Category Archives: WSU_CS

End Of the Semester

For Jon and I this is the end of the road for undergrad.  This Android project was a great way to end it.  All three of us want to continue to work on the app after school ends, we still have plans for it.

 

I’ve learned quite a bit over the course of the semester, not just coding with Android but how to work with a team.   We all became pretty good at using git, although sometimes the project still hates me and doesn’t want to work but that’s ok.  We have hundreds and hundreds of emails over the past few months talking about the app.  We also took advantage of the library TVs and did a bit of code review at our (bi)-weekly meetings.  Of course, we all learned Java for Android quite a bit, too and attempting to use the GUI for XML.

 

This was a great experience and a great way to end my undergraduate degree.

 

 

Thanks to everyone who helped along the way,

 

James Celona

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

QA Testing

The release candidate is ready to go and so starts the crazy amount of bug testing we will need to do.  We need to assure we check all the edge cases and all the scenarios in which the user could break our app.  It reminds me of the last time working before a Mahadev assignment is due and checking if anything could go wrong.  We need to make sure things like:

repeating alarms actually set to the proper date.

what happens if you delete a task right before it’s due, does the alarm still go off? What about deleting it before looking at the notification? (we corrected this one earlier)

What happens if you set something to go off in the past, how will our app handle it?

Do the notifications stack correctly if it repeats frequently?

Does the app do anything about SQL injection?

Does anything happen if a task has all the same information?

what about categories, does the name matter?

If you create a category in a different activity can you use it in addTaskActivity?

———

The list seems to be endless and ones where we need to create like 20 tasks to make sure everything works at that high of a load is up to Jon/Dhimitri since my VM doesn’t really play nice.

Questions like these are a great way to test to make sure the app is functional.  I’ll doing another write up about what google would like our app to.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Great Meeting the Other day

Synergy! haha, Jon Dhimitri and I met up on Thursday to discuss the final process in the app.  I figured since Dhimitri has that little netbook that he can’t do much with that I would bring a VGA cable to the library and set my laptop up on the big screen.  I’ll remember not to listen to Dhimitri though because the VGA cable wouldn’t fit so I had to run back and grab an HDMI, the result:

Look at him pointing, Synergy!

It actually worked out really well, and I wish we had started doing it earlier.  We used My/Jon’s laptop and were able to solve a problem in Dhimitri’s ViewCalendarActivity which turned out to be some weird problem with using .get__() (it was a call to a different class outside the package) which it didn’t like and wouldn’t allow the calendar to move more than a month away.

The meeting lasted a pretty long time where we discussed where the app was going and who was testing it.  I suggested we use r/androidDev from Reddit considering we would definitely get some feedback from knowledgeable app devs who are happy to help.  I think it might be a good idea to get some freshmen CS students into the testing too, I’ll email whomever is doing 101/140 this year and ask.

The app is looking awesome, excited for these next few weeks.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Working on a facelift

Howdy all,

Jon and I aren’t graphic designers, actually I just ran into this problem at work,  and it’s pretty obvious this app isn’t going to be the prettiest bell at the ball.  Whatever, form follows function.  Right now I’m working on making the ‘create activity’ section contain everything we’re going to need Calendar style date picker, notes, title, priority radio buttons and that should be it for now.

I’ve ran into a bit of a problem with saving the tasks and I can’t figure out why they aren’t being recreated on restart for now I’m just leaving it alone (which is why nothing has been committed yet).  Since Jon built most of the onRestart() I’m sure he’ll know what’s wrong once we meet THIS SUNDAY FOR SURE so I’m not too concerned.  I found out today that the GUI for android dev is terrific, it really is.  I was fussing around with all the ugly xml and switched over only to see the GUI version was so smooth and easy to use.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Catching Up on GIT

Howdy all,

Luckily Jon and I have been working internships all summer using some sort of variation of a Version Control System.  I guess I didn’t learn as much as I thought in 401 for GIT as I really needed.  My git-foo has improved significantly (Jon’s is still way above mine, though. )  Right now I’m working on my james-dev branch (at least the one I push to) and usually branch when I’m trying something new.  I’m really digging the issue tracker but, I think one day this week I am going to take some time out, probably with Jon, and really get our Wiki in gear.

In other news, old news that I never mentioned, Joe was MIA for a while and I finally got in contact with him and he said he was too busy and couldn’t commit I emailed Karl about it but I never got a response, I’m sure he’s just enjoying summer.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

My First App

I never mentioned in my previous post that I have been watching www.thenewboston.org ‘s video series throughout the past few weeks.  He’s a young guy and it’s kind of funny learning from him sometimes, weird little things bother me sometimes, I’m weird, it’s weird.  But!

