Moving Forwards

As per last time apologies for the lack of posts.  What with the day job, family and having to actually do some Android Programming to write a blog about it - things can get a bit hectic.

In my last post the excuse for the lack of posts was that I had been increasing my presence on the Android Market.  I had done this by creating Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division only variants of my Maths Test app which asks random Maths questions.  In addition to believing that it would be beneficial to increase my presence on the Android Market, I also believed there would be demand for these variants of the apps because you may want to start a child going with addition before moving on to subtraction, multiplication and division.  There was next to no new learning of Android concepts in creating these variants of the Maths Test app, thus the lack of posts because I had learnt nothing new to tell you about.

This time the excuse for lack of posts is that I have been learning new Android concepts.  I have done this by increasing the functionality of the original Maths Test app.  The functionality has actually been increased to a level where the four variants I had created are now obsolete and have been removed from the Android Market.  The latest version of Maths Test on the Android Market boasts the following functionality.

• Duration of the game is now user specified (Guess what I used to get bored playing the game for 3 minutes as well).
• The user can now choose from the following game types (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division and Random).  This is what has made the variants of Maths Test obsolete and prompted me to remove them from the Android Market.
• The user can now choose from 5 different levels ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard.
• A new scoring system has been introduced and user feedback has been improved.  The feedback now tells you how many questions you got correct, how many you got wrong and a score calculated using the following formula: 

(Correct Answers - Wrong Answers) * (60/Game Duration in Seconds)

In improving the functionality of the Android App I have learnt some new Android concepts and will be telling you about these in forthcoming posts.  The new concepts I have learned include the following:

• Displaying menu options when the user presses the menu button on their phone
• Disabling menu options when they are not applicable
• Creating custom dialogs to get user input
• Displaying dialogs and alerts to the user

For now go and search 'Sundev Pabla' on the Android Market.  Download the latest version of Maths Test and spend some time playing with the app.  This way you will have a better idea of what I am talking about in subsequent posts.  Enjoy playing Maths Test.  As always if you have any questions, advice or want a chat about Android then please get in touch.