The Google+ bar, which appears at the top of Google products, is your connection to Google+. You can share what's on your mind, view your Google+ notifications, access your profile, or jump to a variety of other Google products. For instance, to get to Google+, all you have to do is click +[your first name].
When you're signed in and look at the Google+ bar, you'll see your full name or email address displayed with a photo or avatar next to it. This helps you identify which account you're currently signed in to. You can sign in to multiple accounts at once and switch between them using the Google+ bar.
When you receive a notification, the notification area in the Google+ bar will turn red and show the number of new notifications. If you click the notification area in the Google+ bar, you’ll see a summary of your recent notifications. When you click a notification, a preview of the event that generated the notification will appear in the drop-down menu. You can take action on each notification right from the notifications menu, like commenting on a post or adding someone to a circle.
To support Hangouts, we built an all-new standards-based cloud video conferencing platform. This platform combines high quality, low latency, and strong security with the ease of use of a web application. Through the efficiency of this new platform, we're able to deliver a leading video conferencing experience at Google scale.
A few noteworthy technical points:
* Fully browser-based/cloud-based
* Client-server: leverages the power of Google's infrastructure
* Designed for low latency (< 100 ms) and high performance (multicore + hardware acceleration)
* Standards-based: XMPP, Jingle, RTP, ICE, STUN, SRTP
* Fully encrypted (HTTPS + SRTP)
[This post is by Reto Meier, Tech Lead for Android Developer Relations, who wrote the book on Android App development. — Tim Bray]
I'm a big fan of location-based apps, but not their seemingly-inevitable startup latency.
Whether it's finding a place to eat or searching for the nearest Boris Bike, I find the delay while waiting for the GPS to get a fix, and then for the results list to populate, to be interminable. Once I’m in a venue and ready to get some tips, check-in, or review the food, I’m frequently thwarted by a lack of data connection.
Rather than shaking my fist at the sky, I’ve written an open-source reference app that incorporates all of the tips, tricks, and cheats I know to reduce the time between opening an app and seeing an up-to-date list of nearby venues - as well as providing a reasonable level of offline support — all while keeping the impact on battery life to a minimum.
You can check-out the Android Protips for Location open source project from Google Code. Don’t forget to read the Readme.txt for the steps required to make it compile and run successfully.
It uses the Google Places API to implement the core functionality of apps that use location to provide a list of nearby points of interest, drill down into their details, and then check-in/rate/review them.
The code implements many of the best-practices I detailed in my Google I/O 2011 session, Android Protips: Advanced Topics for Expert Android Developers (video), including using Intents to receive location updates, using the Passive Location Provider, using and monitoring device state to vary refresh rates, toggling your manifest Receivers at runtime, and using the Cursor Loader.
The app targets Honeycomb but supports Android platforms from 1.6 and up.
Nothing would make me happier than for you to cut/copy/borrow / steal this code to build better location-based apps. If you do, I’d love it if you told me about it!
My top priority was freshness: Minimize the latency between opening the app and being able to check in to a desired location, while still minimizing the impact of the app on battery life.
Related requirements:
The current location has to be found as quickly as possible.
The list of venues should update when the location changes.
The list of nearby locations and their details must be available when we’re offline.
Check-ins must be possible while we’re offline.
Location data and other user data must be handled properly (see our prior blog post on best practices).
You can significantly reduce the latency for getting your first location fix by retrieving the last known location from the Location Manager each time the app is resumed.
In this snippet taken from the GingerbreadLastLocationFinder, we iterate through each location provider on the device — including those that aren't currently available — to find the most timely and accurate last known location.
List<String> matchingProviders = locationManager.getAllProviders();
for (String provider: matchingProviders) {
Location location = locationManager.getLastKnownLocation(provider);
if (location != null) {
float accuracy = location.getAccuracy();
long time = location.getTime();
if ((time > minTime && accuracy < bestAccuracy)) {
bestResult = location;
bestAccuracy = accuracy;
bestTime = time;
}
else if (time < minTime &&
bestAccuracy == Float.MAX_VALUE && time > bestTime){
bestResult = location;
bestTime = time;
}
}
}If there is one or more locations available from within the allowed latency, we return the most accurate one. If not, we simply return the most recent result.
