Does anyone know what kind of "prototyping tools" they're referencing?
I'm not interested in this position, but I am in the middle of creating my first Android app and I'd love to know what additional tools might be available to enhance my workflow (I'm just using Eclipse and JDebug).
Wow, what a shame. There doesn't seem to be any decent Android UI prototyping tools. Looks like Keynotopia is working on an Android app but it's not out yet.
A bunch of wireframe stuff being called prototyping tools, but nothing for interactivity. We'll update the post, thanks.
Considering the initial release of the android market was 2 years ago, I'm surprised you require the candidate to have built "non-trivial Android applications". Keep in mind that's plural.
I don't think that is an unreasonable requirement. I think they are talking about a decent 2D Android game or productivity aid or a ContentProvider/database-driven/synch app (e.g. not something that looks bad, has no value). And ideally, for a client that was high profile.
Hipmunk's iOS app is awesome. I'm scratching my head as to how you would build their custom UI in Android with custom views and gestures. A Hipmunk widget to monitor a chosen 'I-want-to-go-to-X' flight would be of value. I am confident that they will find the right person and look forward to using or beta testing it. Android developers are hot right now because most iOS developers are scared of the Droid/Java/XML (no IB)
IB sucks, and is XML anyway, just very abstract. Seems if you want to do anything fancy with IB and custom controls you end up doing lots of your own code anyway: some things are only possible in code.
Other than that: many Android apps seem to look to replicate their cool iOS look. Foursquare looks very similar in both platforms, and there's some more examples.
IB is fine – very handy for setting up tedious things like layout, auto-resizing masks and the like. Any view, especially full-screen, with major complexity should start in IB, even if there's plenty of custom action going on. At the very least, that can be a few dozen lines of label and button configuration code completely skipped, which is awesome.
I'm happy to have IB in my toolbox and it can definitely save a lot of grunt work but I do think it tends to break down in more complex cases. Just today I gave up after a few hours of trying to align several subviews in a big scrollview and did it in code in a few minutes.
The beauty of IB (along with pixel-perfect layouts since there are only 3 devices) is that our designer can checkout the project and skin the app and not have to touch code. Yes, there are something that IB can't handle (try passing a managed object context to a view controller in a tab using IB) but you can do anything you want in code.
In Android, there is no IB. Closest equivalent is someone's project called http://DroidDraw.org. Since there is no IB, it is all code. XML is more code than meta-data when it comes to defining views. To make an equivalent UI in Android that is pretty as the iOS one requires a lot more unit effort than in iOS (and a lot more of that coming from the developer).
The closest equivalent to IB in Android is actually built into the standard Android dev toolset (the Android Developer Tools for Eclipse).
Droid Draw has been abandoned for years. The visual UI tools in the latest releases of the ADT is actually pretty decent. Probably not as good as what I've heard about IB, but not bad. Certainly better than Droid Draw ever was.
Basically, we want someone who actually has Android experience. If that person does not exist, we'll have to manufacture our own Android experience, which will take longer.
The problem with trying to start a joke thread isn't that we're all humourless drones, but that it derails the conversation. There's nothing wrong with humour per se, so long as it's used as part of a germaine contribution to the discussion. When it's just a throwaway line like this, it doesn't add anything and simply detracts from the topic at hand.
I agree with your comment but the parent might have something valid to say within that joke. Perhaps the posting only needs someone who has good design skills - not someone with experience with a particular technology.
I'm not interested in this position, but I am in the middle of creating my first Android app and I'd love to know what additional tools might be available to enhance my workflow (I'm just using Eclipse and JDebug).