[android-developers] splash image when app is loading
Hello all: I was wondering if there is a way to have a splash image display while my app is loading? As it is right now, it's just a black screen until the main activity launches and it may confuse people into thinking that the app is stuck or not launching properly. Thanks, DM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
On 11 February 2011 18:11, DanielleM dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all: I was wondering if there is a way to have a splash image display while my app is loading? As it is right now, it's just a black screen until the main activity launches and it may confuse people into thinking that the app is stuck or not launching properly. No, you can't have any splash screen while app is loading. If your app needs some time to start up *after* being loaded by OS, then you may show up something (splash image, progress bar etc) to notice users you're loaded and yet busy working... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on other apps so I was just wondering how they do this? Usually you click the launcher icon and then an image is displayed for a short time and then the app starts. I assumed the image is used as a placeholder while the app finishes loading. Thanks, DM On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Marcin Orlowski webnet.andr...@gmail.comwrote: On 11 February 2011 18:11, DanielleM dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all: I was wondering if there is a way to have a splash image display while my app is loading? As it is right now, it's just a black screen until the main activity launches and it may confuse people into thinking that the app is stuck or not launching properly. No, you can't have any splash screen while app is loading. If your app needs some time to start up *after* being loaded by OS, then you may show up something (splash image, progress bar etc) to notice users you're loaded and yet busy working... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
There's several approaches for doing this. Just Google android splash screen. I think one of the first few links contains info that I used to create my own. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on other apps so I was just wondering how they do this? Usually you click the launcher icon and then an image is displayed for a short time and then the app starts. I assumed the image is used as a placeholder while the app finishes loading. Thanks, DM On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Marcin Orlowski webnet.andr...@gmail.com wrote: On 11 February 2011 18:11, DanielleM dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all: I was wondering if there is a way to have a splash image display while my app is loading? As it is right now, it's just a black screen until the main activity launches and it may confuse people into thinking that the app is stuck or not launching properly. No, you can't have any splash screen while app is loading. If your app needs some time to start up *after* being loaded by OS, then you may show up something (splash image, progress bar etc) to notice users you're loaded and yet busy working... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
11.02.2011 21:53, Danielle Murkerson пишет: Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on other apps so I was just wondering how they do this? The distinction, if any, between loading and starting, is entirely in your code. Android brings your process into memory, creates the main activity, and starts calling its lifecycle methods: onCreate, onStart, onResume, and off you go. If you have a lengthly operation (to load textures in a game, unpack compressed RSS stream, etc.), then you can: 1. have your main activity set its content to a splash image; 2. schedule lengthy operations on a background thread, AsyncTask (or any other way that doesn't tie up the UI); 3. handshake back to the main activity when those lengthy operations are completed, and present the UI for interacting with your application. Item 2 is a good idea anyway, because if you run a lengthy operation in one of the above lifecycle callbacks (onCreate, etc.), and it exceeds the time limit allowed by Android, then the user will see the ANR popup (Application Not Responding - giving the user a choice to kill it or to give it more time). Usually you click the launcher icon and then an image is displayed for a short time and then the app starts. I assumed the image is used as a placeholder while the app finishes loading. I believe Android just animates a mock-up of the activity, based on what it can gather from the manifest (the color scheme and the title). This happens before onCreate. -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
Yes this may be the way to go for me. My main activity has to setup and prepare a couple of MediaPlayer objects to play some streaming audio...this may take a while on a slow connection and I've seen some examples that use the onPostExecute method of an AsyncTask to tell the activity when to stop displaying the splash image. Thanks for the tips...I'll look into this more. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Kostya Vasilyev kmans...@gmail.com wrote: 11.02.2011 21:53, Danielle Murkerson пишет: Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on other apps so I was just wondering how they do this? The distinction, if any, between loading and starting, is entirely in your code. Android brings your process into memory, creates the main activity, and starts calling its lifecycle methods: onCreate, onStart, onResume, and off you go. If you have a lengthly operation (to load textures in a game, unpack compressed RSS stream, etc.), then you can: 1. have your main activity set its content to a splash image; 2. schedule lengthy operations on a background thread, AsyncTask (or any other way that doesn't tie up the UI); 3. handshake back to the main activity when those lengthy operations are completed, and present the UI for interacting with your application. Item 2 is a good idea anyway, because if you run a lengthy operation in one of the above lifecycle callbacks (onCreate, etc.), and it exceeds the time limit allowed by Android, then the user will see the ANR popup (Application Not Responding - giving the user a choice to kill it or to give it more time). Usually you click the launcher icon and then an image is displayed for a short time and then the app starts. I assumed the image is used as a placeholder while the app finishes loading. I believe Android just animates a mock-up of the activity, based on what it can gather from the manifest (the color scheme and the title). This happens before onCreate. -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
