Data Binding with Live Data for RecyclerView in Kotlin

When working on an app in Kotlin or Android, it’s very common to use RecyclerViews to display lists of information. Typically, this data will be built up in ViewModels and passed to a list adapter. This works fine for most things and allows interaction with the items. Usually, they don’t need to change directly in […]

Compiling a List of Your Airship Tags

Airship (recently rebranded from Urban Airship) is a service that you can integrate into your mobile app or web application. It allows you to send push notifications to a targeted segment of your users based on a variety of filter mechanisms, including a series of Tags and Tag Groups.

They Say, “Everything Is a Signal.” But What Exactly Is a Reactive Signal?

During my introduction to reactive programming, I was shown a giant reactive codebase and told, “Everything is a signal.” Of course, my first question was, “What is a signal?” In my opinion, this question is the sticking point for many reactive tutorials and explanations. Is a pipeline a good analogy for a signal? Maybe an […]

React Hook for Query String State Management

On a current project, we wanted to hoist page state out of a useReducer hook into a query string of the URL. We saw this as a continual need for the project going forward, so we wanted a convenient way to build new pages that stored their state in the URL’s query string. To do […]

Using SkiaSharp to Create an Inner Shadow in Xamarin.Forms

I’m currently working on a project that uses Xamarin.Forms, and the other day I started a story to implement some design on a multi-selection list in our mobile application. The design added checkboxes to each cell in the list, and each checkbox has a subtle inner shadow. This is a common design convention–so common that […]

Three Methods for Solving Android Data Binding Errors

Trying to figure out what is causing data binding errors when you compile your Android project? This post will save you a lot of time and frustration. There is nothing worse than the compiler telling you something’s wrong in your project but not telling you where. If you are getting cryptic errors like error: cannot […]

Substates – Adding Loading and Error Screens in Your Ember Application

On my current project, I was tasked with implementing loading screens in our application. As it turns out, Ember has a built-in way of showing loading templates to the user! This built-in mechanism exists through what Ember calls substates. Let’s take a look at what these substates are and how you might use them.

Making Development with PowerShell More Hospitable

As generalists, we can and do work across many platforms and frameworks. But that doesn’t mean that we’re immediately comfortable when we have to pack up and move from the platform we typically call home, where we’ve got things arranged just the way we like it. When moving from a Unix-like platform to Windows, things […]

Why Flutter Might Be the Best of Both Worlds

A little more than a year ago, I started working on my first project with native mobile applications. It has been wonderful learning the intricacies of the iOS and Android platforms, but I’ve noticed how cumbersome it is for a team to maintain two versions of the same application. It takes quite a bit of […]

Creating Material Design Chips in an Android App

Material Design was introduced by Google in 2014 as a visual language to create a universal design and style guide for applications. Along with Material Design, new widgets and controls were added to match the new styling. One of these elements is the chip. Chips function like buttons that can either be checked or toggled. […]

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