Monday, April 30, 2012

Week 4

The basic user interface of the application has been created. Following are some screen shots up to this point:

Main Screen
From main screen the user can choose to create a new card or to review the whole set of flash cards which they have been created.

History
This tab provides a quick list of the recent flash cards which the user has just created. They can scroll up and down the list to quickly pick and see a flash card.

Next week deliverable: continue working on the UI and test SQLite DB.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Week 3 Thoughts

I have thought about our application for the past few days. I have a few thoughts about how we will implement it. First let me talk about what will be going on basically in our app. Imagine it this way:

- There will be a screen that has a list of the cards that the user has made (we call each screen an activity, each activity is corresponding with a view)
- On the first screen there will be a button called ADD. onClick that button, they should be able create a new card.
- On the front of the card, they can input some text. The other side, the back of the card, they can add a picture or a sound, even an video.
- On the front of the card: flip button, delete card button
- On the back of the card: add video, add picture, add sound

The idea about using the phone's camera to take a picture or a video and insert directly to a card is quite ambitious. To be honest. I think that we need more time to implement that ideas that just 7 more weeks. Therefore, I think we should keep the app simple as this: "We are making an app that the user can create a flashcard which they can use their media files to add to it."

They won't use the camera to take the picture or something, but we will make a button that they can access to their SD cards and choose whatever they want. And we use that to insert to the back of the card.

I myself found that this app utilizes a simply idea yet has a big potential, which we can discuss later if you guys to collaborate to work on something fun. I hope you guys get my ideas.

Basically that is it.

For our REAL jobs, here are what we need:

+ Create a user interface (obviously)
+ Make a SQL database that has these fields: (I am figuring out how to create this, I don't know how to at this point)
  • dbFrontText
  • dbBackText
  • dbImage
  • dbVideo
  • dbSound
I think a database that stores not only text but rich media content is a bit more complex.
+ Write classes that handle all these stuff. Get input information from the user and put into the database. Get information from the database and show to the list, and when they choose their flashcards from the list we have to show it to them.

Actually even handling only the ListView thing to display the list of the card is complicated enough.

There is a quite interesting class that I think we can use for both for the back and the front of the card. It is the WEBVIEW class. Google it, you guys will see what I meant. Basically, we can display the content in html markup code.

OK. Please reply with any thought so we are all clear before working on this. 
 
Vu

Friday, April 13, 2012

Before Week 3 Lab Tasks

By Wednesday:
  • Should have the draft of the proposal
    • Vu:
      • Problem Overview
      • Design Constraints
    • Richa:
      • Pre-Existing Solutions
      • Design Goal
    • Khong:
      • Project Deliverable
      • Project Schedule
By Friday:
  • Everyone should watch a series of Android application development tutorials. Should know how to write a simple application on Android at least like Hello, World! 
Vu:
+ Make a mock user interface
+ Scope? of the project

Khong:
+ Android code hosting
+ Read about  Android API for using camera to take pictures and videos and use the results for the flashcards

Richa:
+ Research some other flashcard applications already in the market

Android Tutorials

I think we should start watching some tutorials for Android development as soon as possible to get a sense of how to make an "real app."

http://thenewboston.org is a pretty good site, including tutorials in many topics. There are 200, short 5-6 minute videos for Android. I watched and found them really helpful for beginners. It is unlike Google's documentation, which is somewhat overwhelming. You guys can find Android tutorials at http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=6.

But I think the Google website (http://developer.android.com/index.html) is great too. It's thorough and we can look for information about its standard API and stuff.

Here is from thenewboston:
Android Application Development Tutorial - 1 - Download and Install the Java JDK

There are tons of free tutorials online, you guys can choose whatever preferred. Please let me know or comment below with any suggestion.

Thanks,
Vu