Using Proec - C++ or Other Android Development Languages

Processing (processing.org, I can't post the link as I'm a new member..) is a basic language, generally used to quickly sketch out ideas and not for full app development. It's the only language I know how to write though, and I've been using it to create apps in Eclipse. Is there anyone else here who has used Processing to create Android apps? Would be great to talk about ways to optimize the use of Processing for these purposes and how to get around some issues I've had, e.g.:
- All my code sits in one activity, which is obviously not the most effective and efficient use of resource
- Integrating with Android modules like IAP support, it works, but with some issues

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[Q] is there an app that checks all installed or purchased apps for ICS compatibilty?

maybe either through API level, or by querying market info
Reason: i want to check on GB before I upgrade to ICS, which apps will not work.
don't know if relevant but it is for SGS II
Thx in advance
repost from here as nobody could really answer my question
can't believe I'm the only one with that issue
maybe an idea for a dev? would be willing to pay for that ;-)
I don't see why this can't be done:
-http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2695746/how-to-get-a-list-of-installed-android-applications-and-pick-one-to-run
-http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/PackageManager.html
-http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Context.html#getApplicationInfo()
I haven't thought through the problem just yet, but its seems to be doable. If you don't find an app soon, I will start working on a script that does it and, if successful, a proper, free software app. I am hoping the available methods won't require something as stupid as launching each app fully. But again, I haven't thought it through. Thanks for the idea btw.
EDIT:
Made a little more effort
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/android-developers/dXLACRIizKc
I will work on something this weekend and get back with y'all.
EDIT 2:
So it looks like I would need maxSdkVersion which I don't find in the API. Furthermore, it is strongly suggested that one not use maxSdkVersion when building an app so that doesn't sound all that useful. I have received another, much more complicated suggestion that may do what I want, but I will have to look hard at it. Looks like I'm going nowhere in my effort. Always open to suggestions. More to come later this weekend.
I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I thought this was mostly a straightforward task using the API's exposure to AndroidManifest.xml. As per my previously posted link to an Android Developers discussion on the topic, my approach is dead in the water as far as I can see. I did try to find an answer though to the best of my limited ability. If anyone has or ever solves this problem (I consider it a problem) I would hope they find the this thread.
Thanks for the learning experience. I give up.
Most older apps will work fine on ICS, its pretty backwards compatible. If the app uses legacy menus the button will appear in the old lower left hand corner location instead of the upper right hand corner like apps written for ICS.
i'm no dev so bear with me if i write stupid stuff
one likely but not very promising sounding way might be to use android:targetSdkVersion as "As Android evolves with each new version, some behaviors and even appearances might change. However, if the API level of the platform is higher than the version declared by your app's targetSdkVersion, the system may enable compatibility behaviors to ensure that your app continues to work the way you expect. You can disable such compatibility behaviors by specifying targetSdkVersion to match the API level of the platform on which it's running. For example, setting this value to "11" or higher allows the system to apply a new default theme (Holo) to your app when running on Android 3.0 or higher and also disables screen compatibility mode when running on larger screens (because support for API level 11 implicitly supports larger screens)."
question though is how many apps actually use this?
However after having read this re android:maxSdkVersion "Warning: Declaring this attribute is not recommended. First, there is no need to set the attribute as means of blocking deployment of your application onto new versions of the Android platform as they are released. By design, new versions of the platform are fully backward-compatible. Your application should work properly on new versions, provided it uses only standard APIs and follows development best practices. Second, note that in some cases, declaring the attribute can result in your application being removed from users' devices after a system update to a higher API Level. Most devices on which your application is likely to be installed will receive periodic system updates over the air, so you should consider their effect on your application before setting this attribute." (taking from here) i now don't know how important my op is, but then why do all app devs release new versions "fixing things" for ICS?
One pretty significant example which actually currently will prevent my phone from getting ICS for now is that the subsonic app in the current version produces stuttering when playing audio while downloading (problem description here).
Isn't there any way to instead of searching the phone searching google play/android market instead?
Randi said:
maybe either through API level, or by querying market info
Reason: i want to check on GB before I upgrade to ICS, which apps will not work.
don't know if relevant but it is for SGS II
Thx in advance
repost from here as nobody could really answer my question
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's a list of some working games/apps for ICS
Theoretically an Android app (or a combo of say App Engine and Android) could find your installed apps, seacrh Play for said apps and then scrape the page for relevant information. Doesn't sound to hard, but I didn't think about too hard either. Perhaps I will check out what useful info is on Play and how feasible scraping its markup will be. I will get back at y'all if I do.