I wrote my first app, you can push a button to add or push a button to subtract! Can’t wait to publish it to Google play..  It’s a good building block to start from.

————————————-

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android&#8221;
android:layout_width=”fill_parent”
android:layout_height=”fill_parent”
android:orientation=”vertical” >

<TextView
android:id=”@+id/tvDisplay”
android:layout_width=”fill_parent”
android:layout_height=”wrap_content”
android:layout_gravity=”center”
android:gravity=”center”
android:text=”Total =”
android:textSize=”45dp” />

<Button
android:id=”@+id/addButton”
android:layout_width=”250dp”
android:layout_height=”wrap_content”
android:layout_gravity=”center”
android:text=”Add One”
android:textSize=”20dp” />
<Button
android:id=”@+id/subButton”
android:layout_width=”244dp”
android:layout_height=”wrap_content”
android:layout_gravity=”center”
android:text=”Subtract One”
android:textSize=”20dp” />

</LinearLayout>

——————–

Does wordpress not have a <code> tag? Gross.

But, that’s XML a lot of referencing android:layout, or just android in general, who would have thunk it?!  XML seems pretty straight forward, oddly enough the day after I learned some of it I had to write it a bit for my internship, which was pretty cool.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Keeping Scheduled Meet Times

I spoke with John this week, he works in Lowell and I live about 5 minutes or so from his work I we met for a quick meal and talked about what we’ve done.  I’m still trying to get in contact with Joe, I don’t know what he’s doing.  But, we both realized we were letting work take up a bit too much of our time we are going to start meeting at least once a week on a google+ hangout and teach each other what we’ve learned.

Also, I have set aside a few days a week a few hours after work to sit in my office and learn / write xlm/java to get some little android apps up and running.  Today is the first of the sit downs and it’s a lot better of an idea than “I’ll just do it when I get free time”  because summer has been itching for me to just go outside and hang with friends.

This idea of “class time” in my office is going to work out well.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

First Week install/configure

It’s been a slow start to the project, nice weather tends to do that to me.  I manged to find a great video series about Android development that really starts from the ground up.  Actually, it’s kind of boring at times when he begins to talk about what’s going on in the Java code he’s typing, the XML I am lost but the Java is pretty straight forward (for now).

I have mixed feelings about using Eclipse for this project, I think it will come in handy most of the time but, it’s really bloated.  I like Gedit, or I guess notepad++ for windows.

I watched the first videos, downloaded Eclipse, downloaded everything I needed, John wants to work on Android 4.03 since his phone will be able to use it.  It’s going to work fine but, just won’t be available to as many people considering it’s a much newer version than the API level 8 that was suggested in the video series.   The videos came in handy since I thought it was always kind of a pain in the neck to set up Eclipse in Java.

It’s pretty convenient that I am learning XML because I had to use it recently at my job, and knew where I was because of watching a few videos.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Onto Android

John, Joe, and myself have begun a new project and have said goodbye to Eucalyptus.  We will be designing our own app for the android market.  John had been talking for a while about how he needed a task manager that actually did what he wanted and needed it to do.  No, not a task manager to kill processes etc but one designed to integrate with a calendar, or any other event based program we can use.  We will be designing a ‘normal’ task manager app at first but will be making it very modular because we’re really not sure how difficult the development process will be.  We will add as we need, or if we can, many key features that will actually make the app useful.  By the end we will submit it to Google Play and hope for the best.

The journey begins.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Have been reading design paradigms for Android Apps

Since I really have never owned an Android phone I don’t know much about their apps.  I spent a while today looking at the difference menu styles and how to design to optimize for certain button layouts.  Some phones have more buttons..stuff like that.  As I was browsing this my reddit feed led me to this link: http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2012/06/emerging-ui-pattern-side-navigation.html which talks about the side style menu, such as Facebook. I can only hope our app isn’t as slow as the Facebook one, though.  The article talks about how, “The side navigation replaces the much criticized dashboard pattern in the apps.”  I think it would be a cool implemented on our app.

On a side note, I think I need to find supplemental methods of learning Java/XML the Android way.  I don’t mind the new Boston but sometimes when he talks about stuff in Java that has been burned in my brain for life gets me distracted.

From the blog jamescelona » WSU CS by jamescelona and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.