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Tag: android developers

  • Google Calls On Developers To Get Behind Android One

    Google announced the launch of Android One, this week. It’s a series of more affordable Android devices aimed at getting smartphones in the hands of more people, starting in India.

    The company is now calling on developers to ensure support from their apps. Android developer advocate Rich Hyndman gives some examples of how to do so:

    If your app has search functionality, will user requests time out entirely? Do you think it is more important that a result is returned in a timely manner, or that the result is returned at all? If you’re trying to build a robust app to reach the next five billion, it might be less about returning a result immediately, and more about returning a result at all. To address this challenge, why not include an option to users to “notify me with the results” when a search query is running on a slow network? Your app can then take as long as it needs to successfully retrieve the data in the background and show a notification when complete. The difference in user experience between an app that times out on a slower network and one that caters to user-specific needs will be very impactful for driving mobile app adoption.

    There are also ways to test app performance without flying around the globe. The Android Emulator has network speed and network delay emulation settings, which can become an integral part of your testing strategy. If you’re testing on physical hardware, try turning off WiFi and switching the network to 2G only; how well does your app perform? Do search pages load? Does data refresh? These issues can often be fixed with relatively minor changes to your app logic or by leveraging a SyncAdapter. Check out our blog post on sync in the Google I/O app for more ideas.

    He notes that another area of concern is app memory utilization, and that Android has added new tools to the SDK as part of the KitKat launch, as well as new APIs that can help.

    More on all of this and more here.

    Image via Google

  • Amazon Launches New Developer Portal

    Amazon Launches New Developer Portal

    Since its launch, developers have had to submit apps to the Amazon Appstore through a developer portal that has remained largely unchanged over the years. Change is good, however, and Amazon is approaching its developer portal with a change-centric mindset going into 2014.

    Amazon revealed this morning that it has completely redesigned its developer portal to make it easier for developers to submit apps, find documentation and more. The retailer says that its new developer portal has been designed with the following in mind:

  • Get Started: If you have an Android app, you can simply drop your APK in our updated testing widget to get Appstore compatibility test results in just seconds. Once your app is ready, you can create a free developer account and submit it using the Developer Console.
  • Access the Latest Amazon APIs: Download the free Amazon Mobile App SDK for access to APIs and services that can enhance your apps and games, help you monetize them, and engage your audience across Android and iOS platforms.
  • Find the Content that Matters: The new site includes a wide variety of support resources to help you through the development process including documentation, development tools, marketing tips, promotional tools, videos, case studies, blog posts and one of my favorites, a schedule of upcoming training events.
  • Of all the changes, Amazon has a number of specific changes that developers should be aware of. First off, the app submission form has been updated to make it easier for developers to find out if their Android .apk is compatible with the Appstore. Just drag and drop the .apk into the submission portal and it will tell you right away if it’s compatible.

    To make it easier on developers, Amazon has created a page that has all the Appstore APIs, including in-app purchasing, mobile ads, GameCircle and more. Speaking of GameCircle, there is also now a dedicated page for game developers with links to all the tools needed to make a great game for the Amazon Appstore.

    There’s a lot more for developers to find on the new developer portal, including resources for mobile and PC developers. You can find out more here.

    Check out the video below to see some of the changes:

    Image via Amazon App Distribution and Services Portal/YouTube

  • Here’s Everything Developers Need To Know About Android 4.4

    After two months of waiting, Google finally unveiled the features its bringing to its mobile OS with Android 4.4. There’s a lot of good stuff for users and you can read more about that here. There’s even better news though – Google is making developers’ lives much easier with the latest incarnation of Android.

    On the official Android Developers blog, Google laid out all the new development features coming to Android 4.4, or KitKat. These new features will help developers deliver more immersive apps while adding new functionality.

