Android 4.0 New Features

Android UI Fragments
Welcome to this module in Android Fragments. My name is Jim Wilson. In this module, we're going to talk about the Android component type known as a Fragment and how they're used to build modularized user interfaces. In this module, the first that we're going to talk about is this concept of user interface modularization or dividing UI up into a series modules and how that works in the Android 4. 0 platform. The core of modularization is fragments in Androids. So we're going to start up by just talking again about how we use these fragments, how do they work, and kind of what is their purpose and everything. As we utilize fragments, we often have multiple fragments on a given activity and so we have to coordinate the content of those fragments. Fragments often get dynamically created destroyed or recreated. So we also have to maintain state for these fragments. We'll talk about that next. And then, we'll finish up by talking about dynamically managing-- excuse me, dynamically managing fragment display. Much of the display fragments can be managed automatically by the platform itself. But sometimes you need to kind of step in and do a little extra in managing things directly.

Android ActionBar
Welcome to this module on the Android ActionBar, my name is Jim Wilson. In this module we're going to discuss the new feature of Android 4. 0 called the ActionBar. And how it helps us improve the user interface and user experience of our Android Applications. The first thing we're going to look at is the need for a change. Why did Android need to move away from the traditional menu bar they were using and move towards this new thing called the ActionBar. Of course, from there we need to discuss, you know, exactly what is the ActionBar? What's its purpose, what does it do? And once we understand what the ActionBar is, it's time to look and see how we can actually add the ActionBar to our Android Applications. Now, the ActionBar has some good default behavior but there's a lot of features that are very customizable. So, we're going to take a look at some of those most common things we want to customize to actually improve the way the ActionBar interfaces or interacts with your particular application. And we're going to finally finish up with the tab navigation feature of the ActionBar. We're actually moving away from the tab views that Android's had over the years, moving towards the ActionBar as being our tab navigation point.

Android 4.0 Networking
Welcome to this module on Android 4. 0 networking features. My name is Jim Wilson. In this module, we're going to talk about some of the new networking features, capabilities, and responsibilities that exist in Android 4. 0. Now, the first thing we're going to talk about is network configurability. There's a new configuration option that exist in Android 4. 0 that can pretty significantly affect the way your application behaves. From there, we're going to talk about Wi-Fi Direct, a new capability in Android 4. 0 that allows multiple Android devices to communicate with each other without requiring a Wi-Fi hot spot that provides greater range than bluetooth does. I'm going to finish by talking about Near Field Communications, a new capability in Android 4. 0 that allows us to actually read data from special tags, that allows us to handle things like credit card processing or identifying equipment or other items.

Android 4.0 Calendar API
Welcome to this module on Android 4. 0 Calendar Management. My name is Jim Wilson. In this module, we're first going to look at the Android calendar API from a high level, just briefly where it came from and the way it works now, how we actually access the calendar UI inside of our applications so there's bring in things like the event screen and so forth that the users use to, how do we do that and what are the benefits and shortcomings of taking that approach? How do we reach down and directly work with the calendar data, all right, directly from inside of our programs? Again, the benefits and draw box of that approach. When we talked about working with the calendar, the main we're really talking about is events, right, creating events that we want to have on the calendar, deleting those events, modifying those. When we talk about events that we worked with them though, events don't stand alone or events have attendees, events need reminders. So there's some stuff we have to do to create and manage those sort of things. When we deal with events, very often those events are recurring, right? Every Monday for 4 weeks, or the third Tuesday of the month, right, those sort of things. So we have to look at how we actually create those types of events.