@nikolaevra

Blog for programming

[nikolaevra]

Android Snackbar example

http://www.androidhive.info/2015/09/android-material-design-snackbar-example/

Just copy-paste, this is pretty cool

[nikolaevra]

Generating icons

If you want to build an Android Icon or an ImageButton, use this tool. https://romannurik.github.io/AndroidAssetStudio/icons-launcher.html

[nikolaevra]

Learning Vim

I was very resistant to learning Vim for quite some time, but after reading this post, I feel like it makes sense to invest the time into learning it. 

In addition, I’m currently in the process of learning PHP, so I was also naturally interested in PHP dev using Vim. I found this link that explains it all.

[nikolaevra]

Why Snap Inc. should partner with Polaroid

Partnerships between companies can do great things, they can act as a time travel device to take over markets and create amazing products. For example, remember how Fitbit used to be the leader of fitness wearables? Well, Apple took them down in an instance when they announced their partnership with Nike and released a sports version of their Apple Watch. 

So why should Snap Inc. partner with Polaroid?

It’s a similar idea; Snap has already gotten into the hardware market with their Spectacles, but obviously they don’t have the manufacturing power to make that product mainstream and they will need a lot of resources to accomplish that. Now, consider this product, Polaroid just released at CES 2017. To begin with, the whole camera is already resembling Snapchat's style, the way they use the glossy finish, the vibrant colors, and perfectly round corners and buttons. Imagine that same camera, with all the similar specs, but where you will be promised that everything that you shoot on it, will be backed to your Snapchat memories, which can be later shared with others (Isn't this what Snapchat created memories, so that instead of old albums, you look through your old memories?). In addition, you will get that insane round video (I think this is the best feature of the Spectacles) option. Finally, only with this partnership will Snap be able to truly penetrate the hardware market and establish a strong presence there. 

What about Polaroid?

With Polaroid, it’s very simple. The company has been trying to restore its popularity from the old days and they have not had all that much success to date. They have a somewhat of an action cam, in Polaroid Cube and now they have a legit camera, but it's no different than hundreds of similar cameras that are on the market. The company's biggest issue is that they are trying to print pictures in a digital world, and while it sounds pretty cool, the photo paper is expensive and... What happens if you run out of it, but you still want those pics? Well, that partnership with Snap can solve a lot of problems for Polaroid and really differentiate their products from the rest of the market, it can be the golden mine that will start Polaroid's comeback.

[nikolaevra]

PHP: Setting up the LAMP stack

Found a great tutorial on how to install the LAMP stack: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu

There are a few things that have to be noted since the instruction is somewhat outdated and uses the PHP 5.x, whereas we want to use PHP 7.x, which promises to be much faster and a bunch of new features

[nikolaevra]

Starting to learn PHP

This Winter school term, I got an internship position in a company that is working on online advertisements and SEO, this requires me to learn PHP and the rest of their stack (Linux, Apache/nginx, MySQL and PHP). I’m already familiar with Linux, as I have been using Ubuntu for quite some time now, but I gotta work on my PHP, SQL and Apache and understand how they all fit together. 

My first step was to find a good textbook to learn from, because IMHO, textbooks > online courses. I landed on this book because it promises to teach the latest practices and “The Right Way” to do PHP. Its also free

Textbook link: https://leanpub.com/phptherightway

[nikolaevra]

Android: Creating RecyclerView

Though Android may provide you with some simple and easy to use ListViews, but as soon as you want something more custom, you will have to look at the RecyclerView. With RecyclerView, you can basically have a fully customizable view copied many times as items of the list. 

So to create your own Recycler View, you have to follow the steps in this link: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31572294/the-simplest-way-to-display-strings-with-icons-in-a-recyclerview 

There are 5 steps that you have to follow and after that, you will have a custom RecyclerView. The good thing is that you can customize the View of every item because it's just inside the .xml file.

[nikolaevra]

Learning about Material Desgin

Material design is slowly making it into everything in our world, people use it in mobile apps and lately even websites, however, there is always a big question of how do I start with the Material Design and where can I get the resources for free?

There are a bunch of great websites and guidelines describing best practices for Material Design, but none are as complete and comprehensive as this one:

https://material.io/

[nikolaevra]

View all the Material Design icons and more from the community.

A great resource to material design icons, they are free too

[nikolaevra]

Facebook Messenger Hack

I used to hate using Facebook for messaging, because every time you type in that facebook.com, you are hit with tons of information/ads and trust me, Facebook is doing a great job at customizing posts to keep you hooked in. (At least that’s the case for me) So what I found is this standalone messenger application for Facebook Messenger so that you don’t have to read a single post or see a single ad, but you can still send Facebook messages back and forth. 

Here is the link: https://messengerfordesktop.com/

[nikolaevra]

Do-whatever-you-want high-resolution photos.

How to get high-res images, for next-level UIs

[nikolaevra]

A collection of screenshots encompassing some of the most beautiful looking Android apps. Aiming to...

A great source to see some beautiful Android UIs