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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

Educating Android users can be subtle by using motion

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Older Posts

Podcasting to those without Internet access
Podcasting to those without Internet access

Creating a phone number which plays podcasts over the phone from an RSS feed or JSON object

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Nick Holcombe Headshot on the firebase app distribution blog post
Firebase App Distribution: Improving our sharing process

We wanted to make sharing our apps with testers easier

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An example to answer the question of - What is an Android Spinner?
What is an Android Spinner?

"What is an Android Spinner?" – A common question with a less than obvious answer. In this article, we look at what an Android Spinner is and where it is used.

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Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Connecting coding and culture
Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Coding and culture
How does Kotlin Multiplatform affect your development culture?
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Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Testing
Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Testing

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

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Kotlin Multiplatform
Kotlin Multiplatform Android/iOS: Project Structure Strategies

A guide to how should you structure your multiplatform project?

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How to analyse Play Store Reviews in Google Sheets
Play Store Review to spreadsheet automation
Our guide to analysing Play Store Reviews in Google Sheets
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HowTo: Creating a Barcode in Kotlin Android
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Mockk.io - our new mocking framework

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

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Google PlayStore internal app sharing
We set out to start deploying apps to internal app sharing within our CI system.
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Google PlayStore automated deployment with AAB
Updating our deployment scripts to use Android App Bundles
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Android Threads & Coroutines for Beginners
What is threading? Why is it important for Android? And where does Kotlin fit in?
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Brightec Code
Flutter - is this the answer?
Could Google's cross-platform solution solve all our problems?
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Android 2018
How To Create a Dashboard on Android TV
We recently re-launched our dashboard on Android TV with some great results.
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Material Theme Editor Colours featured Image
Adding Colours to a Sketch Material Theme Library
The Material Theme Editor for Sketch is game-changing, but sometimes two colours aren't enough.
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Handling International Addresses in Android
How to structure your data to handle different address formats from around the world.
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Code at Brightec
Cross-platform vs native app development?
At Brightec, we’re specialists in native mobile apps. But is there ever a place for the cross-platform frameworks offered by the likes of React Native or Xamarin?
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Android 2018
Google PlayStore and automated deployment
We recently set out to automatically deploy an apk to the PlayStore to speed up our distribution process.
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Android Mobile App Development
Creating a Selectable Cluster Map
We explored using Google Maps to create a map with selectable markers that cluster together.
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Enterprise Apps Featured
Enterprise Mobile App Development: 5 ways to plan for success
We offer insights into key issues to consider in the early stages of enterprise mobile app development.
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Android Development and ConnectivityDataLive
ConnectivityLiveData
Our Android development team look at using Android Architecture Components to provide an observable interface to our connectivity status.
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Coding Ideas Featured
Extending the ListAdapter with a header view
For all Android app developers tackling the issue of scrolling, read on...
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Creating Vector Drawables for Android
We've been busy creating vector drawables for Android using Sketch.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Firebase Test Lab on CircleCI
Firebase Test Lab on CircleCI
Following Apple’s purchase of Buddybuild, and their decision to drop support for Android projects, we've been looking for an alternative CI platform for our Android projects.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Google Ideas Featured
Firebase Database explained
Struggling to understand Firebase Database? Here is our explanation from an SQL perspective
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Android
Android O brings new features to Notifications
Notifications pose a tricky challenge for developers. Discover the extra tools Android O gives us to help.
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Kotlin
Kotlin is here. So what?
All about the new programming language - Kotlin. It’s features, strengths, and weaknesses.
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Android
Code snippets in Espresso
A few snippets from Espresso - the automated testing framework for Android
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Alistair
May 2017 - Which devices and versions of iOS are most popular?
Each month we take a brief look at the devices and versions of iOS and Android which are currently in use.
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Coding Ideas Featured
PIN protection for your app using LolliPin
How to setup LolliPin pin protection to keep your apps secure
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Android
Why you should care whether your app was built using Google Firebase
Are you looking for a Rolls-Royce, tried and tested solution for your app? Does Google Firebase provide that and, if so, should you care?
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Talking
Working with Layer Messaging
Some hints and tips for working with Layer - the messaging service provider.
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Google Ideas Featured Image
Google Pixel Event
At the most recent Google event, they showed off their future vision (plus their iPhone killer).
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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
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Android library
Distributing your Library using JCenter
Rate The App - Part Three: Distributing your Library using JCenter
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Google I/O 2016 1
Google I/O 2016
Take a more detailed look at our reflections on Google IO 2016.
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How much does an app cost
Android Pay arrives in the UK
Android Pay is finally here in the UK. Here's what we make of it.
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Android library
Open source your Android Library
Rate The App - Part Two: Making your Android Library Open Source
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Android library
Creating an Android Library

