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CHET HAASE: Hi, welcome back to "Now in Android."
This is episode number 23.
First of all, Android 11 just hit Beta 3.
This is the final beta, and there's actually not much
going on in Beta 3.
It's mostly about bug fixes and performance improvements,
because if you'll remember, Beta 2 was the platform stability
milestone, which means we're not changing behavior,
we're not changing APIs, everything is stable
in the build.
We're basically trying to get ready for the final release.
So Beta 3, final beta release, hopefully the release candidate
for the final build, which should
be coming up real soon now.
So check out Android 11 Beta 3 on the preview site.
You can also register to get the beta downloaded
onto your device if you have a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4, or even
upcoming, maybe a 4a.
So go ahead and register for that, get the system image,
play around with it, and certainly check out your app
and make sure you're ready to go.
11 Weeks of Android, ongoing.
We are in week 10.
That means that next week is the last week
of 11 Weeks of Android.
So exciting.
So lots of things have happened there in the last few weeks
since the last "Now in Android."
Week 7 focused on Android Studio tool stuff.
There were videos and articles on design tools,
a lot of stuff on the build system and performance
improvements for the build, how to make your builds faster,
as well as performance profiling for your application.
Also the Motion Editor went stable in Android Studio 4.0
that week.
So if you haven't checked out the Motion
Editor or MotionLayout in general,
maybe it's time to do that.
You can find out all the links to all
of the content that went live that week
in the wrap-up blog that was posted at the end of that week.
There's also a pathway that lists a lot of the content
that you can tune into one by one
to work through the content that was posted.
And there's a playlist for all the videos
that went live that week with that content.
Week 8 was all about distribution,
getting your app out there to your users.
There were videos on using the new Google Play Console beta.
There was also information about Play Billing Library 3
and information about Android App Bundles.
So let me pause on that.
There's a really important development
in App Bundles, which is that in the second half of 2021,
all new apps published on the Play Store
will need to use Android App Bundles.
It is matured, it is the right thing to do,
and also it's going to be a requirement
for new applications.
No more APK uploads for those new apps.
So you can read more about that change and related changes,
like deprecation of APK expansion files or OBBs,
in the Medium article that is linked in the "Now in Android"
article.
There's a wrap-up blog for that week.
There's also a pathway with all the content that came out
and a playlist for the videos.
Week 9 focused on different form factors that weren't phones.
It turns out there are a lot of those, more all the time.
There were articles and videos on Wear OS, on Android TV,
on Android Auto and Android embedded Automotive OS,
and Android development for Chrome OS, as well.
So again, there's a wrap-up blog with the links
to all the content for all of those different form
factor development things.
And there's a playlist with the videos that were posted.
Finally, week 10, that is this week in which I
am recording and posting this, is all about games and media.
So for starters, Greg Hartrell posted an article
on what's new for game developers.
So kind of a good way to start--
get some links to what's going on there.
And if you want to follow the content as it is being posted
this week, as always, follow the @AndroidDev
handle on Twitter and the hashtag #11weeksofandroid,
and you will see all the content as it gets posted.
There's also a playlist which has been populated
and will continue to be populated through the week.
And there will, of course, be a wrap-up blog
at the end of the week.
Next week, UI, so stay tuned for the final week
of 11 Weeks of Android, the 11th one, all about UI.
Android 11 Meetups continue to happen.
On Monday morning.
I called in, along with Murat Yener, Yacine Rezgui, and Fred
Chung into a meetup in Nairobi.
I've never been to Nairobi.
I still haven't, but it was fun to talk to the community
there, give some presentations, and answer
random Q&A. That was great.
And then tomorrow, Thursday of this week, I'm
calling in again with Fred into Memphis.
These are just examples, lots of Meetups
happening all over the world.
So check out the online Meetup site
to find out what's happening near you online.
Couple of articles that are important to point out.
First of all, Ian Lake posted one on Fragments.
Really in-depth article about a major restructuring
that happened in the Fragment world.
There's a new alpha release for the Android Fragments library,
alpha08, that includes all of this refactoring you
should check out.
First of all, if you are still using Fragments
in the platform, please stop.
So we have not been maintaining that for a while, which
means not only are you beholden to whatever
fixes and functionality are in the specific release
that your user has, but also you're
not getting the latest performance
and functionality fixes and bug fixes
that we're doing along the way.
Instead all of our development efforts
are focused on the unbundled library
that you can use across all of those releases
that you care about.
So if you haven't made that switch,
please make that change now, because these are really
important fixes going forward.
The major change for that alpha release
is, of course, the refactoring.
It refactored, basically, how FragmentManager worked--
made it possible for all kinds of new capabilities
and important state-related fixes.
It also enabled fixing some longstanding issues that
were not fixable otherwise and future improvements that we
hope to work on such as--
I know people have been asking for this--
support for multiple backstacks, and also vast simplification
of the Fragment lifecycle overall.
So check out the 1.3.0 release of the Fragment AndroidX
library, alpha08 or later, and check out the article
for all the details.
Another
Article, Wojtek Kalicinski posted an article
about the new release of 1.4 for Kotlin.
This includes some features, like SAM conversions
for Kotlin Interfaces.
This was limited to interfaces in the Java programming
language before, but now you can declare
that a Kotlin interface should be
included in these capabilities.
You can take advantage of that.
There's something called explicit API mode.
There are compiler performance and functionality improvements.
And also there's a new alpha version of the new Kotlin
and JVM IR backend.
This is a new backend that's actually
required for Jetpack Compose.
So if you're playing around with Jetpack Compose,
you're already going to be using this.
If you're not, you need to opt into it.
There's a command, kotlinOptions.useIR = true,
that you need to put in your Gradle script
for your builds to enable that.
Please check that out, try it out,
and give us feedback if it is not quite working right
for you.
There is another AMA.
So we've had a couple of AMAs for the 11 Weeks in Android
series already, and I've talked about them here on "Now
in Android," but not in a really helpful way,
because by the time the recording was posted,
the AMA had already happened.
So it was really more of a, go check out what happened,
as opposed to, join us for this thing.
But this time, you're in luck.
There's an AMA next week around the final UI
week for 11 Weeks of Android.
So please do join us if you have questions about UI,
about Android Jetpack, about Jetpack Compose,
about other things that have the word Jetpack in them.
There will be a large team of people
to answer your questions.
And then finally, there was another podcast
posted, of course, for Android Developers Backstage.
We posted it-- we.
I posted it just this morning, about an hour ago.
And it is specifically on games.
So it's for the gaming week of 11 Weeks of Android.
Romain talked to Greg Hartrell, product manager
for games on Play and Android, as well as Dan Galpin, who's
the DA for games on Android.
And they talked about recent developments
in game technology for developers,
including the plug-in that we have for Visual Studio.
So it's a plug-in for Android development
using Visual Studio, because we recognize
that that is a really common workflow for game developers.
So we want to meet you where you are.
There is other content out there for tools for specialized game
developers.
There's more episodes in Dan's game series, the "Game Dev
Show" on YouTube.
So check out all that content.
There's more stuff about Android asset delivery and Android App
Bundle that they talk about on the podcast as well.
As usual, all of the links to all
of the stuff that I mentioned today
are available in the article for "Now in Android" number 23.
And if you like the video, go ahead and like and share,
and subscribe to the Android Developers channel on YouTube.
Thanks.