7. Android Content Providers

A content provider component supplies data from one application to others on request. Such requests are handled by the methods of the ContentResolver class. A content provider can use different ways to store its data and the data can be stored in a database, in files, or even over a network.

Each Android applications runs in its own process with its own permissions which keeps an application data hidden from another application. But sometimes it is required to share data across applications. This is where content providers become very useful.

6. Android Broadcast Receivers

Broadcast Receivers simply respond to broadcast messages from other applications or from the system itself. These messages are sometime called events or intents. For example, applications can also initiate broadcasts to let other applications know that some data has been downloaded to the device and is available for them to use, so this is broadcast receiver who will intercept this communication and will initiate appropriate action.

There are following two important steps to make BroadcastReceiver works for the systen broadcasted intents:

• Creating the Broadcast Receiver.
• Registering Broadcast Receiver

There is one additional steps in case you are going to implement your custom intents then you will have to create and broadcast those intents.

5. Android Services

A service is a component that runs in the background to perform long-running operations without needing to interact with the user. For example, a service might play music in the background while the user is in a different application, or it might fetch data over the network without blocking user interaction with an activity. A service can essentially take two states:

State	Description
Started	A service is started when an application component, such as an activity, starts it by calling startService(). Once started, a service can run in the background indefinitely, even if the component that started it is destroyed.
Bound	A service is bound when an application component binds to it by callingbindService(). A bound service offers a client-server interface that allows components to interact with the service, send requests, get results, and even do so across processes with interprocess communication (IPC).

4. Android Activities

An activity represents a single screen with a user interface. For example, an email application might have one activity that shows a list of new emails, another activity to compose an email, and another activity for reading emails. If an application has more than one activity, then one of them should be marked as the activity that is presented when the application is launched.

If you have worked with C, C++ or Java programming language then you must have seen that your program starts from main() function. Very similar way, Android system initiates its program with in anActivity starting with a call on onCreate() callback method. There is a sequence of callback methods that start up an activity and a sequence of callback methods that tear down an activity as shown in the below Activity lifecycle diagram: (image courtesy : android.com )

3. Android Hello World Example

Create Android Application

The first step is to create a simple Android Application using Eclipse IDE. Follow the option File -> New -> Project and finally select Android New Application wizard from the wizard list. Now name your application as HelloWorld using the wizard window as follows:

2. Android Installation

1. Installation of the Android development tools
Android provides a standalone customized Eclipse download for Android development or the possibility to update an existing Eclipse installation with additional plug-ins.

1. What is Android?

Android is an operating system based on Linux with a Java programming interface.

The Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) provides all necessary tools to develop Android applications. This includes a compiler, debugger and a device emulator, as well as its own virtual machine to run Android programs.

CAPTION HOVER EFFECTS

A tutorial on how to create some subtle and modern caption hover effects.
Today we want to show you how to create some simple, yet stylish hover effects for image captions. The idea is to have a grid of figures and apply a hover effect to the items which will reveal a caption with the title, author and a link button. For some of the effects we will use 3D transforms. The aim is to keep the effects subtle and provide inspiration for many different variations.

DEMO

SOURCE

tympanus.net

RESPONSIVE MULTI-COLUMN FORM

CREATIVE BUTTON STYLES

Today we would like to give you some button inspiration. This button set consists of some simple, creative and subtle styles and effects to inspire you. The effects can be seen when hovering on some buttons and clicking on others. Mostly, CSS transitions are used but also CSS animations and for some buttons we use a bit of JavaScript to add/remove effect classes

DEMO

SOURCE

Chapter 17: Web Services

Webservices are services exposed over the internet. Typically, webservice is just like any other class library, written in any language. What make it a'web service' is, it can be accessed across internet.

Eventhough webservice is a new technology with a wide range of usage, it is a pretty simple concept. It doesn't require much additional knowledge to create web services if you are already familiar with C# or VB.NET. (Web services are not specific to .NET. Even Java has web service applications, but here we are discussing only the .NET web services.)

Chapter 16: Custom Exceptions

The Microsoft .NET team has done a good job by providing us a rich set of Exception classes. Most of the time, these exception classes are sufficient enough to handle any common error situation. However, it may be required that our application would need some additional exception classes, that are not available in .NET Framework.

Chapter 15: Exception classes in .NET

.NET Framework provides several classes to work with exceptions. When there is an exception, the .NET framework creates an object of type 'Exception' and 'throws' it. This Exception object contains all information about the 'error'. 

If you enclose your code within the try-catch block, you will receive the exception object in the 'catch' block when the exception occurs. You can use this object to retrieve the information regarding the error and take appropriate action.

Chapter 14: Exception Handling in .NET

If you write a program, it is for sure that it will have errors and issues. You cannot avoid them. But what you can do is write the code such a way that it is easy to find the errors and issues so that you can solve them easily. You need the real skill to write 'maintainable code'.

Chapter 13: More about DataTable and DataRow

A DataTable is a class in .NET Framework and in simple words a DataTable object represents a table from a database.

DataSet and DataTable are the key components in ADO.NET programming. While DataSet can be used to represent a database as a whole, a DataTable object can be used to represent a table in the Database/DataSet. A DataSet can contain several DataTables. 

Chapter 12: DataSet, DataTable, DataRow

DataSet and DataTable are the key components in ADO.NET programming. In simple words, DataSet represents an in memory representation of the database. We can load an entire database into a DataSet and manipulate the data in memory. If you aremore familiar with DataSet, you can Add, Edit and Update data in the dataset and then just call a single method 'AcceptChanges()' whichwill save all the changes back to the database.

Chapter 11: Create, Read, Update, Delete - ADO.NET sample

This chapter demonstrates the basic database operations using the ADO.NET classes. The sample code in this chapter uses the OleDb Provider.