I was going to suggest something similar to what Kostya suggested. As he said, if you're taking time to load things in an onCreate, first you want to move it to a thread (AsyncTask). What I do is I've found one of the examples out there that sets my launcher to the SplashScreenActivity. In my case, I do it just for showing info about the app, author, etc. So I have a timer counting down for 15 seconds (which is way too long). If the user touches the screen at any point, it then times out immediately. Either way, it starts my main activity at that point. As Kostya said, in your case, once your background loading stuff is done, start the main activity. This way they see your splash screen until all the loading is done. You can even make an animated splash screen to help alleviate the amount of time it seems a person is waiting. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Yes this may be the way to go for me. My main activity has to setup and prepare a couple of MediaPlayer objects to play some streaming audio...this may take a while on a slow connection and I've seen some examples that use the onPostExecute method of an AsyncTask to tell the activity when to stop displaying the splash image. Thanks for the tips...I'll look into this more. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Kostya Vasilyev kmans...@gmail.comwrote: 11.02.2011 21:53, Danielle Murkerson пишет: Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on other apps so I was just wondering how they do this? The distinction, if any, between loading and starting, is entirely in your code. Android brings your process into memory, creates the main activity, and starts calling its lifecycle methods: onCreate, onStart, onResume, and off you go. If you have a lengthly operation (to load textures in a game, unpack compressed RSS stream, etc.), then you can: 1. have your main activity set its content to a splash image; 2. schedule lengthy operations on a background thread, AsyncTask (or any other way that doesn't tie up the UI); 3. handshake back to the main activity when those lengthy operations are completed, and present the UI for interacting with your application. Item 2 is a good idea anyway, because if you run a lengthy operation in one of the above lifecycle callbacks (onCreate, etc.), and it exceeds the time limit allowed by Android, then the user will see the ANR popup (Application Not Responding - giving the user a choice to kill it or to give it more time). Usually you click the launcher icon and then an image is displayed for a short time and then the app starts. I assumed the image is used as a placeholder while the app finishes loading. I believe Android just animates a mock-up of the activity, based on what it can gather from the manifest (the color scheme and the title). This happens before onCreate. -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
Yes this makes sense...I have a question regarding how my app is set up though...I'm using a tabbed interface where each tab launches a new activity. So basically the activity that would launch first sets up the tabs and then starts the activity that is in the first tab...So would I put my splash screen code in the activity that sets up the tabs, or put it in the activity that the user actually sees once the tabs are done setting up? I'm new to android programming and I've basically built my app from seeing examples of similar things that I want to accomplish in my app. This came about because I got the app running perfectly in the emulator...but when I tested it on two different real devices, it wouldn't load at all on one and it seemed to work ok on the other. It seemed to install correctly on the device that it wouldn't load on, it just never got past the black screen before the first activity starts. And then it would take forever to even try and go back to the device's home screen. So I'm trying to go back and look at my code and see if there is something I could re-work to make it more efficient or something. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Kevin Duffey andjar...@gmail.com wrote: I was going to suggest something similar to what Kostya suggested. As he said, if you're taking time to load things in an onCreate, first you want to move it to a thread (AsyncTask). What I do is I've found one of the examples out there that sets my launcher to the SplashScreenActivity. In my case, I do it just for showing info about the app, author, etc. So I have a timer counting down for 15 seconds (which is way too long). If the user touches the screen at any point, it then times out immediately. Either way, it starts my main activity at that point. As Kostya said, in your case, once your background loading stuff is done, start the main activity. This way they see your splash screen until all the loading is done. You can even make an animated splash screen to help alleviate the amount of time it seems a person is waiting. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Yes this may be the way to go for me. My main activity has to setup and prepare a couple of MediaPlayer objects to play some streaming audio...this may take a while on a slow connection and I've seen some examples that use the onPostExecute method of an AsyncTask to tell the activity when to stop displaying the splash image. Thanks for the tips...I'll look into this more. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Kostya Vasilyev kmans...@gmail.comwrote: 11.02.2011 21:53, Danielle Murkerson пишет: Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on other apps so I was just wondering how they do this? The distinction, if any, between loading and starting, is entirely in your code. Android brings your process into memory, creates the main activity, and starts calling its lifecycle methods: onCreate, onStart, onResume, and off you go. If you have a lengthly operation (to load textures in a game, unpack compressed RSS stream, etc.), then you can: 1. have your main activity set its content to a splash image; 2. schedule lengthy operations on a background thread, AsyncTask (or any other way that doesn't tie up the UI); 3. handshake back to the main activity when those lengthy operations are completed, and present the UI for interacting with your application. Item 2 is a good idea anyway, because if you run a lengthy operation in one of the above lifecycle callbacks (onCreate, etc.), and it exceeds the time limit allowed by Android, then the user will see the ANR popup (Application Not Responding - giving the user a choice to kill it or to give it more time). Usually you click the launcher icon and then an image is displayed for a short time and then the app starts. I assumed the image is used as a placeholder while the app finishes loading. I believe Android just animates a mock-up of the activity, based on what it can gather from the manifest (the color scheme and the title). This happens before onCreate. -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