    Without further ado, here are the major new development tools in Android 4.4:

  • New ways to create beautiful apps — A new full-screen immersive mode lets your app or game use every pixel on the screen to showcase content and capture touch events. A new transitions framework makes it easier to animate the states in your UI. Web content can take advantage of a completely new implementation of WebView built on Chromium.
  • More useful than ever — A printing framework lets you add the convenience of printing to your apps. A storage access framework makes it easier for users find documents, photos, and other data across their local and cloud-based storage services. You can integrate your app or storage service with the framework to give users instant access to their data.
  • Low-power sensors — New hardware-integrated sensors let you add great new features to your apps without draining the battery. Included are a step detector and step counter that let you efficiently track of the number of walking steps, even when the screen is off.
  • New media capabilities — A new screen recorder lets you capture high-quality video of your app directly from your Android device. It’s a great new way to create walkthroughs, tutorials, marketing videos, and more. Apps can use adaptive playback to offer a significantly better streaming video experience.
  • RenderScript in the NDK — A new C++ API in the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) lets you use RenderScript from your native code, with access to script intrinsics, custom kernels, and more.
  • Improved accessibility support — New system-wide captioning settings let your apps present closed captions in the style that’s preferred by the user.
  • If you want to learn more about Android 4.4, check out this new video from the DevBytes show on the Android Developers channel:

    Developers interested in updating their apps for Android 4.4 can download the SDK and related tools today from the Android SDK manager. You can also grab the latest support package here, and the latest Android NDK here.

    [Image: Android Developers/YouTube]

  • Learn About The Best Design Tools Available To Android Developers

    Design is an incredibly important part of any mobile app. A solid aesthetic and UI could be the only thing standing between your app gaining wider use, and being tossed to the bottom of the download charts. This week’s Android Design in Action might just help your app avoid such a fate:

    Join Nick Butcher, Adam Koch and Roman Nurik as they discuss various elements of Android Design. This week, we’ll explore the design of a podcast creation app and share a list of software tools that Android designers should be aware of.

    If you want to better follow along, Nurik has shared the slides shown during the video on his Google+ profile.

  • Want To Make Successful Android Games? Watch This Video

    There’s money to be made in Android game development, but you have to be smart about it. There’s a lot of things to consider when developing a successful Android game. To help developers just starting out or those who have yet to find success, Google has put together a short video that describes “crucial elements to developing successful games on the Android platform.”

    Go here for more on Android development.

  • Learn How To Make Great Widgets For Android

    One of the more unique aspects of Android is its support for home screen Widgets. This support was introduced with Android 1.5 and developers have since created a number of unique, and sometimes utterly amazing, home screen widgets for Android devices.

    Of course, you may just be starting out and wand to build the best widget ever. That’s a lofty goal, but you’re going to need some help. The latest App Clinic episode from Google’s Android Developers channel has the advice and tips you need to realize your dream of building the best home screen widget ever.

  • Learn How To Design Android Notifications

    There’s a time and place for every notification in Android. Consumers won’t be happy if you constantly spam them, but smart notification design is key to enhanced engagement. Learn more about it in this week’s Android Design in Action.

    This week’s video tackles not only notification design, but the design process behind Google Now:

    Join Nick Butcher, Adam Koch and Roman Nurik as they discuss various elements of Android Design. This week, Alex Faaborg from the Android UX team at Google stops by to talk about the when and the why of notifications and walks through a design process case study for Google Now.

  • You Have Questions And The Android Team Has Answers

    The Android Developers Office Hours for the EMEA region recently took place, and the entire session is now up on YouTube. The team covers a number of topics that are relevant to the Android developer, regardless of region, like authentication issues, certain devices not supporting apps, and other problems that plague developers.

    Check it out:

  • Need Help Designing An Android App? Watch This

    So, you just downloaded the Android SDK and you’re ready to make your fist app. You have a great idea, but you just don’t know what the design of the app should look like. Google has a few guidelines and recommendations, and is now sharing them with you.