[Q] Best way forward for non professional (with NFC)

I will be developing an app to utilize NFC tags for parts identification. More or less I will need to write stuff into NFC tags, read data from NFC tags, act upon that data - open a webpage, fetch something from external database etc. This will also be more of a proof of concept than a commercial app. I am not aiming for performance either.
The thing is - I am not a professional developer nor I am planning to become one. I am a mechanical engineer with some programming done in the past - I've programmed microcontrollers to work with MEMS sensors and made some basic Visual Basic apps.
What would be the best way forward? Should I just stick to developer.android.com and Eclipse, or there is some software or super-duper tutorials that can make my life easier?

[Q] User generated layouts

Hi all
I am developing an app in which I would like to allow user-generated content. Specifically, this will be a remote control application, and I would like people to be able to add custom layouts, capable of sending "events" through the app, but I am not sure how to do so.
There are a couple of ways I have been looking at. The first is using a WebView so that this content can be developed in HTML. This would be nice and easy from their point of view, but it does have it's downsides, especially where security is concerned. If I was to do this, I would want to bind a "send" Javascript interface to my app, but disallow any other Javascript (I do not, for example, want it to be able to relay the button presses to some other place). I'm not sure exactly how I could do this.
The second way I can see would be to use an XML file and build up the layout from that. Here, the only way I could see it to parse the XML file and programatically build the layout. This seems a lot of work, and I would rather avoid that.
A third way would be to import a layout purely as an image plus an XML file describing hot-spots for triggering events. This seems to have too many limitations.
The final option is to expose an interface to other apps, and allow users to build separate applications which hook in to provide these layouts. This seems a terrible approach for such a simple objective.
So, does anyone know of a simple way to do what I am after, or any comments on the options listed above? Has anyone done anything similar, or know of an open-source project which acheives something similar?
Thanks in advance

My first app is live - what do you think?

I've been learning Android development recently and finally released my first free app.
It's open source and available on Github too. It's made with C# in Xamarin (not forms though, which meansit uses Android's native APIs).
I chose to start with a TOTP generator because
It's a non trivial use case yet not too complex
It allows to meaningfully integrate image acquisition and protocol handling
I already had a UWP version I could reuse the corre logic from
The Google OTP generator uses a web service to scan QR codes, as far as I can tell
I'd be interested in asking for feedback: does the app's UI feel right? What areas can I improve?
kaworu1986 said:
I've been learning Android development recently and finally released my first free app.
It's open source and available on Github too. It's made with C# in Xamarin (not forms though, which meansit uses Android's native APIs).
I chose to start with a TOTP generator because
It's a non trivial use case yet not too complex
It allows to meaningfully integrate image acquisition and protocol handling
I already had a UWP version I could reuse the corre logic from
The Google OTP generator uses a web service to scan QR codes, as far as I can tell
I'd be interested in asking for feedback: does the app's UI feel right? What areas can I improve?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was nice to see that you have your first software released. Congradulations... And thanks for sharing. As I saw you developed your software with Xamarin which is a cross platform framework. It would be great if you can share your experience here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/tools/frameworks/native-vs-cross-platform-t3850250 with other people.
I like to hear more stories about crossplatform and also native coding experiences.
I'm going to give your software a try.
I'm not a fan of material design UI, however your app looks nice. Congratulations for creating your first app.
Congratulations. You made the right choice when decided to create tool. Wish you high ratings and many downloads! I downloaded it on my phone.

Finding an android IDE which hides the baggage of the official one

Hi there. I have created a few apps using the android version of the processing IDE. I was amazed at how easily i could create applications for my device compared to using the official IDE which was far too complicated for an amateur like myself. I have now reached a point however, where the limitations of the processing IDE are showing themselves, it was developed as a means to create visual 'sketches' after all and not for creating complex applications.The main problem i have is in the organisation of my code which becomes harder and harder as the application gets bigger. Which brings me to my question; are there any android programming environments which are more 'app oriented' but still provide that layer of abstraction which hides all the unnecessary baggage of straight up android app development? would be great if there was some GUI features too. does this exist or would i be better off sticking with processing?many thanks.

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