11.02.2011 23:13, Danielle Murkerson пишет: It seemed to install correctly on the device that it wouldn't load on, it just never got past the black screen before the first activity starts. And then it would take forever to even try and go back to the device's home screen. This seems like an infinite loop somewhere. Since you don't have access to the device, I would recommend you follow the advice given by TreKing: ask the user to install one of the many logcat - collecting applications from Market and send you the logs. To make this more useful, inspect your code and add frequent logging statements, especially around and in places that process data. -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
First, are you using debug mode with your physical device plugged in to the USB slot and deploying that way? It will allow you to watch the LogCat output, you can put Log.i() info throughout your code to try to trace it or use the debugger and break points, whichever your fancy. You may see why one device is taking a long time and the other isnt. As for the tabs and what to do.. I would create a completely new Activity, called SplashActivity or whatever. Separate layout xml for it. Put that as your starting launcher. From there, you would launch your activity that sets up the tabs. I haven't done anything with tabs yet.. is ti required that each tab be a separate activity.. is that the normal way it works (anyone)? I would have thought you could use a single activity and listen for tab changes and set the content view to a new view for that tab, rather than separate activities for each. If you can do that, then you load all your data during the splash screen, then start the tab activity and you are good to go. If it is pretty common or the only way to do tabs is with separate activities, then generally I take the lazy approach. A user may never select any other tab, so why load the data for it up front? That takes up resources. If you have too much data, you could degrade the device performance, and cause android to shut down other running applications (er..running but in pause mode of course). If each tab requires a couple seconds or so to load data, maybe in the tab switching handler, put up a simple alert box with a spinning meter to show something is happening. I'd also look at releasing the previously selected tabs data. From what I've learned, even with 256MB up to 1GB or more ram, you are still very limited in memory because of the potential of other apps running (again, in pause mode while your app is up on top) and consuming resources. You want to try to play nice with the overall idea of multiple apps running as much as possible. Don't forget to release all your resources in the onPause handler for each activity, and handle those events properly. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Yes this makes sense...I have a question regarding how my app is set up though...I'm using a tabbed interface where each tab launches a new activity. So basically the activity that would launch first sets up the tabs and then starts the activity that is in the first tab...So would I put my splash screen code in the activity that sets up the tabs, or put it in the activity that the user actually sees once the tabs are done setting up? I'm new to android programming and I've basically built my app from seeing examples of similar things that I want to accomplish in my app. This came about because I got the app running perfectly in the emulator...but when I tested it on two different real devices, it wouldn't load at all on one and it seemed to work ok on the other. It seemed to install correctly on the device that it wouldn't load on, it just never got past the black screen before the first activity starts. And then it would take forever to even try and go back to the device's home screen. So I'm trying to go back and look at my code and see if there is something I could re-work to make it more efficient or something. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Kevin Duffey andjar...@gmail.com wrote: I was going to suggest something similar to what Kostya suggested. As he said, if you're taking time to load things in an onCreate, first you want to move it to a thread (AsyncTask). What I do is I've found one of the examples out there that sets my launcher to the SplashScreenActivity. In my case, I do it just for showing info about the app, author, etc. So I have a timer counting down for 15 seconds (which is way too long). If the user touches the screen at any point, it then times out immediately. Either way, it starts my main activity at that point. As Kostya said, in your case, once your background loading stuff is done, start the main activity. This way they see your splash screen until all the loading is done. You can even make an animated splash screen to help alleviate the amount of time it seems a person is waiting. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Yes this may be the way to go for me. My main activity has to setup and prepare a couple of MediaPlayer objects to play some streaming audio...this may take a while on a slow connection and I've seen some examples that use the onPostExecute method of an AsyncTask to tell the activity when to stop displaying the splash image. Thanks for the tips...I'll look into this more. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Kostya Vasilyev kmans...@gmail.comwrote: 11.02.2011 21:53, Danielle Murkerson пишет: Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