    The Android developers YouTube channel recently hosted anther episode of Android Design in Action. The topic this time around is “Iterative Improvements.” Here’s the synopsis:

    In this week’s episode, we’ll look at a simple article reader app and how to evolve its visual design iteratively, transforming it from zero to hero.

    Even if you’re a battle-hardened Android developer, the walkthrough may have some tips for you as well. The 33 minute video is definitely worth checking out:

    Check out more Android developer tips and news here.

  • All Android Developers Will Soon Be Able To Reply To Reviews On Google Play

    In a rather awesome move for developers, Google allowed Android developers to directly reply to reviews on Google Play back in June. Unfortunately, the ability to do so was restricted to those who had achieved “Top Developer” status on the platform. Now Google is rolling out the ability to everybody.

    Android Community reports that developer Dave Kover recently discovered that he could reply to reviews on his apps in the Google Play store. He’s not billed as a “top developer” so it means that Google is finally beginning to roll out the review reply ability to more and more developers. At the moment, it doesn’t look like it’s live for everybody, but we’ve reached out to Google to find out when it might be.

    It’s kind of annoying that it took Google this long to roll out the ability to reply to reviews to everybody. It’s only a good thing when users and developers can directly communicate with each other instead of having to resort to email or other methods of communication that may get lost in the shuffle. This way, developers can offer support to users directly from the Play store and other users who may be having the same problem will be able to troubleshoot without having to wait for a reply.

    Smaller developers will probably also appreciate the ability to defend themselves from rotten reviews. Some men just want to watch the world burn, and that’s doubly true in mobile app reviews. Granted, some users may be less likely to post scathing reviews now that Google has tied Google Play into Google+. Trolls tend to flee from the loss of anonymity.

  • Check Out This Android Developer Hangout For Some Tips, Stay For BugDroid Santa

    It’s Christmas time for our friends across the Atlantic, and they’re celebrating in the best way they know how – an Android developers Office Hours. You can check out the hour long talk below for the latest news in Android development.

    As an aside, where can I get the Santa BugDroid in the back? I know that Google employees get some awesome, exclusive BugDroid swag, but a Santa BugDroid has mass market potential written all over it. I’ll buy 50.

  • Here’s The Latest Android Developers Office Hours

    Google has uploaded an Android Developers Office Hours hangout from this week. If you have an hour to kill, enjoy:

  • Google Play Developer Console Now Available To Everyone

    Google Play is slowly, but surely, growing into a powerhouse distribution platform for Android apps. By that, I mean more and more developers are bringing their previously iOS-exclusive content to the platform. Some of that success can be attributed to Google Play quickly becoming one of the more developer friendly platforms around. The latest release only serves to make Google Play even better.

    Google announced today that their long awaited update to the developer console is now available to developers big and small. The new console will make it even easier for developers to track how well each app is doing on Google Play by showing active installs, average ratings, and detailed reports on your app’s success.

    The developer console itself has received a major facelift. Here’s what you’ll see when you go to the developer console and click on “Try the new version:”

    Android Developer Console

    Beyond that, the new developer console also features more detailed reports than ever before. The top of the page will feature a graph that shows the increase or decrease in user ratings over a set amount of time. It will also break down your ratings by “device, country, language, carrier, Android version, and app version. Here’s what it will look like:

    Android Developer Console

    Other changes include a streamlined app publishing process that allows developers to starrt with either an APK or app name. The new process allows you to save before you have all of the information needed for your app. It will also list the differences between new and old versions of apps so developers don’t unintentionally miss anything between versions.

    As for language support, developers can now publish an app listing in 49 languages. This is due in part to Google now pushing Google Translate to both the Web and mobile versions of Google Play. All listings will be automatically translated in a user’s native language on the Web starting today and will be available soon on mobile.

    There are a few downsides to the new developer console. Namely, the new version doesn’t support multiple APKs or APK Expansion Files just yet. Google is working on adding this support, but they encourage developers who make use of those particular features to keep using the old developer console until the new one is updated.

