Discounted Android Books for Purchase

Don't think you'll win a free (signed) copy of Sam's Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours from Mobiletuts+? Already have the Sam's book or the first edition of Android Wireless Application Development, but haven't gotten around to buying the second edition?

Well, InformIT is offering up a discount for the second edition of Android Wireless Application Development -- 40% off with the coupon code ANDROID until March 15, 2011. That's a little better than the regular Amazon price. :)

Honeycomb Preview Now Available

Earlier today, I was just telling someone how we lesser mortals almost never get SDKs much in advance of hardware anymore. Well, we just got one: the Honeycomb SDK preview.

And, besides the preview, the SDK tools and plugins have been updated. Sounds like good stuff. Now to go digest it all for an afternoon snack.

Even if you can't use the new SDK, don't forget to update your tools.

After you've digested it, let us know your favorite new features!

Free Android Development Books!

Mobiletuts+ is offering up several signed copies of Sam's Teach Yourself Android Wireless Application Development in 24 Hours. For Free! You could be a winner!

So head on over there and give it a shot if you haven't taken the dive yourself already. Check out Mobiletuts+ for great Android tutorials, many written by yours truly.

Phrasebook Map Intents: Redux

Maps 5.0 at 1024x600 (click)
Zoomed all the way out at z=2

As part of a review of some of our applications we've created as part of articles, we revisited the Phrasebook app found on Google Code. Written with Android 2.2 in mind, the application still runs fine on both Android 2.3 and with Tablet displays (e.g. 1024x600).

However, one strange issue did come up: the geo URLs for the addition of launching maps from Android SDK Quick Tip: Launching Maps In-App don't all work as expected with Maps 5.0. The default one, the world link, used:

geo:0,180?z=1

Sending this actually causes Maps 5.0 to crash. It works fine in Maps 4.2 and 4.7 (available in Emulator 2.2 and 2.3, respectively). The fix? Change z to 2. This is odd, because 1 is documented by Google to show the whole world. (Though, there is a note that the geo URI is still under development. The linked-to document is from 2007, though.) We clearly see in the above screenshot that there are no levels of zoom farther out now.

Next, we wanted to test the rest of the queries to see if any others were affected. Here they are, and the results:

"geo:0,0?q=Belgium": Success
"google.streetview:cbll=46.813812,-71.207378&cbp=1,99.56,,1,-5.27&mz=21": Success
"geo:0,0?q=Matterhorn&z=8": Success
"geo:0,0?q=Coffee Shops near Paris, France":Success

So, it's reasonable to expect the only thing to now avoid are zoom levels of 1. The fix has been pushed up to the repository.

This experience is a great example of the sort of maintenance applications can take. Not only should they be tested on devices with new firmware and SDK versions, but any other applications that they rely on also need to be updated and tested against. Maps 5.0 is not yet found within an emulator, so this testing requires a handset with Maps 5.0 on it.