Alistair Sykes

Alistair

Sykes

Senior Engineer

Graduating from Birmingham University in 2014, Alistair has been part of the Brightec team for over five years. He’s primarily focused on the Android platform but is equally skilled working with iOS. He is driven to produce innovative Android products with a strong focus on best practices.

Discover more about Alistair in this interview.

Series

Writing An API

This in-depth blog series offers a step-by-step guide for mobile development teams.

Blog Posts

Alistair and Nick looking at a screen together

How to trust all SSL certificates with KMM and Ktor

How to configure Ktor in a Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile project to trust all SSL certificates

Alistair looking at his screen

How Has ‘Tap to Focus’ Evolved Over the Years on Android?

There’s no denying how satisfying it is when your camera magically knows what you're pointing it at. But often it's not quite right. So, we need the ability to focus the camera ourselves.

How to use JAXB bindings with WSDL to separate schemas into different packages

Multi Schema WSDL and separate packages

Alistair working at his desk alongside Rhys

Internationalise your multi-module Spring Boot Application

Alistair pinpoints how and where to define your user-facing strings.

WSDL client generation with Kotlin and Gradle

WSDL client generation with Kotlin and Gradle

How to use JAXWS to generate HTTP client code using the Gradle Kotlin DSL.

Alistair and Rhys working alongside each other

Introducing Vectordrawable-Seekable

Using the new and improved AnimatedVectorDrawable to pause and seek your animations.

Alistair holding Android character

Education through motion

Using motion can subtly educate Android users about how objects move and interact with each other

Kotlin Multiplatform iOS Certificate Pinning

Kotlin Multiplatform iOS: Certificate Pinning

How to implement certificate pinning in Kotlin Multiplatform using Ktor

Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Connecting coding and culture

Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Coding and culture

How does Kotlin Multiplatform affect your development culture?

Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Testing

Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Testing

A how-to guide on writing tests within Kotlin Multiplatform.

Kotlin Multiplatform

What is the best way to structure your Kotlin multiplatform project?

Project Structure Strategies for Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS projects

Alistair XMLCheck

Writing an XML style checker with Clikt

How we went about creating tooling to maintain high-quality code.

Brightec Android Icon

Mockk.io - our new mocking framework

What is mockk.io and why have we adopted it in our team?

Brightec Android Icon

Google PlayStore internal app sharing

We set out to start deploying apps to internal app sharing within our CI system.

Brightec Android Icon

How to update deployment scripts to use Android App Bundles

How we automate our AAB deployment to the Google PlayStore

Brightec Android Icon

CameraX: An Introduction

We explore Google's answer to the complexity of the camera APIs

Given When Then - Our Testing Approach

We've been looking into why we write tests and how we go about them

Brightec Android Icon

Android Threads & Coroutines for Beginners

What is threading? Why is it important for Android? And where does Kotlin fit in?

Flutter - is this the answer?

Could Google's cross-platform solution solve all our problems?

How To Create a Dashboard on Android TV

We recently re-launched our dashboard on Android TV with some great results.

In-depth coding image

Handling International Addresses in Android

How to structure your data to handle different address formats from around the world.

Google PlayStore and automated deployment

We recently set out to automatically deploy an apk to the PlayStore to speed up our distribution process.

Android Mobile App Development

Creating a Selectable Cluster Map

We explored using Google Maps to create a map with selectable markers that cluster together.

Android Development and ConnectivityDataLive

ConnectivityLiveData

Our Android development team look at using Android Architecture Components to provide an observable interface to our connectivity status.

How a mobile app developer writes an API 1

Writing an API - a mobile developer story

This in-depth blog series offers a step-by-step guide for mobile development teams.

Google App Engine Top Tips 1

Three tricks for working with Google App Engine

Using Google App Engine and looking for some useful tips? Then read on...

Scaling on Google App Engine 1

Scaling on Google App Engine

On a recent mobile app project using Google Cloud Platform, we had issues with instances not scaling as expected. So we took a closer look to understand what was happening.

User Authentication for Cloud SQL 1

User Authentication for Cloud SQL

When using Cloud SQL for databasing on a project, we needed a solution to ensure the right people could access the right information.

How to set up Cloud SQL in Java Brightec illustration

Setting up Cloud SQL in Java

Are you setting up Cloud SQL within a Java project using Android Studio? Read on - and hopefully we can point you in the right direction!

How Brightec mobile app developers use Google Cloud Endpoints 1

Using Google Cloud Endpoints

APIs need protecting - when we were recently using Google App Engine we explored Google Cloud Endpoints and utilised them to improve the security.

Queued tasks on App Engine for Firebase 1

Queued tasks on App Engine for Firebase

We’ve recently been exploring Google App Engine with Firebase. Here’s how we queued tasks between them.

Brightec discuss Firebase Cloud Functions 1

Trigger Firebase Cloud Functions

How do you trigger Firebase Cloud Functions when a file gets uploaded? We recently needed to take regularly updated text files and read them into a database. Here’s how we used Firebase to do it.

Google Ideas Featured

Firebase Database explained

Struggling to understand Firebase Database? Here is our explanation from an SQL perspective

How to work best with your designers

The relationship between developer and designer is crucial in any development team. In this article, one of our developers gives his perspective on how they can work well together.

Kotlin is here. So what?

All about the new programming language - Kotlin. It’s features, strengths, and weaknesses.

Code snippets in Espresso

A few snippets from Espresso - the automated testing framework for Android

Working with Layer Messaging

Some hints and tips for working with Layer - the messaging service provider.

Google Ideas Featured Image

Google Pixel Event

At the most recent Google event, they showed off their future vision (plus their iPhone killer).

Brightec developed iOS camera that replicates system camera app 1

How to get your notifications noticed (on Android)

Notifications must be utilised with wisdom and cunning. Here's how to do it on Android

Google I/O 2016 1

Google I/O 2016

Take a more detailed look at our reflections on Google IO 2016.

Android TV Development

Top tips for Android TV development

Our top tips for developing Android (& Amazon Fire) TV apps.

Android animations

A few solutions for easily executing Android animations

Google September Event 2015

What did Google announce at their recent annual press conference?

Google Codelab - Android TV

Recently we attended a Google Codelab devoted to Android TV.

Android Studio Improvements

What can we expect to find in the upcoming (and ongoing) improvements to Android Studio?

Straight out the box - hudl2

We got our hands on the new Tesco tablet - the hudl2 and subjected it to an 'out of the box' review.

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