    Any developer interested in trying out the new console need only click on “Try the new version” button in the header of the current developer console. You can also just hit up the new version by visiting this URL.

    Here’s a video from earlier this year at Google I/O that explains the new developer console in greater detail (skip to 31:30):

  • Android Developers Can Now Offer Free Trials For Subscriptions On Google Play

    Android Developers Can Now Offer Free Trials For Subscriptions On Google Play

    Android developers are presented with a number of ways to monetize their content on the Google Play store. One of the more prominent methods is through the use of subscriptions. In essence, a player pays a monthly fee for a set amount of microtransaction content. Now developers can hook potential subscribers with free stuff.

    Google recently added a new section to the billing subscription guide that details how developers can offer free trials for their subscriptions. The free trial offer is extremely open ended and allows developers to offer seven days or more of free subscription goodness.

    For users, initiating the free trial will require them to “purchase” the full subscription through the in-app purchasing system. This means that users must have a valid form of payment as their card starts getting billed as soon as the free trial ends. The user will not be charged whatsoever though, and the transaction will appear as $0.00 on a developer’s transaction records.

    Interestingly enough, canceling the free trial is handled a bit differently from canceling a subscription. Ordinarily, the subscription benefits would continue throughout the period even if the user canceled the subscription at the beginning of their subscription period. Canceling the free trial will end all benefits immediately.

    Developers who already offer subscriptions have nothing to lose from adding free trials. Implementing the free trial only takes a quick edit of the subscription in your product list. Free trials must be set for a minimum of seven days, but can be as long as you want after that. Developers can also only create one free trial period per subscription product.

  • Google Releases Tablet App Quality Checklist

    Now that the Nexus 7 has been deemed a success, Android app developers are taking a new look at porting over their smartphone applications for the tablet market. To help make sure things look right on the Nexus 7’s sexy screen, Google has released a tablet app quality checklist for app developers.

    Most items on the checklist, unsurprisingly, deal with arranging things for a larger screen, such as adjusting font sizes & touch targets, and optimizing the layout by taking advantage of the extra screen real estate. It also encourages developers to adjust the sizes of widgets and icon assets to fit larger resolutions. The eighth item on the checklist stands out a bit, as Google issues a warning to developers not to require hardware features (such as cameras, NFC, or a data connection) that tablets may not have.

    Aside from the size and hardware considerations, Google bookends its list with reminders to test the core app and follow best practices for publishing the app in Google Play.

    Below is the full checklist, but the list can be perused with Google’s more detailed outline at the Android developer site.

    1. Test for core app quality
    2. Optimize your layouts for larger screens
    3. Take advantage of extra screen area available on tablets
    4. Use icons and other assets that are designed for tablet screens
    5. Adjust font sizes and tou h targets for tablet screens
    6. Adjust sizes of home screen widgets for tablet screens
    7. Offer the app’s full feature set to tablet users
    8. Don’t require hardware features that might not be available on tablets
    9. Declare support for tablet screen configurations
    10. Follow best practices for publishing in Google Play

    (via TechCrunch)

  • After A Year Of Success, Amazon Appstore Is Still Going Strong

    Can you believe that it’s already been over a year since Amazon introduced their Appstore for Android? In that time, it’s grown into a formidable service that has proven to be even more profitable than Google Play. We recently had a chance to talk with Aaron Rubenson, director of Amazon Appstore for Android, about the evolution of the Appstore and why developers should be developing for them.

    Rubenson started out by telling us that the Appstore wasn’t just a split-second decision made in 2011. They actually had the infrastructure and tools since the launch of Amazon Web Services in 2002. They even started dabbling in mobile development with the AWS SDK before they launched the Appstore. None of that has changed. Developers can still utilize AWS for mobile applications. In fact, Amazon encourages it alongside their other mobile specific SDKs for apps.

