[Android Bootcamp] Tip Calculator 2 of 2 - "What's The Tip?".

[medha]

@nesquena - Here's version 2 of 2!

I made two versions of the tip calculator. One with a Seek Bar to let users set a custom tip, and another more conventional one which I feel is more easy to use.

If it's not too much trouble, it'll be great if you can check out both my projects and give me feedback on which style is more intuitive and works better. Thanks!

I've tagged you on my first project as well.
-Medha

[nesquena]

Medha - 👍 nice work. A few notes after checking out the code:

• Like your use of styles and themes to spruce up the look and feel! (and custom font)
• In the final XML, the naming (id) of your view elements are very unsemantic i.e editText1 you should name your views more helpfully (i.e etBillAmount) (I noticed you have two unused XML files and in some of them you named the views)
• Nice touch with using onSaveInstanceState
• Good defensive error handling for invalid inputs
• Attaching the buttons with click handlers in the approach you took requires a lot of code. See the feedback guide for a way to clean up (i.e attach method to click in the XML)

One of the most important part of these projects is that you add additional features and tweak the UI / UX because that will provide many more learning opportunities. You've clearly figured that out and I'm glad you have started that early. I would encourage you to push the projects each week, continue adding your own UI elements and experimenting with optional features that improve the user experience.

We have provided a detailed Project 1 Feedback Guide here which covers the most common points we see for this project. Read through the feedback guide point-by-point to determine other ways you could improve your submission. You should consider going back and implementing applicable feedback as well. Keep in mind that one of the most important parts of Android development is learning the correct patterns and conventions.

Hopefully this has given you a first sense of the RelativeLayout which is a very powerful layout system, probably one of the best responsive-first layout systems available across web and mobile platforms. The next assignment will build on top of the first concepts introduced here and will also introduce networking, api use, handling remote images and navigating between activities.

If you have any particular questions about the assignment in general or on any of the feedback, feel free to reply here or post on the discussion forum on Canvas.

[medha]

Yay thanks for reviewing both! And thanks for your feedback.
I really should have done a final cleanup, and given more sensible names to the views. I did it in one of the layout files as you noticed, but then I tried another layout and swapped it out.

A quick quesiton - I had to set android:minSdkVersion to 16 in order to use the custom Roboto font. I was wondering what this means for sdk versions below 16. Will they see a replacement font or will it not work at all? Is there a best practice for using custom fonts?

[nesquena]

I had to set android:minSdkVersion to 16 in order to use the custom Roboto font. I was wondering what this means for sdk versions below 16.

When android:minSdkVersion that means that users with phones beneath that version won't even be able to install the app. Install is disabled when they visit the play store on their phone.

Is there a best practice for using custom fonts?

This approach is pretty common and works across all version > API 11