Android Development in 2023

There has been a lot of progress done in and for Android Development. Support for large screens and form factors, wearOs and Compose TV, new updates in Kotlin like K2 complier, KSP, Kotlin Multiplatform and more updates coming to Jetpack and more. In this talk, we'll highlight the new updates, new library releases as well as updates in Android Studio.

Making Android Development better than before!

Cheers

Transcript

1. Beatrice Kinya GDE for Android Android Engineer Also, I create content @Kodeco Twitter: @B__Kinya | LinkedIn: Beatrice Kinya
2. Android Development in 2023 Android | Kotlin | Jetpack
3. Language
4. Kotlin - 2017: Officially supported language for Android. - Google I/0 2019: Google announced Kotlin as the first class language for Android Development. - New libraries, development tools and guidelines are now designed in Kotlin, for instance Jetpack Compose. - Android ❤ Kotlin: - Kotlin is safe, concise and expressive - Structured concurrency offered by coroutines
5. K2 Compiler - Now in Beta , in Kotlin 1.9.0 release - Better builds and improved IDE performance. It’s twice faster compared to Kotlin 1.8 compiler. - Default for Kotlin 2.0
6. K2 Compiler - Starting with Kotlin 1.9.0, you can test K2 compiler using kotlin.experimental.tryK2=true gradle property. Use the following command on command line ./gradlew assemble -Pkotlin.experimental.tryK2=true - Or Update language version from modules build.gradle file
8. Kotlin DSL for Gradle Builds - Gradle Kotlin DSL is an alternative syntax to Groovy DSL for writing gradle build scripts. - Advantages include code completion, navigating to source ,syntax highlighting and type and method documentation.
9. Kotlin DSL for Gradle Builds - Starting Android Studio Giraffe Kotlin DSL will be the default DSL for writing Gradle Build Scripts - Android Studio Giraffe offers Gradle version catalog an an experimental option. - Gradle Version Catalog provides a centralised place for managing dependencies.
10. KSP - Kotlin Symbol processing(KSP), a better alternative to Kotlin Annotation Processor(KAPT) - KAPT generates Java stubs from Kotlin code to allow annotation processors written for Java to work with Kotlin code. This is time consuming - KSP, a first alternative for Kotlin, directly analyses Kotlin Code. - It’s 2X faster. It does not generate Java stubs - It provides better typing. It better understands kotlin constructs and types such as nullability. - It’s multi-platform ready
11. Kotlin Multiplatform - Kotlin Multiplatform simplifies development of cross-platform projects. - It allows sharing code across different platforms while retaining the benefits and flexibility of native programming. - Now in Beta - Jetpack Libraries supporting Kotlin multi-platform - Collections - Annotations - Datastore
12. Large Screens and Form Factors
13. Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold
14. Jetpack Compose - Pager and flow layouts for designing adaptive ui layouts across different screen sizes - Flow layouts are similar to Row and Column. - They differ in that items move to the next line when container runs out of space. - You can also use LazyGrid layouts.
16. Window Size Class - androidx.compose.material3.windowsizeclass library enables you observe device window size class so that you can build adaptive ui layouts easily. - Window size classes include : small, medium and large
17. Window State - Jetpack WindowManager library help developers adapt their apps to a multi-window environments. - Activity embedding used in a multi-activity apps design adaptive layouts for different screen sizes. - In 1.1 release of Jetpack WindowManager, activity embedding is no longer experimental - Window layout library allows you to determine features of app display window such as fold posture and orientation. Check out this article to learn how to build adaptive apps for large screens and foldables: https://www.kodeco.com/34785195-large-screens-foldables-tutorial-for-android
18. Glance - Jetpack Glance library enables you to develop widgets customized for android phones, tablets and foldables. - Glance simplifies implementation of interactive and responsive widgets