    You’d be forgiven for not knowing about Amazon’s mobile presence before 2011 though. They didn’t really make their mark until the launch of the Amazon Appstore for Android in March 2011. Rubenson told us that there were around 4,000 apps when it launched. That number has now increased to 51,000.

    Over 50,000 apps in just a year is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s relative newcomer status puts it at a disadvantage to the hundreds of thousands apps that are available to consumers on Google Play. How does Amazon compete (and win) against a store outnumbers it almost 12-to-1? Rubenson told us that a number of programs and incentives that are exclusive to the Amazon Appstore help drive installs and downloads.

    First and foremost, Amazon is still the only Appstore that offers anything like Test Drive. If you’re not familiar, it’s a program that lets users play around with an app in their browser. It’s a try before you buy service that doesn’t even require the user to install the app, and it’s proven popular among consumers and developers. Rubenson said that Test Drive has accumulated over 7.7 million minutes of use across the 19,000 apps that are currently enrolled in the program.

    Since the launch of the Appstore, Amazon has also featured the Free App of the Day. Rubenson said that there have now been over 375 free apps on offer through Amazon. All those free apps also represent $1,100 in value. It’s that kind of promotion that turns heads and converts consumers into loyal users. One fan told us that he had the Amazon Appstore installed on all of his devices and checks the Free App of the Day religiously. That’s the kind of loyalty that the Amazon Appstore inspires. Rubenson hopes that developers will see that and get their apps on the service.

    Speaking of developers, Rubenson most of our time together explaining why he thinks the Amazon Appstore is the best platform for Android developers. The robust set of tools that Amazon has on offer to developers is definitely a plus, but he thinks the real advantage comes in the form of Kindle.

    The Kindle Fire, and its new HD cousin, are what’s driving a lot of the growth in the Amazon Appstore. One reason for that was the launch of the in-app purchasing SDK that allowed developers to offer free-to-play titles with microtransactions on the Amazon Appstore. Rubenson claimed that in-app purchases were generating twice as much revenue as those apps that only feature an up-front transaction to purchase. He pointed out that the SDK is also developer friendly as it only takes about 10 minutes to implement it into apps.

    The Kindle is also pushing Amazon Appstore even deeper into the realms of gaming apps with the launch of GameCircle in July. It’s a set of tools that allows developers to add social and competitive features to their games. He couldn’t provide exact numbers, but Rubenson said that many developers have expressed interest in GameCircle. He also said that a number of the most popular games on the Amazon Appstore have integrated GameCircle.

    All these tools and features are great, but they don’t mean anything without a good discoverability plan. I told Rubenson about the frustration that I’ve been hearing from developers in regards to getting discovered on app stores. A recent study even said that over two-thirds of all apps on iTunes are never downloaded. People mostly stick to the top 20 apps and stay there. He said that this is where Amazon is different.

    He told us that the trust consumers put into Amazon carries over to people shopping on the Amazon Appstore. They’re encouraged to go deeper into the recesses, past the top 20 apps, to find the diamond in the rough. They accomplish this in a number of ways. First, they make sure to test every app before it hits the App Store. It’s not just a simple approval process, but rather a strict test to see that each app meets all the guidelines that Amazon has set for its Appstore. The strict process guarantees that users can trust every app to work on a fundamental level.

    The big advantage they have over others, however, relates to Amazon’s power as a retail giant. They have curated an advanced recommendation system over the years that has carried over to the Appstore as well. App pages will list a number of other apps based upon the interests that a customer has expressed in their shopping patterns. It’s the kind of exposure that nobody else can offer.

    For their part, Amazon is working hard to bring more developers over to their side. Rubenson told us that Amazon has a team that will work one-on-one with developers to bring their apps to market. They will help developers in making, marketing, placement and all other avenues to make sure that each app has all the chances it can get to succeed.

    During our time with Rubenson, it was obvious that Amazon cares about developers. The company is giving developers all the tools they need to not only compete, but thrive, in the highly competitive Android app market. Add in the Kindle Fire HD to the equation and you have a company that stands to emerge as the biggest app player on the market.

