Nounours for Android

What is this?

This app includes a series of images of a teddy bear. By dragging his "features" (paws, ears, etc), the user changes the image, thereby moving the bear around. Some features include:

• list of preset animations: each animation is a sequence of some of the bundled images, and may be accompanied by audio.
• gesture detection: if a fling gesture is detected, this triggers an animation
• orientation detection: when the device is tilted at certain angles, this triggers the display of certain images. The bear effectively "looks" in the direction the device is tilted.
• themes: each theme is a set of images, animations, sounds, and gesture and orientation configuration. Only the default theme resources are included in the app. The list of themes is also included in the app, but the other theme resources (images, audio files, configuration files) are hosted on an external server and downloaded when the user first selects a given theme from the settings screen.

History

I created this app in 2009 as a way to introduce myself to Android development. At the time, it was simpler for me to first develop a prototype app using Java Swing. I extracted the non-platform-specific code (basically everything but UI logic) from the prototype app into a library, libnounours (https://github.com/caarmen/libnounours), which I then included in this Android app.

The project was closed-source until 2015, when I decided to publish it on GitHub. The legacy code from 2009 was not too clean, as I was just discovering Android development at the time: The project had unusual naming conventions, unusual logging, messy hairs added to the code as I tried to resolve memory issues when loading bitmaps...

Trivia

This app was selected as one of 10 "Prix du Public" finalists in the "SFR Jeunes Talents Développeurs" competition in Paris on May 13, 2009. http://www.pointgphone.com/resultats-concours-android-sfr-jeunes-talents-developpeurs-2636/

Modernization

I have tried to clean up the project a bit. I've:

• moved the build system from ant to gradle.
• fixed some bugs.
• removed the feature to check for new themes on the server: in the six years since this app was published on the Play Store, I have not released any new themes on the server. I've decided, if I ever do decide to make new themes, I will just publish a new version of the app.
• updated the code to use more standard naming conventions and logging methods.
• moved settings out of custom menus and dialogs into a PreferenceActivity.
• added native action bar support for API level 11+.
• changed the license from no license (all rights reserved) to GPLv3.
• added watch faces for Android Wear compatible devices.

Nevertheless, the original 2009 design and implementation of the project is still visible, and this project is not the first one I would show off to prospective employers or clients :)

Legacy support

Android development was pretty new itself at the time this app was created: Android 1.5 Cupcake (API level 3) was released while this app was being developed. Mostly for nostalgic reasons, this app still supports API level 3. As a result, this project has a few unusual attributes compared to a typical modern Android project:

• A compat package exists, with classes such as Api8Helper. Prior to Android 2.0 Eclair, app code calling framework methods at higher API levels could not be loaded, even if proper checks on Build.VERSION ensured it would never be executed. The result would be a AndroidRuntime: java.lang.VerifyError: com.mycompany.MyClass. To prevent this, code for higher API levels must be completely isolated into separate classes.
• The check for the API level is done on the String Build.VERSION.SDK instead of the int Build.VERSION.SDK_INT.
• No support library is included, for the handheld app.