In the latter case (where it’s determined that the last location update isn't recent enough) this newest result is still returned, but we also request a single location update using that fastest location provider available.
if (locationListener != null &&
(bestTime < maxTime || bestAccuracy > maxDistance)) {
IntentFilter locIntentFilter = new IntentFilter(SINGLE_LOCATION_UPDATE_ACTION);
context.registerReceiver(singleUpdateReceiver, locIntentFilter);
locationManager.requestSingleUpdate(criteria, singleUpatePI);
}Unfortunately we can’t specify “fastest” when using Criteria to choose a location provider, but in practice we know that coarser providers — particularly the network location provider — tend to return results faster than the more accurate options. In this case I’ve requested coarse accuracy and low power in order to select the Network Provider when it’s available.
Note also that this code snippet shows the GingerbreadLastLocationFinder which uses the requestSingleUpdate method to receive a one-shot location update. This wasn’t available prior to Gingerbread - check out the LegacyLastLocationFinder to see how I have implemented the same functionality for devices running earlier platform versions.
The singleUpdateReceiver passes the received update back to the calling class through a registered Location Listener.
protected BroadcastReceiver singleUpdateReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver() {
@Override
public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
context.unregisterReceiver(singleUpdateReceiver);
String key = LocationManager.KEY_LOCATION_CHANGED;
Location location = (Location)intent.getExtras().get(key);
if (locationListener != null && location != null)
locationListener.onLocationChanged(location);
locationManager.removeUpdates(singleUpatePI);
}
};Having obtained the most accurate/timely estimate of our current location, we also want to receive location updates.
The PlacesConstants class includes a number of values that determine the frequency of location updates (and the associated server polling). Tweak them to ensure that updates occur exactly as often as required.
// The default search radius when searching for places nearby.
public static int DEFAULT_RADIUS = 150;
// The maximum distance the user should travel between location updates.
public static int MAX_DISTANCE = DEFAULT_RADIUS/2;
// The maximum time that should pass before the user gets a location update.
public static long MAX_TIME = AlarmManager.INTERVAL_FIFTEEN_MINUTES; The next step is to request the location updates from the Location Manager. In this snippet taken from the GingerbreadLocationUpdateRequester we can pass the Criteria used to determine which Location Provider to request updates from directly into the requestLocationUpdates call.
public void requestLocationUpdates(long minTime, long minDistance,
Criteria criteria, PendingIntent pendingIntent) {
locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(minTime, minDistance,
criteria, pendingIntent);
}Note that we're passing in a Pending Intent rather than a Location Listener.
Intent activeIntent = new Intent(this, LocationChangedReceiver.class);
locationListenerPendingIntent =
PendingIntent.getBroadcast(this, 0, activeIntent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);I generally prefer this over using Location Listeners as it offers the flexibility of registering receivers in multiple Activities or Services, or directly in the manifest.
In this app, a new location means an updated list of nearby venues. This happens via a Service that makes a server query and updates the Content Provider that populates the place list.
Because the location change isn’t directly updating the UI, it makes sense to create and register the associated LocationChangedReceiver in the manifest rather than the main Activity.
<receiver android:name=".receivers.LocationChangedReceiver"/>The Location Changed Receiver extracts the location from each update and starts the PlaceUpdateService to refresh the database of nearby locations.
if (intent.hasExtra(locationKey)) {
Location location = (Location)intent.getExtras().get(locationKey);
Log.d(TAG, "Actively Updating place list");
Intent updateServiceIntent =
new Intent(context, PlacesConstants.SUPPORTS_ECLAIR ? EclairPlacesUpdateService.class : PlacesUpdateService.class);
updateServiceIntent.putExtra(PlacesConstants.EXTRA_KEY_LOCATION, location);
updateServiceIntent.putExtra(PlacesConstants.EXTRA_KEY_RADIUS, PlacesConstants.DEFAULT_RADIUS);
updateServiceIntent.putExtra(PlacesConstants.EXTRA_KEY_FORCEREFRESH, true);
context.startService(updateServiceIntent);
}The snippet from PlacesActivity below shows how to monitor two important conditions:
The Location Provider we are using being deactivated.
