Android Best Practices Explained

Android Best Practices
 
As Android has reached 75 percent of the global smart phone market, it should come as no surprise that numerous people are struggling to develop captivating applications. With the launch of a new IDE “Android Studio” by Google, which aids developers to build the Android apps while adhering to endearing best practices of android development.
 
Designing and developing Android applications can become quite difficult at times, but there are certain points which if developers consider, the process of developing apps can be simplified to a great extent. This blog is an attempt to alleviate the Android development by discussing some of the disarming best practices which will universally to all the Android applications.
 
Use multiple XML files to organize screens
 
Most of the developers store the strings in strings.xml file, but there are many other options for organizing the screens in an easily accessible and concise manner. It is very imperative to store your strings in different XML files on the basis of their usage and type. For example, message.xml can be used to store messages shown in dialogs, strings.xml can be used to store application strings and placeholder.xml can be used to store other strings.
 
Seamlessness and Speed
 
It’s not very difficult to build unique apps around the greatest idea imaginable, but if the app is not user friendly, it will never be able to attract the users. Users can forgive a slightly visually unattractive app for once, but one of the aspects that users will never agree with is slow functioning of app. So, ensure that your app is easily navigable, easy to use and fast in functioning.
 
UI is the most significant factor
 
The UI (user interface) must be developed in a way that it allows users to use the app in a flexible, convenient and quick manner. The responsiveness and performance of UI can be easily optimized by keeping the layout of the app in accordance to the concept and required responsiveness. For example, if the layout of the app is 5 levels deep, the developers must work on its simplification in order to improve the UI responsiveness. Simultaneously, the developers must also work on identifying the large view hierarchies which consume more memory. They must work on efficiently managing the VM garbage collection perfectly to protect the UI responsiveness from being affected by the recurrently blocked UI (main) thread.
 
Check the Hierarchy
 
If after applying all the tactics, you app is still slow, than the aspect which might be slowing down your app might be the manner in which your UI is rendered. So consider rendering view of same data types, one after the other and then switches to the next data types. If two different data types are rendered one after other may create problems with UI and speed of the app as it consumes more memory.
 
XML layouts styling and designing
 
It is quite significant to design the layouts in the way they can flow appropriately between different screen sizes. If you possess knowledge about the dynamic or responsive web development, it would be easier for you to understand the concept of different screen sizes but if you are new in dynamic UI layouts designing, it can surely give you a hard time. Also, it is entirely different than the iOS’s pixel perfect layouts.
 
You would be required to assign dynamic heights and widths to your UI elements instead of hard coding heights and widths.
 
Modularization and addition of comments
 
It is one of the simplest yet most ignored aspect of development. Comments help developers to enumerate the flow of the project or the code, and whenever you want to alter the code or few aspects of the apps, it can be easily done. Probably the most supportive aspect of adding comments comes when you are developing complex and confusing functions.
 
Similarly, modularization makes it very easier to read and maintain the code. Modularization cuts down the recurrence thus, shrinking down the overall size of the code and write more precise contents.