading as a PDF.

The code snippets are posted at Making Good Apps Great: The Code Snippets for your copy/paste pleasure.

Presenting Without a Computer

Like last year, I presented without a computer -- instead using a Asus Transformer Prime paired with a Nexus 7. One app, running on two tablets, connected via Bluetooth.

The Transformer Prime was wired up with HDMI-out and a USB-connected clicker that let me transition between slides.

The Bluetooth-connected Nexus 7 showed me my "Speaker View": My speaker notes, the current / next slide preview, my pre-written live tweets, and a countdown timer.


Whenever the Transformer Prime transitioned slides, it transmitted the current slide to the Nexus 7.

The slides themselves I created using Powerpoint, using the "Export as a series of pictures" option. Except the animations which were custom created by Pandamusk, as detailed here.

The app just steps through each of the images / animations in sequence.

Can I Get the App? Can I See the Source?

Yes and yes. I need to make a few improvements before I open source it.

Really? Because you said that last year and…

Yes. Sorry! The code took a little more tidying than I expected. I'll try and be a little more... prompt, this year.

1 comment:

  1. I'm very excited to see that app! Keep us posted :-)

    ReplyDelete