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Is there some kind of technical limitation of Android that prevents this most rudimentary of features of a computing device with a screen?
I'm on my second Android phone (from Hero --> to new Desire) and after 5 years with Windows Mobile I not only have zero regrets, I just pity anyone still stuck on WM... but enough of that ... at least there are screen shot apps! I just don't get it at all. It can't be that nobody has asked for one. So, what is the limitation of Android that prevents something so simple as a screenshot to be generated?
Sign me,
Frustrated in San Francisco
Oh what the hell, while I am at it, I might as well show off svetius's newly available YOUTUBE embed code here at XDA -- which -- shhhhh!!!! --- it's a big secret, only I alone am supposed to know about it.
PHP:
[media=youtube]xxxxxxxxxx[/media]
where xxxxxxxxxx = the video file name in the URL after watch?v=
I don't think there is any technical problem, I think it just wasn't added to official API yet. Yes, I know it should.
And if you are in urgent need of doing some screenshots, then you could take quite awkward, but working for non-rooters, approach: take screenshots on your PC using Android SDK.
I agree it should be much easier to just take a simple screenshot. Where can we ask google to add this function?
DBBGBA said:
Where can we ask google to add this function?
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Click to collapse
You could star this issue:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6547
I don't know, wouldn't that be a pretty big security issue?
A screenshot app is good for nothing if you can only take screenshots of the app itself. So it has to have access to screen captures of any app.
Now I'd just write some service running in the background waiting for key presses and taking a picture every time. When you type in passwords, the default option is showing the letter for a small time.
That should be sufficient to get user passwords. I would not want software that can do this on my phone.
I know open home has a screenshot feature you enable by the camera button. Maybe someone can rip the code from there and make a separate app?
erronr said:
I know open home has a screenshot feature you enable by the camera button. Maybe someone can rip the code from there and make a separate app?
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Click to collapse
The home replacement apps only take screenshots of the home screen (OpenHome, dxTop).
You can easily use Droid Explorer on a Windows PC to do screenshots.
Hey all-
I am very new to developing (and Java). Currently working on my 2nd android app so be gentle here. Is there a way, or a good work-around to display web-based pdf files with android? Basically I am trying to have one of the buttons in my program pull up a website that happens to be a web-based pdf. I don't believe WebView will support that.
I have tried converting the pdf files to .png but I loose all the resolution I need as I need the user to be able to zoom in and see the detail.
Is there anyway to either host the pdf file on-line as something else and/or convert it to something else to make it available off-line?
Thanks for any help
Just throwing this out there, but why not have the link download the PDF file to the user's phone.
Only downside I see to this is in the even that the user doesn't have a PDF "viewer."
Otherwise, I'm not aware of any real way to display a PDF within the browser.
If someone can work this out, I'd be interested in learning his/her technique as well.
Thanks for the reply- I did think of doing it that way but I didn't want to make use of my app dependent on another app- It sounds like that's what I will have to do though as I have searched high and low without finding a solution. I had wanted to make two versions of the app- in the free version the user would need web access, in the paid version the user could have off-line access.
With Adobe's pdf viewer on the market for free and most new phones coming stock with pdf viewers, I suppose it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Is there no graphic format I can convert a pdf to and then host on-line? Thank you again
OREGONMX said:
Thanks for the reply- I did think of doing it that way but I didn't want to make use of my app dependent on another app- It sounds like that's what I will have to do though as I have searched high and low without finding a solution. I had wanted to make two versions of the app- in the free version the user would need web access, in the paid version the user could have off-line access.
With Adobe's pdf viewer on the market for free and most new phones coming stock with pdf viewers, I suppose it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Is there no graphic format I can convert a pdf to and then host on-line? Thank you again
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Click to collapse
Yeah, I know exactly what you are saying. Having an app-to-app dependency can cause quite a hysteria with users. They'll complain that the app is faulty and rate it 1 star.
My other suggestion would be to screenshot the PDF, page by page, and paste them into Photoshop and save the files as jpg's with the highest resolution. It will definitely take up a lot of your time if you have a lot of PDFs with many pages. Granted, you'll be taking up much more space, and the image will be loading a lot slower but you'll have pretty neat quality.
You'll have to weigh the factors on what you find more important - speed or quality.
If you don't mind me asking, what type of app are you making.
