Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Android 4.3, updated developer tools, and backwards compatible Action Bar Available Now

Unknown    10:48 PM   


I should say thank you ActionBar Sherlock for being a great tool while Google worked on this! :-) 
Let's all take this moment to shout out and thank Jake Wharton for supporting ABS for so long.

 Android 4.3, a sweeter version of Jelly Bean, includes performance enhancements to keep your apps fast, smooth, and efficient; together with new APIs and capabilities including:

 * OpenGL ES 3.0 Take advantage of OpenGL ES 3.0 and EGL extensions as standard features of Android, with access from either framework or native APIs.

 * Bluetooth Smart Communicate with low-power Bluetooth Smart devices and sensors to provide new features for fitness, medical, location, proximity, and more.

 * Restricted profiles Tablet owners can create restricted profiles to limit access to apps, for family, friends, kiosks, and more. Your app can offer various types of restrictions to let tablet owners control its capabilities in each profile.

 * New media capabilities A modular DRM framework enables you to more easily integrate DRM into your streaming protocols, and apps can also access a built-in VP8 encoder from framework or native APIs for high-quality video capture.

 * Notification access: Access and interact with  the stream of status bar notifications as they are posted — including routing them to nearby Bluetooth devices!

 * Improved profiling tools New tags in Systrace, and on-screen GPU profiling, give you new ways to optimize performance.

 We’re also releasing a new version of the Android NDK (r9), which provides native access to the OpenGL ES 3.0 APIs and other stable APIs in Android 4.3. 

 The Support Package has also been updated with the long awaited Action Bar API that lets you include this Android design pattern in your app with compatibility back to Android 2.1. 

 You can download the Android 4.3 Platform (API level 18), as well as the SDK Tools, Platform Tools, and Support Package from the Android SDK Manager.

 Android 4.3 powers the new Nexus 7 tablet and is rolling out now as an update to Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ devices.
Links:
Android 4.3 APIs
http://android-developers.blogspot.in/2013/07/android-43-and-updated-developer-tools.html
http://officialandroid.blogspot.in/2013/07/introducing-android-43-sweeter-jelly.html

Sunday, May 5, 2013

JavaScript: The Good Parts - An awesome book by an extraordinary man

Unknown    8:33 AM   
Couple of weeks ago I was looking for some book recommendations , videos etc on advanced JavaScript things. I've been programming for a decent period of time, so I didn't need a book that spends 4 pages on for loops. I was googling on this and everywhere I ended up with this man's name Douglas Crockford.

I ordered his "JavaScript : The Good Parts ", started reading it. And I felt, I'm late to read it. I would say, it is a must have JS book. Small one but dense.

This book is a compact form of only the most elegant, beautiful and good parts of JavaScript. Its quite unbelievably compact yet maintains the sense of usefulness. The topics covered would help an intermediate or an expect become a "Guru" of JavaScript. The "railroad" diagrams used in this book truly explain the concepts very well. This book also has the best reference for the "JSLint" tool. All in all "Douglas Crocford" has done an excellent job at helping improve the JavaScript programmer in me by emphasizing using the
"Good Parts" and avoiding the "Bad Ones".

The author, Douglas Crockford, has been continuously involved in the development of the JavaScript language. With an insider’s perspective, he reveals that JavaScript has more than its share of bad parts due to its premature, and therefore unrefined release. He goes on to stress that superseding all the unrefined, not-so-great features is a set of good, reliable ones that can be used to develop truly efficient code. He compares the unfortunate mix of good and bad ideas to a programming model that functions on global variables.

Crockford insists that by thoroughly understanding the positive, elegant aspects of JavaScript and forgetting the negative, inefficient methods, the readers can uncover a beautiful and expressive language for building great code.

The book is aimed at anyone and everyone who develops applications or sites for the Web. It is divided into ten chapters. It begins with an overview of the good features in JavaScript. Subsequent chapters cover concepts like grammar, functions, objects, inheritance, arrays, and regular expressions. The book ends with a set of five appendices that provide added information such as the negative features of Javascript, Syntax Diagrams, JSLint, and JSON.

Yes, beyond any questions the best books/ videos available on JavaScript are from Douglas Crockford. He is inspirational and extraordinarily rewarding to watch and listen to.

Monday, January 7, 2013

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