Should Microsoft out-Apple Apple?

May 17, 2013 by Inteist

Microsoft’s strategy should not be to produce a better phone or tablet or to be the best mobile content provider. It cannot out-Apple Apple.

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Programming fonts

Apr 19, 2013 by Inteist

It is a matter of preference, no doubt, but most developers I know prefer monospaced fonts. So what are the best ones to be used?

Over the years, I’ve tried numerous fonts and the few that work good are Monaco, Menlo, and finally Ubuntu Mono. Menlo is a great font that comes with OS X and is used in X-Code. It is also the best font so far that I found to use with Eclipse.

I have recently tried to work with Sublime Text 2. I have used TextWrangler before but Sublime seems so much more powerful out of the box. I read somewhere that it is possible to setup TextWrangler with various plugins and extensions to make it quite powerful too, but Sublime Text comes already quite powerful out of the box and just feels more natural. TextWrangler never really felt natural to me but it was the best option I had so far as it had more options than Smultron.

So I tried Ubuntu Mono with Sublime Text but it looks almost the same as Menlo and since I am using Menlo with Eclipse already (Ubuntu Mono regular was horrible in Eclipse) I decided to keep using Menlo despite many praises towards Ubuntu Mono. But Ubuntu might be a good alternative for other OSes that do not have the Menlo bundled with it.

Happy coding!

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Using Jackson JSON Parser in Android Project

Mar 1, 2013 by Inteist

After some research around JSON libraries I reached conclusion that Jackson would be the first choice, both because it is much more used then Gson and it seems to have performance edge over Gson as well. Unfortunately though, adding just the core and the databind jars, without using ProGuard inflates the size of the final APK by a whooping 600Kb.

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Android ICS style buttons for a dialog

Jan 27, 2013 by Inteist

This is basically how you create a standart borderless buttons, like the Android ICS ones.

<!-- OK/Cancel buttons.  -->

<LinearLayout

        android:layout_width="match_parent"

        android:layout_height="wrap_content"

        android:orientation="vertical"

        android:divider="?android:attr/dividerHorizontal"

        android:showDividers="beginning"

        android:paddingTop="16dip">



    <LinearLayout

            style="?android:attr/buttonBarStyle"

            android:layout_width="match_parent"

            android:layout_height="wrap_content"

            android:orientation="horizontal"

            android:measureWithLargestChild="true">



        <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/leftSpacer"

                android:layout_weight="0.25"

                android:layout_width="0dip"

                android:layout_height="wrap_content"

                android:orientation="horizontal"

                android:visibility="gone" />



        <Button android:id="@+id/cancel_button"

                android:layout_width="0dip"

                android:layout_height="wrap_content"

                android:layout_gravity="left"

                android:layout_weight="1"

                android:text="@string/cancel"

                android:maxLines="2"

                style="?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle" />



        <Button android:id="@+id/ok_button"

                android:layout_width="0dip"

                android:layout_height="wrap_content"

                android:layout_gravity="right"

                android:layout_weight="1"

                android:text="@string/install"

                android:maxLines="2"

                android:filterTouchesWhenObscured="true"

                style="?android:attr/buttonBarButtonStyle" />



        <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/rightSpacer"

                android:layout_width="0dip"

                android:layout_weight="0.25"

                android:layout_height="wrap_content"

                android:orientation="horizontal"

                android:visibility="gone" />



    </LinearLayout>

</LinearLayout>

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Git wizardry – easy way to get the change set from Git

Dec 12, 2012 by Inteist

There is a pretty way way to get the Git commits between versions which can be used to build the change set log.

Below are the basic commands that should give you just that. But these commands are even more useful than this. This is almost too easy, this is why I call it wizardry

The only requirement is that you somehow know what is the commit of the latest release you did (if that’s where you want to start your change set)

To find a specific commit (if you had a meaningful commit message)

git log --pretty=format:"%h - %an, %ar : %s" | grep "RELEASE: X.X.X"

or you can just use tag (if you have tagged the commit that preceded the release) and see where it points to or any other way you use to find the latest release commit where you want to start.

Once you found it, it’s as easy as for example:

git log --pretty=format:"%h - %an, %ar : %s" b9c28fc..

***The revision is in .. revision and the last parameter defaults to HEAD if omitted (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-log.html)

Enjoy

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Git tags cheat sheet

Dec 3, 2012 by Inteist

A short list of most useful Git commands to work with git tags. These should cover 90% of your needs.

###   TAGS

#create tag (annotated = with extra meta information)

git tag -a ver1.4 -m 'my version 1.4'



#list tags

git tag



#delete tag

git tag -d XXX



#delete remote tag

#You just need to push an 'empty' reference to the remote tag name:

git push origin :tagname



#push tags to remote

#specific tag:

git push origin v1.5



#all tags:

git push origin --tags

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