Android.

For some time now this word had been cropping up in my discussions with people. But I never got around start learning about it. So when at office I saw an opportunity, I tried to peep into the Android app development space.
I had a simple task at hand, to create the sharing feature for an Android app. So I googled for code snippets to achieve this. Here I present my quick consolidation of the google results based approach that I tried. There are in general two ways to do it:

• Either download API’s for Twitter, MySpace and Facebook and add dozens of lines in your code to create this feature.(will write soon about this)
• OR just load the twitter,myspace and facebook sharing link in an android browser.

I am sharing the browser method or as somebody said “the web way” of doing stuff.

Just load these URLs to your android browser on button click:
Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/home?status=http://(name of your website:www.xyz.com;add this without quotes)
MySpace:  http://www.myspace.com/Modules/PostTo/Pages/?c=(name of your website:www.xyz.com;add this without quotes)
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http//(name of your website:www.xyz.com;add this without quotes)

In the following code snippet,  I am sharing a link “www.inc.com” on button click:
//Post message to Facebook where facebook is a button
facebook.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener(){
@Override
public void onClick(View v) {
Intent browse = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW ,
Uri.parse("http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inc.com%2f"
) );
startActivity( browse );
}
});

//Post the message to Twitter where twitter is a button
twitter.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener(){
@Override
public void onClick(View v) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Intent browse = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW ,
Uri.parse("http://www.twitter.com/home?status=http://www.inc.com" ) );
startActivity( browse );
}
});

// Post the message to Myspace where myspace is a button
myspace.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener(){
@Override
public void onClick(View v) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
String test= "www.inc.com";
Intent browse = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW ,
Uri.parse("http://www.myspace.com/Modules/PostTo/Pages/?c="+test.toString()
) );
startActivity( browse );
}

Hope this get you started as well on your Android learning journey as it has got me started.

Email from Google

Also when opening Facebook from IE7 browser I got a box on the top suggesting me to upgrade to IE8. Earlier last year similar phase out warnings had started to appear on YouTube as well.

I am sure seeing this would have brought smiles to the faces of  many web developers, as writing JavaScript code to work on IE6 is one of the most painful things in front end web development. So many things just don’t work.

This move by Google and Facebook is very welcome. It will definitely help in  the growth of HTML 5 and advanced JavaScripting.

Some organization have long been running on IE6 and upgrading the browser is a big task for their IT departments. No wonder IE6 still commands as much as 20% of the browser market. It is only such actions on part of major websites, that can shake the organizations to make the shift.

One of the other reasons for phasing out IE6 is its security vulnerability. As this Zdnet blog points out, earlier last month Microsoft had admitted that the attack from China on Google and some other US companies had exploited a hole in IE6, which was also present in IE7 and IE8.