Re:In wich I rant about developing on Android
by Zigurd on Saturday September 01, 2012 @02:18PM
(#4464572)
The rant is a mixed bag:
The state of Android visual GUI editors? Much improved but that just moves them from abysmal to shameful.
Animation? General-purpose property animation, which debuted in Honeycomb is very powerful. LayoutTransition is less-general, but very convenient for transition animations.
Declarative UI in XML is the worst possible way to do it, except for every DSL that's been tried. If you prematurely proliferate different layout files for different configurations, you are screwed. There is no solution, except to convince your designers they will never get the pixel-perfect results they get on iOS. Maybe lie to them and tell them they get only three size variations and two density variation: Big tablet, small tablet, and handset, plus hi-res and medium-res.
The state of Android visual GUI editors? Much improved but that just moves them from abysmal to shameful.
Animation? General-purpose property animation, which debuted in Honeycomb is very powerful. LayoutTransition is less-general, but very convenient for transition animations.
Declarative UI in XML is the worst possible way to do it, except for every DSL that's been tried. If you prematurely proliferate different layout files for different configurations, you are screwed. There is no solution, except to convince your designers they will never get the pixel-perfect results they get on iOS. Maybe lie to them and tell them they get only three size variations and two density variation: Big tablet, small tablet, and handset, plus hi-res and medium-res.