yes someone else suggested an endless loop as well...but I haven't written any loops in my code at all. I am definitely planning on taking TreKing's advice about that...as soon as I can get with my tester we'll work it out...In the mean time I am going back to the code to see if I can make it more efficient. Part of my app has to access some RSS feeds from the website for my company and we've been having server issues so I know that was causing problems. Our streaming servers are separate so the device that was actually running the app had no problems accessing the streams but could not access the feeds due to the above mentioned issues with the website. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Kostya Vasilyev kmans...@gmail.com wrote: 11.02.2011 23:13, Danielle Murkerson пишет: It seemed to install correctly on the device that it wouldn't load on, it just never got past the black screen before the first activity starts. And then it would take forever to even try and go back to the device's home screen. This seems like an infinite loop somewhere. Since you don't have access to the device, I would recommend you follow the advice given by TreKing: ask the user to install one of the many logcat - collecting applications from Market and send you the logs. To make this more useful, inspect your code and add frequent logging statements, especially around and in places that process data. -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
12.02.2011 0:13, Danielle Murkerson пишет: Part of my app has to access some RSS feeds from the website for my company and we've been having server issues so I know that was causing problems. Our streaming servers are separate so the device that was actually running the app had no problems accessing the streams but could not access the feeds due to the above mentioned issues with the website. Are you loading the RSS feeds in the main application thread (same one where onCreate, etc) are called? If so, that would explain the black screen and all. This is an introduction on why this should not be done and how to change it: http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/faq/commontasks.html#threading -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
Yes you can use one activity and just switch views for tabs...but it was suggested on the Android Developer site to use separate activities for each tab if each tab is doing a completely different task...Which mine is...Basically my app has 5 tabs...The first allows a user to listen to our live streams (I work for public broadcasting), the second allows a user to listen/view our podcasts, the third allows a user to set an alarm that will play one of the streams when it activates (don't ask they had to have this bell and whistle), the fourth allows a user to access our news, and the last tab allows a user to choose one of our social media sites to visitIt's a very complicated app that already has an iPhone counter part (that I did not create). So you can see it's very possible that the app is just not very efficient. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Kevin Duffey andjar...@gmail.com wrote: First, are you using debug mode with your physical device plugged in to the USB slot and deploying that way? It will allow you to watch the LogCat output, you can put Log.i() info throughout your code to try to trace it or use the debugger and break points, whichever your fancy. You may see why one device is taking a long time and the other isnt. As for the tabs and what to do.. I would create a completely new Activity, called SplashActivity or whatever. Separate layout xml for it. Put that as your starting launcher. From there, you would launch your activity that sets up the tabs. I haven't done anything with tabs yet.. is ti required that each tab be a separate activity.. is that the normal way it works (anyone)? I would have thought you could use a single activity and listen for tab changes and set the content view to a new view for that tab, rather than separate activities for each. If you can do that, then you load all your data during the splash screen, then start the tab activity and you are good to go. If it is pretty common or the only way to do tabs is with separate activities, then generally I take the lazy approach. A user may never select any other tab, so why load the data for it up front? That takes up resources. If you have too much data, you could degrade the device performance, and cause android to shut down other running applications (er..running but in pause mode of course). If each tab requires a couple seconds or so to load data, maybe in the tab switching handler, put up a simple alert box with a spinning meter to show something is happening. I'd also look at releasing the previously selected tabs data. From what I've learned, even with 256MB up to 1GB or more ram, you are still very limited in memory because of the potential of other apps running (again, in pause mode while your app is up on top) and consuming resources. You want to try to play nice with the overall idea of multiple apps running as much as possible. Don't forget to release all your resources in the onPause handler for each activity, and handle those events properly. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Yes this makes sense...I have a question regarding how my app is set up though...I'm using a tabbed interface where each tab launches a new activity. So basically the activity that would launch first sets up the tabs and then starts the activity that is in the first tab...So would I put my splash screen code in the activity that sets up the tabs, or put it in the activity that the user actually sees once the tabs are done setting up? I'm new to android programming and I've basically built my app from seeing examples of similar things that I want to accomplish in my app. This came about because I got the app running perfectly in the emulator...but when I tested it on two different real devices, it wouldn't load at all on one and it seemed to work ok on the other. It seemed to install correctly on the device that it wouldn't load on, it just never got past the black screen before the first activity starts. And then it would take forever to even try and go back to the device's home screen. So I'm trying to go back and look at my code and see if there is something I could re-work to make it more efficient or something. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Kevin Duffey andjar...@gmail.comwrote: I was going to suggest something similar to what Kostya suggested. As he said, if you're taking time to load things in an onCreate, first you want to move it to a thread (AsyncTask). What I do is I've found one of the examples out there that sets my launcher to the SplashScreenActivity. In my case, I do it just for showing info about the app, author, etc. So I have a timer counting down for 15 seconds (which is way too long). If the user touches the screen at any point, it then times out immediately. Either way, it starts my main activity at that point. As Kostya said, in your case, once your background loading stuff is done, start