A better Location Provider becoming available.
In either case, we simply re-run the process used to determine the best available provider and request location updates.
// Register a receiver that listens for when the provider I'm using has been disabled.
IntentFilter intentFilter = new IntentFilter(PlacesConstants.ACTIVE_LOCATION_UPDATE_PROVIDER_DISABLED);
registerReceiver(locProviderDisabledReceiver, intentFilter);
// Listen for a better provider becoming available.
String bestProvider = locationManager.getBestProvider(criteria, false);
String bestAvailableProvider = locationManager.getBestProvider(criteria, true);
if (bestProvider != null && !bestProvider.equals(bestAvailableProvider))
locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(bestProvider, 0, 0,
bestInactiveLocationProviderListener, getMainLooper());You can start the PlacesUpdateService in the background to refresh the list of nearby locations while your app is in the background. Done correctly, a relevant list of venues can be immediately available when you open the app.
Done poorly, your users will never find this out as you’ll have drained their battery too quickly.
Requesting location updates (particularly using the GPS) while your app isn’t in the foreground is poor practice, as it can significantly impact battery life. Instead, you can use the Passive Location Provider to receive location updates alongside other apps that have already requested them.
This extract from the FroyoLocationUpdateRequester enables passive updates on Froyo+ platforms.
public void requestPassiveLocationUpdates(long minTime, long minDistance, PendingIntent pendingIntent) {
locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.PASSIVE_PROVIDER,
PlacesConstants.MAX_TIME, PlacesConstants.MAX_DISTANCE, pendingIntent);
}As a result receiving background location updates is effectively free! Unfortunately the battery cost of your server downloads aren’t, so you’ll still need to carefully balance how often you act on passive location updates with battery life.
You can achieve a similar effect in pre-Froyo devices using inexact repeating non-wake alarms as shown in the LegacyLocationUpdateRequester.
public void requestPassiveLocationUpdates(long minTime, long minDistance,
PendingIntent pendingIntent) {
alarmManager.setInexactRepeating(AlarmManager.ELAPSED_REALTIME,
System.currentTimeMillis()+PlacesConstants.MAX_TIME,
PlacesConstants.MAX_TIME, pendingIntent);
}Rather than receiving updates from the Location Manager, this technique manually checks the last known location at a frequency determined by the maximum location update latency.
This legacy technique is significantly less efficient, so you may choose to simply disable background updates on pre-Froyo devices.
We handle updates themselves within the PassiveLocationChangedReceiver which determines the current location and starts the PlaceUpdateService.
if (location != null) {
Intent updateServiceIntent =
new Intent(context, PlacesConstants.SUPPORTS_ECLAIR ? EclairPlacesUpdateService.class : PlacesUpdateService.class);
updateServiceIntent.putExtra(PlacesConstants.EXTRA_KEY_LOCATION, location);
updateServiceIntent.putExtra(PlacesConstants.EXTRA_KEY_RADIUS,
PlacesConstants.DEFAULT_RADIUS);
updateServiceIntent.putExtra(PlacesConstants.EXTRA_KEY_FORCEREFRESH, false);
context.startService(updateServiceIntent);
}You’ll note that we registered the Passive Location Changed Receiver in the application manifest.
<receiver android:name=".receivers.PassiveLocationChangedReceiver"/>As a result we can continue to receive these background updates even when the application has been killed by the system to free resources.
This offers the significant advantage of allowing the system to reclaim the resources used by your app, while still retaining the advantages of a zero latency startup.
If your app recognizes the concept of “exiting” (typically when the user clicks the back button on your home screen), it’s good form to turn off passive location updates - including disabling your passive manifest Receiver.
To add offline support we start by caching all our lookup results to the PlacesContentProvider and PlaceDetailsContentProvider.
Under certain circumstances we will also pre-fetch location details. This snippet from the PlacesUpdateService shows how pre-fetching is enabled for a limited number of locations.
