You still do not write Android applications in Java Oracle, is not it? Google tut-tuts to dev conf • The Register

Google I / O Google released Android Q beta 3 for developers this week, but the most important message is that the company wants developers to write their Android applications in Kotlin rather than in Java or C ++.

Already more than half of the professional chocolate developers are using Kotlin and Google is keen to see this trend continue. At the IO conference in California, Google's software engineer Chet Haase invited the public to write new projects in Kotlin because there was less typing, testing and of maintenance.

(And, we imagine some Googlers think, less Oracle.)

"Android is becoming more and more Kotlin first," Haase said, although he admitted that the chocolate maker was not giving up the other supported languages ​​for Android development at the moment.

Android Q beta 3 includes various privacy and security enhancements, such as TLS 1.3 support. It also provides the BiometricPrompt authentication framework at the system level and adds support for passive authentication (eg via face).

There are storage access controls, called Scoped Storage, to limit access to application data. Beta 3 blocks the launch of applications in the background, which is convenient from a security point of view, and the mobile operating system also transmits default random MAC addresses.

There is also a new flag of authorization, READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE, which must be configured to access fixed identifiers such as IMEI and the serial number of the device. And various telephony applications, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have been restricted in the absence of ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION authorization.

Hasse took the opportunity to announce CameraX, an Android library designed to make camera development more consistent across all Android devices. CameraX is an alpha version of Jetpack, a collection of libraries and development tools for Android. It is joined by other alpha modules, including Benchmark, LiveData, Security, SavedState for ViewModel and ViewPager2.

Hasse also talked about a future Kotlin UI library called Jetpack Compose.

Meanwhile, Android App Studio has reached version 3.5 in beta.

Google has also announced Project Mainline, a way to update specific operating system components via Google Play rather than OTA updates from the device manufacturer. It is a way to more effectively obtain important updates.

Avenue Q advance

In addition, Android Q offers many other improvements, including improved accessibility, such as dynamic caption – real-time transcription of media on the phone.

Chrome Canary, the experimental version of Google Chrome for Google developers, got help from lazy loading, which allows the browser to load images as needed rather than all at the same time. It also now includes the beginnings of a plan to change the way cookies are processed. Another technological Web innovation that has caught the eye is Portals, a recent specification for inter-site navigation management. They are similar to iframes but with navigation support. The developers were also invited to try the Web Perception Toolkit, which makes the camera frame objects potentially linked.

There will soon be an SDK to interact with smart home devices without the cloud. Called Local Home SDK, it can run the code locally for smart devices instead of downloading it to a remote server. This would seem like a good way to write assistant apps that would never be approved by Google for a mainstream release, but that could be fun to run privately.

Google's Flutter, a framework for creating Android and iOS cross-platform applications in Dart, has evolved to the point of creating Web applications. Google released Tuesday a technical preview version of Flutter for the Web, with the main Flutter code changing to version 1.5. Flutter has also incorporated the basics of its experimental workstation embed code to allow developers to build Flutter applications running on Linux, MacOS, and Windows.

Google also sees Flutter as an appropriate framework for developing embedded devices. The company points out that some of the user interface elements of its Nest Hub (formerly Google Home Hub) were built with Flutter.

On the hardware side, Google has put its Home products under the Nest brand and announced the end of its Works with Nest development program, which will be closed on August 31, 2019. Software developers who have explored product integrations through Works with Nest APIs do not seem to be too happy. In addition to branding, Google is encouraging Nest customers to convert their Nest accounts to Google Accounts.

According to Google, ChromeOS, present on 21% of US laptops sold in the fourth quarter of 2018, learned new tips. Its file manager can now move files between ChromeOS, Google Drive, Android and Linux, and ChromeOS can now run a web server from the Linux container while debugging on the same computer, thanks to better support for redirection of ports. And set up Android Studio, which once required terminal commands, can now be done in two clicks for download and installation. ®

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