Before I talk about my latest progress I want to reiterate that this is just a work in progress / prototype so nothing shown in the screenshots will be final. I havent spent too much time on the UIs themselves, but have been focusing on the underlying UI code (presenters / data access / adapters / etc). I encourage people to give feedback, however just because something is not being shown, does not mean I am getting rid of it.
Recently, google announced a bunch of new architecture libraries https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/index.html and since I was in the middle of some major rework, I decided to go ahead and start adapting GMMP to use these new libs.
Google also announced official support for Kotlin in Android Studio. I have only played around with it a little but from everything I have read it looks amazing and I do have plans to convert some of GMMP over to it. Since its compatible with the JVM I can mix and match both kotlin and java in the same project.
Anyway for the last 2 weeks I have been working on the album view (its a standalone since I have not done anything with drawer navigation or the viewpager / tab navigation yet). For now I have created 4 different modes for the albums list.
There are also nice transitions in between each view mode (and changing the number of grid columns).
I also made the metadata shown in each grid/list item configurable in the same way as now playing. There will however be less options for the variables depending on the view (IE albums view would only give you access to the artist/album/year and not trackname variable. stuff like that). I also added another small addition to the markup language used for the metadata lines and that is the ability to set the color.. in a very limited way. <color=secondary> or <color=primary> can be added to each metadata line. Primary is the whiter color and secondary is the grayer one. For a light theme these colors would be different. Also, each view mode will have its own metadata lines. In the images above you will see that the list views are aligned left, but the grid views the text is aligned center.
I made the buttons at the bottom configurable. Besides play/pause you will be able to configure them to show other actions and also choose the icon side (small/medium/large). In the image above I adjusted the icon sizes a bit: Shuffle/repeat are small, Next/Prev are medium, and Play/Pause is Large
Finally here is a gif if the play/pause animation: https://media.giphy.com/media/1pvYO3Fs7nPpK/giphy.gif
Recently, google announced a bunch of new architecture libraries https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/index.html and since I was in the middle of some major rework, I decided to go ahead and start adapting GMMP to use these new libs.
- Room is going to greatly simplify access GMMP's database.
- LiveData combined with Room makes it super simple for my UI to get access to the data and get notified on changes to the database
- ViewModel allows me to maintain UI state between orientation changes
- Lifecycle gives my presenters access to the fragment/activity lifecycle without being tightly coupled to the fragment/activity
Google also announced official support for Kotlin in Android Studio. I have only played around with it a little but from everything I have read it looks amazing and I do have plans to convert some of GMMP over to it. Since its compatible with the JVM I can mix and match both kotlin and java in the same project.
Anyway for the last 2 weeks I have been working on the album view (its a standalone since I have not done anything with drawer navigation or the viewpager / tab navigation yet). For now I have created 4 different modes for the albums list.
List
Card List
Grid
Card Grid
There are also nice transitions in between each view mode (and changing the number of grid columns).
I also made the metadata shown in each grid/list item configurable in the same way as now playing. There will however be less options for the variables depending on the view (IE albums view would only give you access to the artist/album/year and not trackname variable. stuff like that). I also added another small addition to the markup language used for the metadata lines and that is the ability to set the color.. in a very limited way. <color=secondary> or <color=primary> can be added to each metadata line. Primary is the whiter color and secondary is the grayer one. For a light theme these colors would be different. Also, each view mode will have its own metadata lines. In the images above you will see that the list views are aligned left, but the grid views the text is aligned center.
Now Playing
There are 2 minor changes to now playing.
I made the buttons at the bottom configurable. Besides play/pause you will be able to configure them to show other actions and also choose the icon side (small/medium/large). In the image above I adjusted the icon sizes a bit: Shuffle/repeat are small, Next/Prev are medium, and Play/Pause is Large
Finally here is a gif if the play/pause animation: https://media.giphy.com/media/1pvYO3Fs7nPpK/giphy.gif