  • Android Developers Now Have A Say On Google Play

    User reviews are one of those necessary evils when it comes to the Internet. There are a lot of good people out there who want to praise the hard work you put into your product, but there’s always that one person who has to make an attack on your product just because they can. Software reviews are especially bad since developers can never really defend themselves… until now.

    Google has now added the ability for developers to reply to user reviews on Google Play. According to Android Spin, the change will be rolled out over time starting with those who have a “top developer badge.” It’s the smaller developers who need this ability the most to protect themselves against unwarranted attacks from Internet trolls so here’s hoping they get responses soon.

    The change makes Google Play a more developer friendly platform compared to its competitors. Apple really needs to get on the ball with a similar solution to combat the absurd amount of spammy and outright deceitful reviews that go up on iTunes as well. I’m all for people being able to review a product that they own, but developers need a chance to respond to criticism and unwarranted attacks.

    Looking on the positive side, the change will also allow developers to interact with their fans in a positive way. It’s a great way to keep fans engaged and let them know about upcoming updates without them having to find the developer’s Web site or other information repository.

    Developers can check to see if they have the reply ability by visiting the Android Developer Console on Google Play. If a reply function is under the comments on the Android Developer Console, you have the newfound reply ability. If not, the wait shouldn’t be that much longer until you can start replying to reviews. We’ll let you know when the reply ability is made available to all.

  • Android Developer Questions Answered During Office Hours

    Android development is one of the fastest growing parts of Google. After coming off of a successful win over Oracle, Android’s only competition is Apple. Developers starting out are going to want advice on how to best take advantage of the platform.

    Google has hosted a new Android Developer Office Hours to give developers some insight into what’s going on in the Android development community. This week’s Office Hours is more about answering questions than showing off any new technologies. The questions on display are pretty important which is made apparent by the one hour long hangout.

    Some of the topics discussed include billing on Android and how to cancel a payment, updates on Android @ Home and alternatives to quick actions. There are plenty of other questions answered that will be of great interest to Android developers.

    As an aside, I want to compliment the Android team on their fantastic cameras for the hangout. Google should use these for all of their Office Hours hangouts since they usually have terrible video/audio quality.

  • Facebook Launches Native Android App Discovery

    Facebook just announced that it is bringing social app discovery channels to native Android apps with the latest version of the Facebook for Android app.

    “This update will help drive additional growth for Android apps by making it easier for people on Facebook to discover and re-engage with their favorite apps on their phone,” a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews. “Social channels like Bookmarks, Requests, and News Feed have been successful in driving the discovery and distribution of apps on the web, and the momentum is continuing on mobile with 7 of the top 10 iOS apps and 5 of the top 10 grossing Android apps integrated with Facebook.”

    Those Android apps include:

    Live Holdem Poker Pro (#1)
    Zynga Poker (#3)
    Slot City – Slot Machines (#5)
    Slotomania (#6)
    Draw Something by OMGPOP (#7).

    “Facebook now enables developers to build apps for the mobile platform of their choice including mobile web or for native platforms (iOS and Android),” the spokesperson says.

    “Once you have a mobile optimized version of your app ready with Facebook Single Sign On, simply go to app settings, enable Android Native Deep Linking, and fill out the required fields,” says Facebook’s Alex Wu on the Facebook Developer blog.

    Documentation is available here. Additionally, there is a video tutorial on the above linked blog post.

  • Google Play Badges Available For Android Developers

    Google announced Google Play today, which replaces Android Market, while combining it with Google Music and the Google eBookstore.

    Google has also released some new badges for developers that they can display to promote their apps. There are two badges, both available in two sizes: large: 60 x 172 and Small: 45 x 129.