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
12.02.2011 0:13, Danielle Murkerson пишет: Part of my app has to access some RSS feeds from the website for my company and we've been having server issues so I know that was causing problems. Our streaming servers are separate so the device that was actually running the app had no problems accessing the streams but could not access the feeds due to the above mentioned issues with the website. One more useful link on threading: http://developer.android.com/resources/articles/painless-threading.html -- Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- http://kmansoft.wordpress.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Android Developers group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
Re: [android-developers] splash image when app is loading
Yes and nothe main application that is the first to launch only displays buttons to listen to one of our streams...the second tab starts the Podcast activity where the user can click a button that displays one of 5 different podcastswhich starts a child activity that actually parses and displays the xml files. Hope that makes sense. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.comwrote: Yes you can use one activity and just switch views for tabs...but it was suggested on the Android Developer site to use separate activities for each tab if each tab is doing a completely different task...Which mine is...Basically my app has 5 tabs...The first allows a user to listen to our live streams (I work for public broadcasting), the second allows a user to listen/view our podcasts, the third allows a user to set an alarm that will play one of the streams when it activates (don't ask they had to have this bell and whistle), the fourth allows a user to access our news, and the last tab allows a user to choose one of our social media sites to visitIt's a very complicated app that already has an iPhone counter part (that I did not create). So you can see it's very possible that the app is just not very efficient. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Kevin Duffey andjar...@gmail.com wrote: First, are you using debug mode with your physical device plugged in to the USB slot and deploying that way? It will allow you to watch the LogCat output, you can put Log.i() info throughout your code to try to trace it or use the debugger and break points, whichever your fancy. You may see why one device is taking a long time and the other isnt. As for the tabs and what to do.. I would create a completely new Activity, called SplashActivity or whatever. Separate layout xml for it. Put that as your starting launcher. From there, you would launch your activity that sets up the tabs. I haven't done anything with tabs yet.. is ti required that each tab be a separate activity.. is that the normal way it works (anyone)? I would have thought you could use a single activity and listen for tab changes and set the content view to a new view for that tab, rather than separate activities for each. If you can do that, then you load all your data during the splash screen, then start the tab activity and you are good to go. If it is pretty common or the only way to do tabs is with separate activities, then generally I take the lazy approach. A user may never select any other tab, so why load the data for it up front? That takes up resources. If you have too much data, you could degrade the device performance, and cause android to shut down other running applications (er..running but in pause mode of course). If each tab requires a couple seconds or so to load data, maybe in the tab switching handler, put up a simple alert box with a spinning meter to show something is happening. I'd also look at releasing the previously selected tabs data. From what I've learned, even with 256MB up to 1GB or more ram, you are still very limited in memory because of the potential of other apps running (again, in pause mode while your app is up on top) and consuming resources. You want to try to play nice with the overall idea of multiple apps running as much as possible. Don't forget to release all your resources in the onPause handler for each activity, and handle those events properly. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Danielle Murkerson dmurkerso...@gmail.com wrote: Yes this makes sense...I have a question regarding how my app is set up though...I'm using a tabbed interface where each tab launches a new activity. So basically the activity that would launch first sets up the tabs and then starts the activity that is in the first tab...So would I put my splash screen code in the activity that sets up the tabs, or put it in the activity that the user actually sees once the tabs are done setting up? I'm new to android programming and I've basically built my app from seeing examples of similar things that I want to accomplish in my app. This came about because I got the app running perfectly in the emulator...but when I tested it on two different real devices, it wouldn't load at all on one and it seemed to work ok on the other. It seemed to install correctly on the device that it wouldn't load on, it just never got past the black screen before the first activity starts. And then it would take forever to even try and go back to the device's home screen. So I'm trying to go back and look at my code and see if there is something I could re-work to make it more efficient or something. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Kevin Duffey andjar...@gmail.comwrote: I was going to suggest something similar to what Kostya suggested. As he said, if you're taking time to load things in an onCreate, first you want to move it to a thread (AsyncTask). What I do is I've found