Thanks again- well just a few minutes ago my friend who is a bit more proficient with the whole coding thing came up with an idea that might just work-
he suggested taking the PDF and splitting it up into several different images and just creating an arrow button on the sides or top or bottom (depending on where in the image you are looking) and then applying an onClickListener to the buttons which will call up a different image view, which would be the next corresponding image/area of the pdf. I'm hoping that by cutting the pdf into small pieces like that and saving them as either jpg or png files I can retain the resolution I am after AND host them on-line myself for the free-app and give users the option to download the pdf to their SD card in the paid version- which would make my original idea a possibility.
My app is a program aimed at dirtbiking enthusiasts- surprisingly there is not a lot of crossover between the dirtbiking community and the developing community- I am all alone Ha!
I don't imagine I stand to make a bajillion dollars but learning android and java and actually seeing what I am doing work (sometimes) has been a fantastically gratifying experience. Just wish I had more time to do it- a 4-year-old and 5-year-old + wife + full-time job make it hard. I'm in no hurry though
That sounds fairly similar to what Facebook has on their "Touch" version of their site (touch.facebook.com)
If you view pictures within an album, you'll notice you get the arrows on the bottom left and right to keep switching between pictures.
Sounds like that would definitely work.
Keep me posted on your app. I give you props for even being on your 2nd app, as I've seen many people in your same situation (wife, kids, job) just give up after downloading the SDK.
But yeah, I'm interested to see how it turns out.
Thanks hopefully my vision will come together sooner rather than later. I'll keep you posted
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Hi all!
I'm in my final year and we're supposed to do a project which is worth 200 marks overall. Most of us in our field have chosen to develop either android or iphone applications. My group and I have chosen adnroid.
Now, I'm in need of simple ideas for the apps. We have absolutely no idea on how to go about with the process. I've seen lots of people here develop stunning applications here! We're in need of ideas for developing simple apps.. which can be completed in a max of 2-3 months (considering the fact that we don't have any background knowledge on android development/programming. All we know is Java)
I'd initially suggested an automatic mobile credit recharge system, where in the app monitors you prepaid account balance from time to time and recharges the account once the credit falls below a user set value.
Although this seemed interesting at first, it can only be simulated with 2 databases (one for the mobile credit and another for the bank account)
After going through the type of apps here, I really want to develop something much better than this.
I'm open to all ideas, in fact, we don't mind developing an app that is already existing (for instance a profile manager or a data wallet etc) All we want is to have a fully complete app at the end of 2 months.
Please assist.
Thanks!
Secret Santa?
That's something that I thought up over winter break and whipped it up over a few days in the App Inventor. If you guys take your time, you can probably learn Android programming and design/code it in a month or so.
There are some "special" features that I added to make the app more useful but I'll leave that for you to think up.
I'll post back if I come up with anything else. I also need some app ideas, but just for recreational programming.
Thanks! I'm currently checking out appInventer.. I somehow find it hard to come up with ideas which is why I'm trying to find help from here :|
I think the credit recharger is a pretty cool idea, personally. But I understand that you might want something with more "impact"
I think part of the key to this would be figuring out what has not already been done to death. There are so many apps with 5, 6, 7, etc versions of the basically the same thing. I would try to find something to develop with less competition, even if it's more of a niche product. I'm trying to think of the things I've previously thought "I wish I had an app for ____" but I'm drawing a blank right now.
If I think of anything I'll be sure to post it back in here
DrDubzz said:
I think the credit recharger is a pretty cool idea, personally. But I understand that you might want something with more "impact"
I think part of the key to this would be figuring out what has not already been done to death. There are so many apps with 5, 6, 7, etc versions of the basically the same thing. I would try to find something to develop with less competition, even if it's more of a niche product. I'm trying to think of the things I've previously thought "I wish I had an app for ____" but I'm drawing a blank right now.
If I think of anything I'll be sure to post it back in here
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Click to collapse
Thanks! I checked out google appInventer tutorials.. theres one which says "no text while driving" -- basically sends back an sms to the sender that ur driving.. It seems interesting so I'm gonna see how best i can use it and pack some more useful stuff along with it.. and see how it all works out.
The reason why I'm giving the auto recharge a back seat is because it can't be implemented in real time.. it can only be simulated in a virtual environment.
You might want to think about doing something that takes advantage of the maps api. It's easy to do but it looks impressive and might help you get high marks.
A great idea?!
Graphics artist here,
Something I just thought of and just started searching for (literally) when I came across your thread, would be: Using the phone as a touch sensitive.. control for editing software, ie photoshop or paint.net. Basically turn the phone into a touchpad control for a computer.
