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Developing for Android

When the Android SDK was first released, I didn’t pay much attention to it. But then came time for me to to choose my final year project for Uni. My original choice was snagged by someone else, so I had to make a quick decision, the deadline for choosing the project was the next day.

I had been thinking, before Uni started again, about how it would be a good idea for me to write my own apps for Android, after all, the apps could be written in Java which was something I knew. The app I had in mind was an IRC client for the phone. (Yes, I am an IRC addict :/).

So, sitting in the Uni computer room, I decided I would make an IRC app for Android as a final year project.


I got started straight away, the SDK and the Android system was completely new to me, I’d never even bothered to look up anything about it. The initial weeks were very tough, I didn’t understand anything and was confused as hell even after reading the docs.

But now, I’m making good progress D The app is coming along nicely; the toughest part is creating a parser, which is taking longer then expected. But my GUI and main interaction screen seem to working pretty well so far. I had to make a few design changes though, the idea to use tabs for channels just didn’t work out, mainly before working with dynamic content and tabs was cumbersome.

Anyway, I managed to work around that problem and load of others, so wish me luck to making a usable app \o/

P.S, leave a comment telling me what type of things you would expect to find in an IRC app for a phone…..

14 Responses to “Developing for Android” comments

  1. I can’t wait to see the app when it’s ready!

    Mark said this on December 1st, 2008 at 5:01 am Permalink

  1. i would love it to stay connected while doing other things on my G1 phone!, cant wait till its ready! wub

    Nena Buena said this on December 4th, 2008 at 8:41 pm Permalink

  1. Sounds great, would love for it to have a simple gui for displaying people in the channel. Instead of relying on /who or displaying a constant list, a button on the interface that brought up the list would suffice well

    Induane said this on December 5th, 2008 at 7:06 pm Permalink

  1. WANT WANT WANT.

    Features? status bar notifications of private messages. Not essential whatsoever tho.

    danny c said this on December 8th, 2008 at 8:02 am Permalink

  1. I’ve just downloaded it on my G1 and I love it! No errors, no problems, stays connected in background all I ever wanted on my phone! If I could only see users list connected to channel and that’s all! wub

    Nena Buena said this on January 5th, 2009 at 2:54 pm Permalink

  1. If I could only see users list connected to channel and that’s all!

    You didn’t read the quick guide did you ( Press the Search button to bring up the user list. There is a known bug which crashes the app if the channel has an uppercase letter, it’s been fixed for the next release.

    Al said this on January 5th, 2009 at 2:57 pm Permalink

  1. reading channel I had keyboard closed blush
    Of course I didnt read, sorry angel I wanted to run it as soon as possible kissing

    Nena Buena said this on January 6th, 2009 at 2:58 am Permalink

  1. Hej! Great app, but how can I start a query? I tried a few commands but didn’t find the right one… if somebody else starts query it works fine. Pls help me sad

    sleepyhead said this on February 8th, 2009 at 10:37 pm Permalink

  1. Hej! Great app, but how can I start a query? I tried a few commands but didn’t find the right one… if somebody else starts query it works fine. Pls help me sad

    /msg nickname message will do the trick, see
    http://androidirc.net/doc/commands.html#msg

    Al said this on February 8th, 2009 at 10:41 pm Permalink

  1. thx. I just didn’t know, that there’s only a new window on reply. Great support cheerful
    Greetz from austria and keep up the good work :>

    sleepyhead said this on February 8th, 2009 at 11:19 pm Permalink

  1. actually, i just found a bug -do you want these reporting here, or…?

    If I join #android and then type `/names` (which I believe will give me a list of people in the channel) I get a blank screen and a crash on the android and in the IRC channel my quit message is “(SendQ exceeded)”. 322 users at current, but I wouldn’t have thought this would cause it to die.

    -nice app all the same though :-D

    MidnighToker said this on March 23rd, 2009 at 4:13 am Permalink

  1. actually, i just found a bug -do you want these reporting here, or…?

    If I join #android and then type `/names` (which I believe will give me a list of people in the channel) I get a blank screen and a crash on the android and in the IRC channel my quit message is “(SendQ exceeded)”. 322 users at current, but I wouldn’t have thought this would cause it to die.

    -nice app all the same though :-D

    Hi, thanks for the bug report. It seems I didn’t read the RFC spec fully for the NAMES command. Just sending NAMES without a channel sends the user list for all visible channels. A bug in the code means it doesn’t check for a string with >= 1 letters and causes a crash. This will be fixed for the next release but in the mean time, use /names #channel or use the search button to bring up the user list.

    Al said this on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm Permalink

  1. Does it have tab nick completion?

    Nick said this on March 25th, 2009 at 9:52 am Permalink

  1. Does it have tab nick completion?

    It doesn’t support it in the normal nick + tab way but you can type in a bit of the nickname, press search and it will automatically search in the user list for matches. Pressing back will save the nickname selection and take you back to the main screen where you can carry on typing.

    Al said this on March 25th, 2009 at 2:31 pm Permalink

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