You found a nice theme packaged in a .jar file (eg. from http://color-themes.com). Now you wonder how to change your IntelliJ based IDE to the new colors.
A long time ago, I wrote how to change the Theme in IntelliJ based IDE . The word “Theme” is misleading for Scheme (read below) and Theme (Preferences > Appearance & Behavior > Appearance > Theme).
In MacOS, the Preferences bar can be accessed at the top left corner under the application name or shortcut “cmd + ,” . Please post in the comment, how to in Windows or Linux.
In order to change the Scheme, go Preferences > Editor > Color Scheme > General.
On the cog icon circled in red, select “Import Scheme” and select the .jar file.
The initial title “Android Fuckup and postmortem” was accepted in the Call of Paper . But to be politically correct I renamed “Failures and Retrospectives” without changing the meaning.
A user contacted me this year. Due to his visual impairment, he uses Android Talkback. He found Raygional useful for switching the system locale. He asked me if I could build with notification, so it can be easily accessed on the system menu.
Battery by MacroPinch is an app I find really useful. The app is really useful to indicate the battery charge level. I really like the notification. My inspiration for Raygional comes from Battery. I reversed engineer Battery and I found for each level , there is 3 icons ( one for GingerBread, one for Honeycomb, one for others ) , so there are at least 300 icons just for the status notifications. The programming of Battery is not so difficult, the main attraction is the graphic . BTW I’m looking for graphic designers, anyone ?
Because Google Keyboard does a great job to switch the keyboard settings for message typing, I did not use my Raygional as often. With my day job, if I did not set timeboxed goals. It took FOUR months , that’s way too long. During the last few weeks , I started to get interested to update the app. Today I released Raygional 3.0, it feels nice to use the notification.
The app is only compatible from Android 4.0 because the UI uses the latest updates . To make compatible from Android 2.1 , I have to import the Holo theme and ActionBar UI pattern , I’ll have a look at the latest Action Bar Compatibility which the Google ‘s answer to ActionBarSherlock .
Shortly after Android studio came out, I installed it at work. As a long user of IntelliJ ( BTW I visited their office in Prague ), my IntelliJ projects were imported into Android studio.
What’s the difference between the two ?
Just like ADT Bundle bundles Eclipse + ADT plugin + Android SDK now , Android Studio is pre-packaged with the Android SDK, so it already knows about android.sdk.path . In short it ‘s easier to install Android Studio than IntelliJ + Android SDK. IntelliJ Community edition is more general. As this quote from Yole ( from JetBrains team )
Yole : The main point of this for Google is being able to have an experience focused on Android – as an example, Android Studio bundles the Android SDK and configures it automatically for you. IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition has a broader focus; for it, Android development is just one of the many scenarios it supports.
As far as I remember IntelliJ supported Android since 2011. Back then, there was no graphical preview for the layout editor. But I used it for the fast code completion and faster compilation time. IntelliJ Community Edition bundles a Android plugin, so there was no need to download the equivalent of ADT.
But still for me, Android Studio == IntelliJ specialized on Android . I use their names interchangeably
Stability
As an early preview (currently v0.1.1 ) , I caught and filed the issue number 56000 ( round number , am I lucky ? ) that IntelliJ 12 did not have . I had to switch back to IntelliJ. After a few days , I opened Android Studio and an upgrade notification popped up. The issue was fixed.
Choices
Now there are two official IDE for Android : Eclipse and IntelliJ
Eclipse
Android Studio
Version Control System ( VCS )
Need a plugin for each VCS. Update with an external VCS client, you need to refresh the workspace
VCS integrated. It supports Git, subversion, mercurial. When you update with an external VCS client, IntelliJ will sync automatically . WIN
Code completion
faster and indexes the world. WIN
There is one area that Eclipse beats IntelliJ : the number of plugins available. I only switches to Eclipse when there is a large team that uses Eclipse because we can easily share dependencies with the .properties files, whereas IntelliJ use .iml files.
By default, Android developers used Eclipse by default. Now Google officially supports two of them. My current choice is IntelliJ ( or Android Studio ). I don’t like the darkcula theme, I prefer light color . Matter of taste like WordPress themes . And you , what will be your choice ?
