Emojis are everywhere — it’s hard to visit a website, app or have a conversation without emojis popping up somewhere along the line 😀 Because of this, it’s important that all users who are involved in these kind of activities are able to see the emojis being used. If not, textual content can be misunderstood or misinterpreted…. Continue reading
Last week came the official announcement of the Android O release. This release of Android comes with some really cool new additions, and in this post I want to look specifically at the new restrictions that have been introduced for background services. If you’re using background services in your app then changes could affect your… Continue reading
Now the Android O APIs have finalised, Android O is just around the corner — which means we need to be sure our apps are filled with the latest goodies from the API. In this article we’re going to be taking a look at one of my favourite Android O features: Notification Badges 👌 I feel like… Continue reading
What an I/O! There were so many exciting things announced this year and too much that I want to write about! One of the topics that I (and a lot of other people) were hyped for was on Architecture. From these talks Architecture Components was announced, and after playing with them since, I’m taking this… Continue reading
On one side of my family runs a genetic condition known as Retinitis Pigmentosa — this is essentially a condition that causes your eyesight to deteriorate over time. Often, this makes me think about how the technology that we create could actually make a difference to someones life and how we, as creators, could be a part… Continue reading
This week we saw the announcement of the first Android-O developer preview. One of the features of this announcement includes Notification Channels — in this article we’re going to take a look at exactly what these are and how we can make use of them within our applications! Notification Channels provide us with the ability to group… Continue reading
Firebase is such an exciting new collection of services that I’ve been reading up on and experimenting with. In this new series of articles, we’ll be covering the features of firebase to learn exactly what we can do with each integration. In this chapter, we’re going to be taking a look at Firebase Dynamic Links — the… Continue reading
Originally posted on the Buffer Overflow blog, here. The composer is the heart of our app — it enables our users to craft social media updates and schedule them to post to the social networks at custom times. It’s been part of the Buffer Android app since the very beginning. And it had reached the point… Continue reading
Remote config is a feature of Firebase suite that allows us to alter both the look and feel of our application without the need to publish any updates to the Google Play or App store. This works by allowing us to define in-app parameters that can be overridden from within the firebase console — these parameters can… Continue reading
After months of waiting, we finally have access to the Google Awareness API. This new API allows to craft context-based experiences within our applications, allowing us to provide a more personal and customised experience for our users. In this article we’re going to take a deep dive into the Awareness API features so we can… Continue reading