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But in practice, you will notice that the AsyncTask is limited to 10 threads. This number is hardcoded somewhere in the Android SDK so we cannot change this. In this case it’s a limitation we cannot live with, because often more than 10 images are loaded at the same time.

I’ve shown you how to improve performance of a ListView in three different ways: By loading images in a seperate thread By reusing rows in the list By caching views within a row

Renderscript is a key new Honeycomb feature which we haven’t yet discussed in much detail

Renderscript is a new API targeted at high-performance 3D rendering and compute operations. The goal of Renderscript is to bring a lower level, higher performance API to Android developers. The target audience is the set of developers looking to maximize the performance of their applications and are comfortable working closer to the metal to achieve this

Renderscript has been used in the creation of the new visually-rich YouTube and Books apps. It is the API used in the live wallpapers shipping with the first Honeycomb tablets.

Additionally, you can feel free to use the Search bar selection mechanism as a replacement for tabs since it’s really just a fast pivot on a data set. If you have more than 3 data sets, tabs become problematic since no more than 3 can be onscreen at once. For example, look at how we implemented the Profile switching mechanism below:

The good news for developers is you get this highly functional contacts feature for free if users choose to sync contact information into your app

The good news for developers is you get this highly functional contacts feature for free if users choose to sync contact information into your app. QuickContact for Android provides instant access to a contact's information and communication modes.

Authentication with App Engine, regardless of where you're doing it, is a three-stage process: Obtain an authentication token. This can be done with ClientLogin for installed apps, for example, or with AuthSub for a webapp. When logging in directly to an application, this is the part of the login process where your user sees a Google signin screen. Take that authentication token, and use it to obtain an authentication cookie. Use that authentication cookie in all subsequent requests.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS"></uses-permission> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.USE_CREDENTIALS"></uses-permission> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission>

> Now I just want to update the GUI from this method. > Can I somehow call a method in PushEndpointDemo.java? No, for two reasons: 1. Because C2DMReceiver is a manifest-registered BroadcastReceiver and therefore has no access to any activities 2. There might not be an activity, since you have no control over the timing of when the C2DM message is received (e.g., the user pressed BACK, the user pressed HOME) > Do I need a Broadcast Intent to do this? Possibly. -- If you want to update an activity or else ignore the message, have C2DMReceiver send out a private broadcast, picked up by a receiver registered via registerReceiver() in the activity -- If you want to update an activity or else raise a notification, have C2DMReceiver send out an ordered broadcast, as described here: http://commonsware.com/blog/2010/08/11/activity-notification-ordered-... -- If you want to update a database, call startActivity() on an IntentService, and have it do the database I/O, plus possibly broadcast an Intent to update an activity/raise a notification.

The Android Market engineering team has been hard at work on improving the Android Market experience for users and developers. Today, I’m pleased to announce a significant update to the Android Market client. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be rolling out a new Android Market client to all devices running Android 1.6 or higher.This new Market client introduces important features that improve merchandising of applications, streamline the browse-to-purchase experience, and make it easier for developers to distribute their applications.

To make it easier for developers to distribute and manage their products, we will introduce support for device targeting based on screen sizes and densities, as well as on GL texture compression formats. We are also increasing the maximum size for .apk files on Market to 50MB, to better support richer games.

To streamline the browse-to-purchase experience, users can now access all the information about an application on a single page without the need to navigate across different tabs.

For completeness we really should handle the possibility of the task getting cancelled. This can happen when the user navigates away from the app and the task is killed before its completed. This will cause the onPostExecute() method to not be called and so the onRefreshComplete() method won’t be called. Depending on how the user navigates through the app, they could return to this activity without going through the complete onCreate() lifecycle, and you’ll end up with the screen still showing the “loading” progress message in the header. This is common when using tabs between multiple ListViews. Also, the documented best practices for implementing an AsyncTask says that in long running background work you should periodically check if the task has been cancelled and try to gracefully quit your work and exit. So let’s get all of that in there.