Rate The App - Part One: The story of creating an Android Library.

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Android ideas main
Android Marshmallow and SimpleDateFormat
Android Marshmallow and a breaking change with SimpleDateFormat
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Android TV Dev ideas main
Building Apps for Android TV

Our advice on designing and building apps for Android TV.

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Android TV Development
Top tips for Android TV development
Our top tips for developing Android (& Amazon Fire) TV apps.
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Alistair ideas
Android animations
A few solutions for easily executing Android animations
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Google 5
Google Developer Day for Agencies
We attended an invite-only Developers Day hosted by Google.
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Communicating between two devices using WebSockets
How we used WebSockets to enable two devices to communicate with each other.
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Google Play ideas main
Information for the Google Play Store
Your app is designed, developed and ready to go. What next? Time for the app stores.
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Android Studio Improvements
What can we expect to find in the upcoming (and ongoing) improvements to Android Studio?
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Calling RESTful APIs with Retrofit
How to call RESTful APIs with Retrofit (in just 3 steps)
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Some quick thoughts from Google I/O 2015
Last week we hosted a Brighton Mobile Developers Meetup for the Google I/O 2015. Here are some of our initial thoughts:
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Best practice in app tracking
App tracking (analytics) holds obvious benefits to developers and their clients but it can be fraught with difficulty. How much and what tracking is needed? What is ‘best practice’ for tracking?
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7 difficulties of internationalisation & localisation
Seven of the most difficult aspects of internationalisation and localisation.
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Simple Android network requests
Chris explores how we set up network requests for Android
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Android Multi-Builds
Building Android projects automatically against multiple APIs
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Branching Strategy
This is the final post in the series - ‘Evolving the Dev Process’.
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Thoughts on Google IO 2014

Google IO is their annual developer conference here are our thoughts.

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Simple multi pane in Android - Pt 2
In the second part of this article we look at how to add interactions to the split screen layout
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Simple multi pane in Android - Pt 1
A good way to utilise the space on tablet devices is to use multi-pane (split) layouts to present different parts of the app on one screen.
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Slow Android emulator?
When developing for Google Android it is important to test your apps properly on multiple devices.
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Android ListView with an alphabet scroller
When presenting data in a ListView it may be helpful to have a scroller down the side to allow users to quickly jump to a specific letter.
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App downloads: Apple versus Google
We wanted to find out which platform has the most number of app download?
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Why build a native mobile app over an HTML5 web app?
This is a question we have been asked many times over the years and doesn’t seem to be going away.
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Custom Android media controller
This post will explain the process that we went through and a sample project to help you build your own media controls.
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Fierce battle between iOS and Android in the UK
Apple and Google are, without doubt, two of the most powerful brands competing for the loyalty of UK consumers today.
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iPhone vs Android in the UK
A recent study concluded that nearly half of smartphones sold in the UK are Android devices
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We develop intelligent mobile apps for iPhone & Android that deliver for you. Call us on (+44)1273 625959, email us at hello@brightec.co.uk or visit us in Brighton. There are hundreds of articles to browse on our blog. Here’s our privacy policy.

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