Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Widgets on Android: Simple, powerful and beautifully formed

Today I have Google Joy and more specifically Android Joy. I was reading the Android Developers Blog and the latest article was on the topic of Widgets.

I reached the end of the article and set about creating my own Android home screen widget. It had to go off to Twitter, retrieve the latest status update for @flashy1980, a colleague and good friend, then display it on my home screen. In a period of time less than or equal to 20 minutes I was wondering around the office with a slightly inane grin on my face, showing off my first Android widget.

Some say I'm biased, and I am, I really am, but I love Android. I'm off to play some more with the Widgets API now. Source code for Google's example Widget that I based mine on is here

NB: you need version 1.5 of the Android SDK to create widgets and they only run on a device with a 1.5 firmware. I've installed the 5.0.2Hr3 firmware from the Sapphire-Port-Dream project. Many thanks to @Haykuro for all his firmware efforts.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice Widget

Anonymous said...

It is rather valuable information

Anonymous said...

Bravo, is simply magnificent idea

Anonymous said...

My friend and I were recently talking about how modern society has evolved to become so integrated with technology. Reading this post makes me think back to that debate we had, and just how inseparable from electronics we have all become.


I don't mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside... I just hope that as technology further advances, the possibility of transferring our memories onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It's one of the things I really wish I could see in my lifetime.


(Posted on Nintendo DS running [url=http://kwstar88.livejournal.com/491.html]R4i SDHC[/url] DS qqPost)

Factory Widgets said...

DO you mind posting your source code?

Thanks.