Just an idea!
mirrorhelix said:
Graphics artist here,
Something I just thought of and just started searching for (literally) when I came across your thread, would be: Using the phone as a touch sensitive.. control for editing software, ie photoshop or paint.net. Basically turn the phone into a touchpad control for a computer.
Just an idea!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This would be great! I'd definitely pay a couple/few dollars for something along these lines if it was user-friendly
Thats a really awesome idea!! Converting the touchscreen into a tablet input for PS or any other photo manipulation software.. But the problem is that I don't know where to begin! :|
This is a college project so the idea isn't to make a unique and sell-able application... it's to demonstrate that you can work as part of a team to make an application from design to completion.
I'd try and think of a fun app (i wouldnt care if it's been done 100 times before) that everyone on your team wants to contribute to. If it's unique, brilliant, if not nevermind you've got some good experience working as a team and making an android app.
I do like the sound of the phone touchpad app, it's been done on iPhone by Logitech but i've not seen something for android. If it helps, http://blog.logitech.com/2010/01/29...-touch-into-a-wireless-trackpad-and-keyboard/ .
There are a ton of them on the market: Gmote, MyRemote, UnifiedRemote, etc.
It might be a good idea to email this developers to get a better picture of what to do.
Problem is that all of those tools rely heavily on WiFi so you'll have to understand networking.
biggler said:
This is a college project so the idea isn't to make a unique and sell-able application... it's to demonstrate that you can work as part of a team to make an application from design to completion.
I'd try and think of a fun app (i wouldnt care if it's been done 100 times before) that everyone on your team wants to contribute to. If it's unique, brilliant, if not nevermind you've got some good experience working as a team and making an android app.
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Click to collapse
Bingo!! Which is exactly what my instructor said. I tried out the tutorials on appInventer.. I was toying with the idea of integrating more features into those itself. Is that a good idea? Although the concept is from Google, would it be ok to build on it? i'm particularly interested in "No texting while driving" and "Broadcast Hub" -- both these apps are awesome! Are there any notable features that I can add to make them better.
How about an app for the quick oil change places. It could show your last service and what was done. Show any upcoming maintenance and when your next oil change is due.
Maybe integrate Google Maps to show locations of service centers. Maybe offer a "e-coupon" if they use the app. Pretend they offer online scheduling and maybe show them "2 customers in bay, one waiting" - Estimated wait time 20 minutes" yada, yada
As an "older" programmer with 2 degrees, it's nice to see your college offering the mobile platform as a programming choice. Hell, all we got to write were COBOL and CICS mainframe applications and some semi-cool C++ projects.
Good Luck and Congratulations on getting your degree!!
What about a bluetooth hack to where u would be able to hack into someones phone and use their service for texting and calling. I heard of something like that when i was on my blackberry and was really into it. But it would be nice to get something like that on my Incredible
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I think it would be a good idea to make an app that uses an existing web api for a popular website, could be facebook, ebay(do they have an api?) etc etc.
It's a good way to learn a lot of aspects of android development, with a useful product as the outcome.
It doesn't matter if there is already an app for that site, think of a different way of using the site on the mobile, and go from there.
I would like to see a program that reads the weather API and reflects the current weather and location on the wallpaper. This app would require graphics design, code to parse the weather feed, writing to the OS. When I was on Windows Mobile there was a skin for Weather Panel that did this but with Android's live walpaper it could be really cool.
Thanks for the ideas you guys! I really appreciate it. Everything seems interesting.. but the problem is we don't know where to begin or how to go about it.
I did the broadcast hub tutorial present in the app inventer page. It turned out good. Is there any way I can add functionality to this itself?
blueren said:
Thanks for the ideas you guys! I really appreciate it. Everything seems interesting.. but the problem is we don't know where to begin or how to go about it.
I did the broadcast hub tutorial present in the app inventer page. It turned out good. Is there any way I can add functionality to this itself?
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Click to collapse
Do all the tutorials and learn the blocks, you can create lots of stuff. There is a app in the market that adds more features to the app inventor, app inventor extender
XDA App
A couple of suggestions:
- A chess PGN editor
- A simple picture/document management app where you take a photo using the camera, add some tags or other info, and save all details in a database. You can also provide search functionality and a viewer to retrieve pictures using the index you've built.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I did some homework on topics and came across this.. A multilingual speech translator.
Talk in a language, it converts the speech to text, translates that text to a target language, and reads the translated text aloud.
Is this feasible? What is the difficulty level?
Also, is it possible to develop a call blocker app? I looked around but wherever I search, I only find fully built apps but not pointers on how to go about creating one by yourself.
