Disable Dashboard on Start Up in Spring Tool Suite

If you are a new user to the Eclipse based IDE Spring Tool Suite (STS). If like me, you are getting annoyed when the Dashboard opens up every time the application is started, this is how you can disable it.

After some research and some searching through the preferences, I finally found out how to get it done on the latest version of STS (3.4.0 the one I am using now). Apparently they moved this around from previous versions.

In the STS application, navigate to "Window -> Preferences", and start typing "Dash" inside the text box located at the top left. Click on the "Dashboard" item and uncheck the "Show DashBoard On Startup" item on the right. Click "Apply" and "OK".

You can look at the above image to see how the preference screen for this will look like. Once done, the DashBoard should be gone for ever, unless you want it back in which case you can bring it back by checking the same option in the Preference.

Design evolution of Random Contact app

Background
Just this week I published an app on Google Play Store called Random Contact. It all started when I was learning the Android Contacts API. I wanted to make an app myself that made use of the Contacts API so that I could learn and see it working in a real environment. Especially as I had a Google Nexus S, it was even more an incentive to develop and experiment my own apps and see them running on my phone.

Random Contact

So that was the reason for developing this app. There seemed no point in making another contacts app as the stock(default) one was very good and many third party apps available. So I thought of making an app that shows a random contact details. It has a surprise element to it.

Warning: This app is not meant to be a replacement for your Contacts / Dialer app. This is a fun app with no real use. The main reason this app is considered as part of "Useless Apps" internally.

The development started with an old version of Android API (2.2 to be precise), so I wasn't keeping in mind the latest design guidelines and the result was an ugly looking app with very little user experience

Redesign and Rewrite
After the Holo design came out solid Android Design guidelines became the De-facto standard, I went about researching on how to create a better User experience (UX) keeping in mind that this app has no special value to a user.

After going through brainstorming and multiple drawings on paper, came up with the new design. And in keeping with the time, rewrote most of the code against Android 4.3 APIs and is now available on the Play Store. Along the way some optimizations and new features were added.

Few people might have seen the original app, so below you can find a screen shot of initial screen, design on paper and the present day app.

Left : First version, Middle : redesign on paper, Right : Completely redesigned UI

Apps Library
I will touch on this in a future post, but one of the side effects of development this app was an Android library app that I created which makes use of mostly my research and studies. This will be an ever growing library which is open sourced and publicly available on GitHub. Any new Android projects can make use of this library to achieve similar functionality.

Try out the app
So if you are still interested in checking out this app, follow the link below to get it from the Play Store.

RandomContact - New App Announcement

After being in an internal Proof of Concept project, one more Android app will soon be seen by the external world. I was learning to work with the ContactsContacts API. This API is a contract between the Contacts provider and applications.

Most of the code related to accessing the API is done as part of a library project called aeappslibrary, the code for which is open source and already available in GitHub. This library can be reused by other projects to work with the API. There have been hours spent on studying the API while developing this library. MessageCounter is an application that already utilizes this library.

It was near the end of 2012 that I started learning about the Android's ContactContract API. In order to learn the various parts of the API, I decided to create an Android App. That turned out to be a simple app called Random Contact. The UI was very basic and not very attractive - the sole reason it has lived its life as an internal app.

The Random Contact application shows you a Contact randomly picked from your contacts list. It will list all the contact numbers and easily allow you to call or text them. Other details that we can get using the API are the times that person has been contacted and the last date of contact. While you may think these features as boring, we think there could be fun uses.

When can you see the app live? Work on version 2, a completely redesigned version, is on steroids for the past few days. As much as the challenges are exciting, I shall provide here, for the first time, an internal road map for any app's development. A Beta release on Google Play is not too distant as of now.

The source code for this app is expected to be released under Apache Licence Version 2.0 on GitHub.

With the supported features as explained earlier, I would appreciate to see some rough drawings on how you expect the UX for the app.

Age of Logo Redesign

The past few months have seen some slight to major redesigns of some major websites. The fact that these have come months apart maybe a coincidence.

Google Logo

The new Google design including logo was mentioned in this post earlier. Above you can see the old logo on the left with the updated flat style logo to its right. The change was from a logo with 3D look with shadow to plain and flat look.

Yahoo Logo

It all started when Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer announced a "30 days of Change", with a new logo for 30 days. At the end of which Yahoo! released their new logo - the same Yahoo and an exclamation mark as shown above. It can easily be noted that the logo has slimmed down and they have used a sans serif font instead. The old logo looked funky, but the new one sporting a darker purple has an elegant look. You can also see it has a slight 3D look and feel to it.

Bing Logo

Bing - Microsoft's answer to Google was the last to do the overhaul. But the change to Bing is more vivid. They have a new logo, which looks like Google Drive's. Then the font has been simplified to follow the new Microsoft logo. And at last it is all golden color now from a blue shade.

In a space of few months, some major websites have tinkered with their logos. What do you think of these changes?

Tips on Improving Productivity with Eclipse

For many tasks Eclipse IDE provides a key board shortcut of some type. When working with medium to large projects, I find using keyboard shortcuts to be a significant time saver. They let me find or get things done very fast. Compared to using a menu option or using the mouse, key board shortcuts can improve one's productivity.

ShortCut	What it Does
F3	Open Declaration
CTRL + SPACE	Auto Complete
CTRL + D	Delete current Line
CTRL + G	Search for declaration in Workspace (after highligting a word)
CTRL + L	Jump to Line Number
CTRL + O	Quick Code Outline/ Structure
CTRL + T	Open Heirarchy
CTRL + E	Swicth Editor
CTRL + Q	Last Edit Location
CTRL + SHIFT + R	Open Resource
CTRL + SHIFT + I	Inspect (Evaluate an expression while in debug mode)
CTRL + SHIFT + P	Find matching brace
CTRL + SHIFT + L	Key Assist

Bonus Tip
Double clicking to the immediate right of an opening brace selects all the code between two braces.

Feel free to add any more shortcuts in the comments.