19. Wear OS - Compose for Wear OS 1.1 stable was released December last year. - 1.2 release is currently in alpha with new features like: - The placeholder and placeholderShimmer add elegant loading animations that can be used on chips and cards while content is loading. - expandableItems make it possible to fold long lists or long text, and only expand to show their full length upon user interaction. - Android studio lets you preview multiple watch screen and text sizes. - And more ..
20. Compose for TV - An alpha release of Androidx TV library - Compose for TV allows to build intuitive TV apps using less code and an intuitive, powerful and flexible API. - Compose for TV comes with variety of components you can use alongside material components - TvLazyRow, TvLazyColumn, TvLazyGrid for scrollable content. - TabRow & Tab and NavigationDrawer for navigation - ImmersiveList - Carousel
21. Jetpack
22. Jetpack - Jetpack is a suite of libraries, tools and guidelines to help developers develop robust android apps, while writing code that works consistently across different android versions and devices. - The libraries can be grouped into 3 major categories - Architecture libraries - Performance Optimization - User Interface libraries
23. Architecture Libraries ❖ Room ➢ @Upsert annotation added in Room 2.5.0 ➢ Support for value classes for KSP. This is available starting from Room 2.6.0-alpha01 ❖ WorkManager ➢ Update WorkRequest that’s already enqueued while maintaining original enqueue time and chaining. ➢ updateWork() API allows you to update existing work request without having to manually cancel and create a new work request. ➢ Available WorkManager 2.8.0 ❖ DataStore ➢ DataStore 1.1-alpha ➢ Support for KMM ➢ Accessing DataStore from multiple processes while providing data consistency between the proccess ❖ Lifecycle ➢ CollectAsStateWithLifecycle API ➢ Released in lifecycle 2.6.0
24. Performance - Have you heard about baseline profile? - Check out Baseline Profile library and learn how you can improve your app start-up time. - And Macrobenchmark library to monitor and improve the performance of your app.
25. Material 3 - Recommended design system for Android apps - 1.1 stable release. - Added new components - Bottom Sheet - Date and time picker - Search bar - Flow layouts
26. Tooling
27. Android Studio Giraffe - Now Stable - Live edit on both the emulator and physical device without rebuilding or redeploying your app. - Support for new animations APIs in Animation preview so you can debug any animations using animate*AsState, CrossFade, rememberInfiniteTransition, and AnimatedContent. - Compose preview supports live updates from multiple files. - Improved auto-complete behavior
28. Android Studio Giraffe - Resizable emulator now includes different foldable postures: folded, unfolded and book posture
29. Android Studio Hedgehog - Now in Canary 14 - Showing compose state information in the debugger. It’ll show you which parameters changes, the ones that remained unchanged making it efficient to investigate recompositions. - Check out this talk by Ben Trengrove to learn more: Debugging Jetpack Compose - Android Studio Bot - A new Espresso Device Api that lets you apply rotation changes, fold posture and other configuration changes to the virtual device under test.
30. Android Studio Hedgehog: Compose Multiple Preview template - androidx.compose.ui:ui-tooling-preview 1.6.0-alpha01+ introduces new multi preview API templates: @PreviewScreenSizes, @PreviewFontScales, @PreviewLightDark, and @PreviewDynamicColors - With a single annotation you can preview your compose UI with different common scenarios.
32. Resources, and a lot more from the Android Community
33. Resources
34. Resources - https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/consuming-flows-safely-in-jetpack-compose-cde014d0d5a3 - https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/05/building-pixel-perfect-living-room-experiences-co mpose-for-tv.html - https://www.kodeco.com/34785195-large-screens-foldables-tutorial-for-android#toc-anchor-005 - https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/window#1.1.0-beta01 - https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/glance - https://developer.android.com/build/migrate-to-ksp - https://jorgecastillo.dev/course/ - https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Android-Development-Cookbook-applications-ebook/dp/B0B9YN7 M41/ref=sr_1_6 - https://practicaljetpackcompose.com/
35. Questions