Here is some sample code to execute a simple query.

Chapter 10: Application Configuration Files

.NET gives an easy way to store configuration information in a ApplicationConfiguration File. In the simple implementation, you can store information as Key-Value pairs.

For example, consider a case where you have to use a DataSource in your application. If you hardcore the DataSource information in your code, you will have a bad time when you have to change this datasource. You have to change your source code and re-compile it. This won't work everytime you give your product to different customers or when you run your application in different machines!

Chapter 9: Namespaces

A Namespace is a group of related classes. It is a good practice to group related classes into a namespace when you create a class library.

Chapter 8: Property in C# class

How do you access member variables of any class from outside the class ? In most of the languages including C++ , you will make the member variablespublic so that you can create an instance of the class and directly access the public fields, as shown below:

Chapter 7: Classes and Object model in .NET

We will start with an introduction to what is object oriented programming, how to write simple classes, creating objects etc.

What is a 'class' ?

Chapter 6 : DataTypes in C#

DataTypes are the basic building block of any language. Microsoft has tried to standardise the datatypes in .NET framework by introducing a limited, fixed set of types that can be used to represent almost anything in programming world. 

Chapter 5 : C# Language Syntax

This article will show you the basic statements in C# language and language syntax.

Chapter 4 : "Hello World" Application

It is time to get started with code. In this chapter, we will show you how to write your first C# program. This chapter assumes that you have already installed and configured Visual Studio .NET in your computer.

Chapter 3 : What is XML?

First what you are thinking is it a programming language like our c,c++ or it’s presentation language like HTML .YES it’s a presentation language not a programming language . Before going into deep about XML we should remember one think ie it’s a case sensitive language where as HTML is not a case sensitive .As i said before that it’s mainly used for structured documents.You don'y have any pre defined tags here .

Chapter 2: Visual Studio .NET

Many people always get confused with Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET) and .NET technology. VS.NET is just an editor, provided by Microsoft to help developers write .NET programs easily . VS.NET editor automatically generates lot of code, allows developers to drag and drop controls to a form, provide short cuts to compile and build the application etc.

Chapter 1 : What Is .NET ?

This chapter gives you an introduction to the .NET technology and explains what is .NET.

.NET is a major technology change for Microsoft and the software world. Just like the computer world moved from DOS to Windows, now they are moving to .NET. But don't be surprised if you find anyone saying that "I do not like .NET and I would stick with the good old COM and C++". There are still lot of people who like to use the bullock-cart instead of the latest Honda car.

TOOLTIP MENU

HORIZONTAL SLIDE OUT MENU

GK Fashion V3.8 GavickPro Joomla Template For J2.5 J3.

AUTOMATIC FIGURE NUMBERING WITH CSS COUNTERS

When writing articles, blog posts, tutorials, magazine entries or anything else, you will often want to include some images, charts, photographs, or even videos and code snippets to illustrate your content.

TEXT OPENING SEQUENCE WITH CSS ANIMATIONS

Today I want to show you how to create a fun little typography effect with CSS animations and text shadows. Maybe you know those eerie opening sequences of movie trailers where some text is being faded in on a dark background. After seeing Introducting Briefs (which is not a terror movie trailer but a preview for an interesting app) I got inspired for recreating the effect using CSS.

SIMPLE YOUTUBE MENU EFFECT

Today we’ll show you how to recreate the little menu effect that you can see in the left side-menu on YouTube when watching a video (where it says “Guide”). The menu is made of a little menu icon, a label and a list of menu items that appears when the label or menu icon is clicked. Once it’s clicked the menu icon slides to the right and the label moves up while the list items fade in sequentially. We’ll add some more style and effects to it in order to make it a bit more interesting.
So, let’s do it!

THE MARKUP
For the HTML we will use a nav element and inside we’ll add a div that will contain the menu icon and the label. We’ll use an unordered list for the menu items:

Each menu item will have a little icon, so we’ll give them all different classes for that. The icons that we’ll be using are from IcoMoon and we’ve created a custom icon set with their brilliant app.
Let’s take a look at the CSS.
DEMO

SOURCE

SLIDE AND PUSH MENUS

A set of fixed menus that will slide out from any of the edges of the page. The two menus that slide out from the left and right side can also be used in combination with the body moving to the left or right side, respectively, hence being “pushed”. There are examples of how to trigger the opening and closing of the menus and some example media queries.

DEMO

SOURCES

HOW TO CREATE A SIMPLE MULTI-ITEM SLIDER

For today’s tutorial we want to show you how to create a simple item slider with CSS animations and some jQuery. The idea was inspired by the Aplle product slider where several little items fly in with a bouncing animation

HEXAFLIP: A FLEXIBLE 3D CUBE PLUGIN

Today I’d like to share my process for creating a flexible JavaScript UI plugin I’ve dubbed HexaFlip.

Lately I’ve taken to building simple experimental UI plugins that manipulate elements with a combination of JavaScript and modern CSS techniques (e.g. oriDomi and Maskew). As Codrops is known for featuring some progressive techniques in browser-based UI design, HexaFlip should fit in nicely.

I originally developed a simpler version of HexaFlip for an iPhone app I built called ChainCal where it served as a time-picker interface for setting alarms. Most mobile time-picker widgets are fashioned after a dial, but I reasoned that rotating cubes would serve for a more unique and memorable experience. As we all know, a cube has six (i.e. “hexa”) faces, but when rotating it around a single axis, we only have four to work with (front, top, back, and bottom). Thus if we built a cube interface using CSS alone, our interface would be limited to four options per choice. HexaFlip solves this issue and playfully challenges the user’s expectations by allowing the cube to cycle over a list of any length.

Demo

Source Code