Note that pre-fetching is also potentially disabled while on mobile data networks or when the battery is low.
if ((prefetchCount < PlacesConstants.PREFETCH_LIMIT) &&
(!PlacesConstants.PREFETCH_ON_WIFI_ONLY || !mobileData) &&
(!PlacesConstants.DISABLE_PREFETCH_ON_LOW_BATTERY || !lowBattery)) {
prefetchCount++;
// Start the PlaceDetailsUpdateService to prefetch the details for this place.
}We use a similar technique to provide support for offline checkins. The PlaceCheckinService queues failed checkins, and checkins attempted while offline, to be retried (in order) when the ConnectivityChangedReceiver determines that we’re back online.
There's no point running update services when we aren’t online, so the PlaceUpdateService checks for connectivity before attempting an update.
NetworkInfo activeNetwork = cm.getActiveNetworkInfo();
boolean isConnected = activeNetwork != null &&
activeNetwork.isConnectedOrConnecting();If we’re not connected, the Passive and Active Location Changed Receivers are disabled and the the ConnectivityChangedReceiver is turned on.
ComponentName connectivityReceiver =
new ComponentName(this, ConnectivityChangedReceiver.class);
ComponentName locationReceiver =
new ComponentName(this, LocationChangedReceiver.class);
ComponentName passiveLocationReceiver =
new ComponentName(this, PassiveLocationChangedReceiver.class);
pm.setComponentEnabledSetting(connectivityReceiver,
PackageManager.COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_ENABLED,
PackageManager.DONT_KILL_APP);
pm.setComponentEnabledSetting(locationReceiver,
PackageManager.COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DISABLED,
PackageManager.DONT_KILL_APP);
pm.setComponentEnabledSetting(passiveLocationReceiver,
PackageManager.COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DISABLED,
PackageManager.DONT_KILL_APP);The ConnectivityChangedReceiver listens for connectivity changes. When a new connection is made, it simply disables itself and re-enables the location listeners.
When your phone is on its last 15%, most apps are firmly in the back seat to conserving what watts you have remaining. We can register manifest Receivers to be alerted when the device enters or leaves the low battery state.
<receiver android:name=".receivers.PowerStateChangedReceiver">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.ACTION_BATTERY_LOW"/>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.ACTION_BATTERY_OKAY"/>
</intent-filter>
</receiver>This snippet from the PowerStateChangedReceiver disables the PassiveLocationChangedReceiver whenever the device enters a low battery state, and turns it back on once the battery level is okay.
boolean batteryLow = intent.getAction().equals(Intent.ACTION_BATTERY_LOW);
pm.setComponentEnabledSetting(passiveLocationReceiver,
batteryLow ? PackageManager.COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DISABLED :
PackageManager.COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DEFAULT,
PackageManager.DONT_KILL_APP);You can extend this logic to disable all prefetching or reduce the frequency of your updates during low battery conditions.
This is already a monster post, so I’m going to leave it there. I’ll follow up in the next week with a post on my personal blog, The Radioactive Yak, that will go in to more detail on the psychic and smooth elements of this app like using the Backup Manager and the Cursor Loader.
I also plan to build a similar reference app for news apps, so that I can spend more time reading and less time waiting.
In the mean time, happy coding!
When a website is secured via HTTPS, the web site designer must also ensure that all of the scripts used by the page will be delivered in the same secure manner as the main page itself. The same requirements also apply to the plugins and external CSS stylesheets used by the page, as these have the same considerations as javascript. When this is not the case (sometimes called a 'mixed script' situation), visitors to the site run the risk that attackers can interfere with the website and change the script so as to serve their own purposes.
Traditionally, browsers have run the mixed script, genuine or not, and notified you after-the-fact by a broken lock icon, a dialog box, or a red https:// in the location bar (in the case of Google Chrome). The problem with this approach is that by the time the script has run, it is already too late, because the script has had access to all of the data on the page. Google Chrome now protects you by refusing up-front to run any script on a secure page unless it is also being delivered over HTTPS.
[This post is by Dianne Hackborn, whose fingerprints can be found all over the Android Application Framework — Tim Bray]
Sometimes a developer will make a change to an application that has surprising results when installed as an update to a previous version — shortcuts break, widgets disappear, or it can’t even be installed at all. There are certain parts of an application that are immutable once you publish it, and you can avoid surprises by understanding them.
