Overview of Android L, Wear, and TV at Seattle Mobile .NET Developers Group, October 2014

1. Android L and So Much More
James Montemagno
Developer Evangelist, Xamarin
@JamesMontemagno

2. New in Android
– Android L Developer Preview
– Android Wear
– Android TV

3. Android L Developer Preview

4. Android L Major Features
 ART Runtime
 Material Design
 Widgets, Views, and Shadows
 Animations
 Notifications
 Compatibility

5. Android L Major Features
ART
Runtime
 Ahead-of-Time compilation
 Improved Garbage Collection
 Improved Debugging Support

6. Android L Major Features
Material
Design
Material metaphor Bold, graphic, intentional Motion provides meaning
google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html

7.  Brand new style for
applications.
• Theme.Material
• Theme.Material.Light
• Theme.Material.Light.
DarkActionBar
Material Design

8.  colorPrimary – App
Branding Color
 colorPrimaryDark – Status
bar & contextual bars
 colorAccent – Theme UI
Controls (ie. checkbox)
Material Design – Color Palette

9. Material Design – Color Palette

10.  Extract Prominent
Colors from Image
 6 Palettes Generated
Material Design –Palettes
Generate a color pallet from an image
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Support.v7.Palette/

11. Material Design – Drawable Tint
 Bitmaps as alpha maps
 android:tint=“@color/blue”

12. Demo

13. Android L Major Features
View and
Shadows
 CardView
 RecyclerView
 Elevation

14. CardView
Wrap any view in a CardView
https://www.nuget.org/packages Xamarin.Android.Support.v7.CardView/

15. RecyclerView
 High speed efficient ListView
 Includes layout manager for positioning items
 Default animations for common item operations
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Support.v7.RecyclerView/

16. Elevation
 android:elevation=“2dp”
 View.SetTranslationZ method
 Z = elevation + translationZ

17. Demo

18. Android L Major Features
Animations
 Touch Feedback
 Reveal
 Activity Transitions

19. Animation
Surface reaction

20. Animation
Surface reaction
Material response

21. Animation
Surface reaction
Material response Radial action

22.  Default Touch Feedback Animation:
RippleDrawable
 Set Background to:
• ?android:attr/selectableItemBackgro
und
• ?android:attr/selectableItemBackgro
undBorderless
 Create custom RippleDrawable using
the ripple element
Animation – Touch Feedback

23. Animation – Reveal
 Easily create
clipping circles

24. Animation – Activity Transitions
 Custom animations for enter and exit transitions
of activities
• Enter: How views in the activity enter
• Exit: How view in activity exit
• Shared Elements: How views that are shared
between 2 activities animate

25. Android L Major Features
Notifications
 Lock Screen Notifications
 Notifications Metadata
 Unified Notifications

26. New APIs – Lock Screen Notifications (Android L)
 Android.App.Notification.Builder.SetVisibility()
• Private: Shows basic information such as icon, but
hides full content
• Public: Show the notification's full content
• Secret: Show nothing, excluding even the
notification’s icon

27. New APIs – Notifications Metadata (Android L)
 SetCategory(): Tells the system how to handle
notifications when the device is in Do not Disturb
 SetPriority(): Set to Max or High to appear in a
small floating window if the sound also has a vibration
or sound.
 AddPerson(): Add a list of people to notification.

28. Unified Notifications – Standard and Extended

29. Demo

30. Android L Major Features
Compatibility
& More
 New APIs
 Android L Small Features
 Google Play Services via NuGet

31. New APIs – Compatibility
 Material Theme
• Only available in Android L
Developer Preview
o Define theme that inherits from
older theme (like Holo) in
res/values/styles.xml
o Define them with same name that
inherits from Material in res/values-v21/
styles.xml
o Set theme as your app’s theme in
manifest file
 Layouts
• Do not use any of the new XML attributes from
Android L Developer Preview, they will not work
with previous versions of Android.
• You must provide alternative layouts if you wish
to use them
o L Preview Layouts: res/layout-v21/
o Alternative Layouts: res/layout/
o Do avoid duplication of code, define styles in
res/values/
o Modify the style in res/values-v21/ for new APIs

32. New APIs – Compatibility
 UI Widgets
• Support v7: RecyclerView & CardView
o Limitations (pre-L Preview):
o CardView falls back to
programmatic shadows
implementation using additional
padding
o CardView does not clip its children
that intersect with rounded corners
 Animations
• Following are Android L Developer Preview ONLY:
o Activity Transitions
o Touch feedback
o Reveal animations
o Path-based animations

33. Android L Small Features
 Camera
• Enhanced image and
video capturing. Capture
Raw sensor data.
 Multi-networking
• Dynamically scan for
available network with
specific capability and
automatically connect.
 BLE Peripheral Mode
• Apps that connect to devices
such as pedometer or health
monitor and transfer data to
another BLE device.
 Document-Centric Recents
 Job Scheduler

34. Google Play Services via NuGet
 Play Game Services: event –based challenges, saved
games, and game profiles
 App Indexing API
 Google Cast: Media tracks for closed captioning
 Wallet: Save to Wallet, geo-fenced in-store notifications,
split tender between wallet & card
 Analytics: Measure product impressions/product clicks
 Mobile Ads: in-app purchase ads
 Dynamic Security Provider

35. Android Wear

36. Android Wear – Extending Apps
 Enhance Existing Apps
• Support v4 Notification API
o WearableExtender
 Inbox Style Cards
 Voice Input

37. Android Wear Notifications + Expanded

38. Android Wear Notifications - Actions

39. Android Wear – Building Apps
 Companion App
• Android app that runs on a wearable
 New Themes
 New UI Widgets
• BoxInsetLayout
• CircledImageView
• WearableListView
• More…
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Wear/

40. Android Wear – Sync Data
 Exposed via Google Play Services
• Data API
o Sync datastore between phone and wearable
 Message API
o Send small payloads and simple
o communication
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.GooglePlayServicesJellyBean/

41. Android Wear – Templates + NuGet
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Wear/

42. Demo

43. Android TV

44. Android TV Features
 Made for TV
• Pre-built fragments for browsing & interacting
with media catalogs
 In-App Searching
• Voice input for searching content
 Recommendations
• Suggest content from your app
 Chromecast Built-in

45. Android TV ADT-1 Development Kit
http://developer.android.com/tv/index.html

46. Android TV + Xamarin
 Available via NuGet
• https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Support.v17.Leanback
 Samples:
• https://github.com/xamarin/monodroid-samples

47. Android Recap
• Android L Developer Preview
• Material Design
• Views & Animations
• Notifications
• Android Wear
• Notifications & Companion Apps
• Android TV

48. Resources
 Tips for Your First Wear App
 http://blog.xamarin.com/tips-for-your-first-android-wear-app/
 Android L Documentation
 http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/android/platform_features/android_l/introduc
tion_to_android_l/
 Samples
 http://developer.xamarin.com/samples/android/

49. Q & A
James Montemagno
Developer Evangelist, Xamarin
@JamesMontemagno