Please assist.
Hi,
A year ago I developed an app as part of a group project at uni. Due to the limitations set by the project rules the app isn't properly designed for Android. The app is a tour guide, in 2 parts. The guide itself is an XML file which has all the content on it. The other part is the player, which is an Android app. The player parses the XML and forms Java Classes to store the data and then play it. The content is saved in the form of Slides in a Slideshow (part of the requirements of the project, not our choice). So for instance 1 slide will be the main menu, then clicking a button will take you to another slide which will be a sub menu and so on.
Now a year later I've come to update this app, originally I was just intending to change the AbsoluteLayouts we used to Relative/Linear/List/whatever works best for that particular slide and also to put the layouts into XML rather keep them in the Java. However I was wondering what would be the best Android practice for an app such as this?
The advantage of using XML for the guide is that say if we had a guide to a different city we could just upload that new XML to a server (the player can download remotely) and then download it to get a new tour guide. However would it be best for me to strip away all of this and start afresh, with Android in mind? I.E. by removing the need to parse an XML file at the start and just have a new app for each city.
I've been thinking about a complete overhaul as changing AbsoluteLayout will be a pain. At the moment each component is given X and Y coordinates in the main XML file, so changing that to relative commands, changing the parser to read that will be hard. Also it's best practice to store the layouts in R.layout but it would be hard to convert the layout from the main Tour Guide XML to a layout XML... if that makes sense :/
If I were to remove the main XML, how would I handle each menu or content page? Would they be given their own activity?
Sorry for the long post, I just want to be clear on what the best way to update this app would be and am just learning how to properly design Android apps. I really appreciate any advice and for taking the time to read this post!
If I've put this in the wrong forum then let me know and I'll move it
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
check out
http://www.appcelerator.com/
i created my first app using it
and its on the market with around 2k downloads
it has its issues and bugs but it was my first real coding experience.
its worth checking out
and its free
The US Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/search/?in=&q=stereographs+&new=true has hundreds of historic stereographs that are freely available for download. There are other sources for these stereo images too.
I've found that I can copy these images to my phone and view them with Google Cardboard but there is no easy way to move from one image to the next. The Stereogram app requires the images be edited and adjusted. I'd rather keep it simple and just copy the images to my phone.
Please respond if you know of a simple Google Cardboard app that will allow me to copy several of these images to my phone and view them one at a time by clicking the button on the Cardboard.
If not that, would someone, familiar with the Google Cardboard APIs for Android, please contact me to discuss possible development of an app.
Thank you,
stlbud said:
The US Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/search/?in=&q=stereographs+&new=true has hundreds of historic stereographs that are freely available for download. There are other sources for these stereo images too.
I've found that I can copy these images to my phone and view them with Google Cardboard but there is no easy way to move from one image to the next. The Stereogram app requires the images be edited and adjusted. I'd rather keep it simple and just copy the images to my phone.
Please respond if you know of a simple Google Cardboard app that will allow me to copy several of these images to my phone and view them one at a time by clicking the button on the Cardboard.
If not that, would someone, familiar with the Google Cardboard APIs for Android, please contact me to discuss possible development of an app.
Thank you,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is cool... let me know if you find something that works..
Im actually trying to fix my Note 5 config. for some reason the inter-lens distance is way to far apart and not usable anymore. Not sure what changed.
Wilsonb said:
This is cool... let me know if you find something that works..
Im actually trying to fix my Note 5 config. for some reason the inter-lens distance is way to far apart and not usable anymore. Not sure what changed.
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Click to collapse
I found I can insert the slide images into a PowerPoint or Google Slide presentation and view them with Slide. They will advance with the Google Cardboard button. This isn't ideal. I'd still prefer an app, but at least it works.
stlbud said:
Please respond if you know of a simple Google Cardboard app that will allow me to copy several of these images to my phone and view them one at a time by clicking the button on the Cardboard.
If not that, would someone, familiar with the Google Cardboard APIs for Android, please contact me to discuss possible development of an app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really cool resource! Didn't find a way to download more than one image at a time, would've been nice.
I'm the developer behind VRTV, posted about my beta here a couple of days ago. VRTV can show stereoscopic images, so it should work. You'll need the paid version to get buttons to switch to next/previous image unfortunately which a bit stupid for images to be honest.
It would be cool with a custom app for this though, that could browse the archives directly, and do some cleanup/straightening of the images. Don't think I have the time, but I'll let you know if I get around to it!