    Here are some guidelines Google provides for the badges:

    • Never separate the phrase “Get it on Google Play” or “Android App on Google Play” from the Google Play logo, and do not change the color, proportions, spacing or any other aspect of the logo.
    • When used online, the badge logo should be used to direct users to:
      • The Google Play landing page: play.google.com
      • The Google Play Apps landing page:play.google.com/store/apps
      • A list of products that include your company name, for example, http://play.google.com/store/search?q=yourCompanyName
      • A list of products published by you, for example, http://play.google.com/store/search?q=publisherName
      • A specific app product details page within Google Play, for example, http://play.google.com/store/details?id=packageName
    • When used alongside logos for other application marketplaces, the Google Play logo should be of equal or greater size

    Google also has a badge generator tool here. This can be used to generate a “Get it on Google Play” or “Android App on Google Play” button that you can use on your site. You can input either your app’s package name or publisher name, and the button will take users to Google Play to either view your app’s info or view a list of your published apps. If it’s clicked while on an Android device, the Google Play app will show your apps.

    More on Google Play:

    Updating Android Market To Google Play

    Google Play On iOS Devices … Kind Of

  • Android Apps Expand App Size by 4GB

    Android applications have typically been limited to 50MB. For most apps this is sufficient. Developers like to make every megabyte count to reduce download time. However, with more and more 3D High-def games hitting the marketplace, Android Apps decided it was time for a change. The maximum app size for local storage has made a huge jump from 50MB to 4GB.

    There is a slight catch. The size of your APK file will still have to be limited to 50MB to ensure secure on-device storage. However, you can now attach two expansion files to your APK totaling 2MB each. Android will host the apps, eliminating the need for file serving, and users will be able to see the total size of your files before purchase.

    On newer devices, expansion files will automatically be downloaded, and refund time will not begin until all the files are downloaded. On older devices, the expansion files will not be downloaded until the app is used for the first time.

    Developers can use the two expansion files any way they want, but Android recommends one serve as the initial download and be rarely if ever updated; the second can be smaller and serve as a “patch carrier,” getting versioned with each major release.

    The details of how to use these new expansion files get pretty technical so I’m going to let the engineers, themselves, take it from here. The following is transcribed from the Android Developers blog:

    Helpful Resources

    In order to make expansion file downloading as easy as possible for developers, we’re providing sample code and libraries in the Android SDK Manager.

    • In the Google Market Licensing package, an updated License Verification Library (LVL). This minor update mostly adds the ability to obtain expansion file details from the licensing server.
    • From the Google Market APK Expansion package, the downloader service example. The library makes it relatively simple to implement a downloader service in your application that follows many of our best practices, including resuming downloads and displaying a progress notification.

    Because many developers may not be used to working with one or two large files for all of their secondary content, the example code also includes support for using a Zip file as the secondary file. The Zip example implements a reasonable patching strategy that allows for the main expansion file to “patch” the APK and the patch file to “patch” both the APK and the main expansion file by searching for asset files in all three places, in the order patch->main->APK.

    Expansion File Basics

    Expansion files have a specific naming convention and are located in a specific place for each app. As expansion files are uploaded to the publisher site, they are assigned a version code based upon the version of the APK that they are associated with. The naming convention and location are as follows:

    Expansion files are stored in shared storage. Unlike APK files, they can be read by any application.

    Downloading and Using the Expansion Files

    When the primary activity for the app is created, it should check to make sure the expansion files are available. The downloader library provides helper functions (for example the “Helpers” class in the code below) to make this easy.

    If the file does not exist, fire up the downloader service with DownloaderClientMarshaller.startDownloadServiceIfRequired(). The downloader will perform an LVL check against the server. This check will deliver the names of the files, file sizes, and the file URLs.

    Once that check has been completed, it will begin downloading the files. You don’t have to use our download solution, but you might want to because we:

    1. Include a notification UI that provides progress and estimated completion time in layouts customized for ICS and pre-ICS devices
    2. Resume large files safely
    3. Handle redirection with appropriate limits
    4. Run in the background as a service
    5. Pause and resume downloads when WiFi is not available