jetc.dev Newsletter Issue #9

Published: 2020-04-14

Change is the only constant. So, this week’s newsletter points to Slack threads on configuration changes and compiler changes. Plus, we look at JetNews, getting feedback, and (a) certain doom.

One Off the Stack, One Off the Slack

You’ve got questions. That’s understandable!

Unfortunately, there were no good Stack Overflow questions in the android-jetpack-compose tag this week, so let’s look at two interesting threads from the #compose channel in kotlinlang Slack!

Note: to view these, you need to be a member of the Kotlin Slack workspace — sign up at https://slack.kotlinlang.org/!

Configuration Changes in Compose

The apparent objective is to allow apps to disable configuration changes for Compose-based activities, with automatic recomposition occurring on a configuration change. Whether this winds up working in the long run has yet to be determined.

Compose and Compiler Changes

Because Compose depends on a particular compiler plugin, Compose is running behind Kotlin itself in terms of versioning. In this thread, Adam Powell discusses the sorts of things that can get unlocked once Compose is able to support Kotlin 1.4, including coroutines support.

Composable Commentary

Posts, videos, and other new information related to Jetpack Compose!

Exploring Jetpack Compose: TriStateCheckbox

Last week, Joe Birch explored Checkbox. This week, he examines TriStateCheckbox. For Joe’s sake, let’s hope that there isn’t an endless series of Checkbox variants!

Jetpack Compose: Columns and Rows

This article covers the Column and Row containers and how you can arrange and organize your content with them.

Adventures in Compose - The Doom fire effect

Adam Bennett writes about how the classic video game DOOM implemented its fire effect, and how he reimplemented it using Compose.

Exploring Jetpack Compose: Switch

Joe Birch has been busy! He has also written a post regarding Compose’s take on the Switch widget.

Resource Roundup

100% pure code!

GitHub - JetNews updated to dev08

Sean McQuillan updated the legendary JetNews sample app to be compliant with the dev08 release of Compose.

GitHub - paug/openfeedback-android-sdk

OpenFeedback offers Feedback-as-a-Service (FaaS). This library implements an Android client-side UI for collecting feedback to send to OpenFeedback, using Compose.

GitHub - DevSrSouza/Marknote-Compose

This is a port of an earlier Flutter Markdown note-taker app to Compose.

…And One More Thing

As the “hey, we have no Stack Overflow questions!” point makes clear, the amount of material that the community is creating around Jetpack Compose is modest. Some weeks, I struggle to fill in all the sections here. That is to be expected, as only so many developers are doing work with early-stage Compose.

I will be starting to write more long-form Compose material, hopefully as soon as next week. And, as Compose matures, and more developers “hop on the bandwagon”, this newsletter will continue to expand.

But, as the jetc.dev site notes, feel free to reach out if you have something that you think should appear here!