The most obvious and visible of these is the “manifest package name,” the unique name you give to your application in its AndroidManifest.xml. The name uses a Java-language-style naming convention, with Internet domain ownership helping to avoid name collisions. For example, since Google owns the domain “google.com”, the manifest package names of all of our applications should start with “com.google.” It’s important for developers to follow this convention in order to avoid conflicts with other developers.
Once you publish your application under its manifest package name, this is the unique identity of the application forever more. Switching to a different name results in an entirely new application, one that can’t be installed as an update to the existing application.
Just as important as the manifest package name is the certificate that application is signed with. The signing certificate represents the author of the application. If you change the certificate an application is signed with, it is now a different application because it comes from a different author. This different application can’t be uploaded to Market as an update to the original application, nor can it be installed onto a device as an update.
The exact behavior the user sees when installing an application that has changed in one of these two ways is different:
If the manifest package name has changed, the new application will be installed alongside the old application, so they both co-exist on the user’s device at the same time.
If the signing certificate changes, trying to install the new application on to the device will fail until the old version is uninstalled.
If you change the signing certificate of your application, you should always change its manifest package name as well to avoid failures when it’s installed. In other words, the application coming from a different author makes it a different application, and its package name should be changed appropriately to reflect that. (Of course it’s fine to use the same package name for the development builds of your app signed with your test keys, because these are not published.)
More than just your package name that is immutable. A major function of the AndroidManifest.xml is essentially to declare a public API from your application for use by other applications and the Android system. Every component you declare in the manifest that is not private (that is whose android:exported state is true) should be treated as a public API and never changed in a way that breaks compatibility.
A subtle but important aspect of what constitutes a break in compatibility is the android:name attribute of your activity, service, and receiver components. This can be surprising because we think of android:name as pointing to the private code implementing our application, but it is also (in combination with the manifest package name) the official unique public name for that component, as represented by the ComponentName class.
Changing the component name inside of an application can have negative consequences for your users. Some examples are:
If the name of a main activity of your application is changed, any shortcuts the user made to it will no longer work. A shortcut is an Intent that directly specifies the ComponentName it should run.
If the name of a service implementing a Live Wallpaper changes, then a user who has enabled your Live Wallpaper will have their wallpaper revert to the system default when getting the new version of your app. The same is true for Input Methods, Accessibility Services, Honeycomb’s new advanced Widgets, and so on.
If the name of a receiver implementing a Device Admin changes, then as with the live wallpaper example, the device admin will be disabled when the application is updated. This also applies to other kinds of receivers, such as App Widgets.
These behaviors are an outcome of how the Intent system is used on Android. There are two main kinds of Intents:
Implicit Intents only specify “what” they should match, using actions, categories, data, MIME types, and so on. The exact components that they will find are only determined at run-time, by the Package Manager matching it against the current applications.
Explicit Intents specify a single explicit “who” they should match, through a ComponentName. Regardless of whatever else is in the Intent, it is only associated with the exact manifest package name and class name as given in its ComponentName.
Both of these types of Intents are important to how Android interacts with your application. A typical example of this is how users browse and select live wallpapers.
To let the user pick a live wallpaper, the first thing Android must do is show them a list of the available live wallpaper services. It does this by building an implicit Intent with the appropriate action for a live wallpaper and asking the Package Manager for all services that support this Intent. The result is then the list of live wallpapers shown to the user.
When the user actually selects a specific live wallpaper they want to use, however, Android now must build an explicit Intent that identifies that particular live wallpaper. This is what is handed to the WallpaperManager to tell it which wallpaper to show.
This is why changing the name of the component in your manifest will cause the wallpaper to disappear: the explicit Intent that was previously saved is now invalid because the ComponentName it references no longer exists. There is no information available to indicate what the new name of the component is. (For example consider if your application had two different live wallpaper services the user could select.) Instead, Android must treat that live wallpaper as uninstalled and revert to its default wallpaper.
This is how input methods, device administrators, account managers, app widgets, and even application shortcuts work. The ComponentName is the public unique name of the components you declare in your manifest, and must not change if they are visible to other applications.
In conclusion: There are some parts of your application that can not change. Please be careful.
