Milestone 1 is done!

I now have a home replacement that can actually launch applications! It is a scrolling grid that contains all the applications on the phone. I have also removed more of the sample home code and resources! I think my next step before building my own custom view that will give us the nice favorites area is to see if I can cache the list of applications on the phone and be updated when new apps are installed rather then creating the list from scratch each time the home screen launches. This should speed up the application drawer.

Well one benchmark in a few days is not too bad and I have some ideas how to build the custom view that is needed.

Get SlideHome Milestone 1 here: http://code.google.com/p/slidehome/downloads/detail?name=SlideHome%20-%20Milestone%201.apk

Well, It's Something...but basically it's nothing

I have finally tracked down my null-pointer,YAY! I have a running but completely useless home screen. It doesn't even show or launch apps yet, but that is the next goal. I do have a better understanding of the Sample Home code now and even analysed how it is called in the wild (i.e. my Droid). I think I will be trimming even more code away before I add anything of my own, but that's a good thing; right?

I have posted my working, but useless code here: http://code.google.com/p/slidehome/source/browse/

I know I have posted my binaries as well, but I am new to git and will fine tune what is posted as I go. I guess that's one more thing to learn...oy.

You can find my useless home screen here: http://code.google.com/p/slidehome/downloads/list

How do we begin...

This is a blog to complement my attempt to create and open source replacement for the now dead SlideScreen for Android. SlideScreen was a home screen replacement for Android that focused on showing the user the most recent and important information from thier life without having to launch other applications. See http://www.larvalabs.com/product_detail.php?app=26 for more information. You can get the final version of SlideScreen here: http://larvalabs.com/slidescreenbeta/slidescreen-2.0-beta10.apk.

I will be posting here as I work on SlideHome.

I am fairly new to Android so I have been hacking away at the Home sample from the Android example code. See http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/Home/index.html for more info. So far I have got the first few lines ported with no errors...well no syntax errors, but I am now tracking down a null-pointer exception that occurs on load. This is honestly a big first project for Android, but I am picking it up as I go.

I do have a couple of milestones planned out, and they are as follows:
*Hello Launcher: A basic scrolling grid of applications.
*SlideHome Drawer: A screen that mimics the application drawer from SlideScreen.
*Twitter Home: A screen that minics the main screen from SlideScreen but with Twitter Alone
*Twitter/FaceBook Home Slider: A screen that mimics SlideScreens Slider along With Twitter and Facebook
*The Whole Hog: Start implementing Calendar, Reader, Phone, Music, etc.

Well I appreciate any Feedback and Help on this project!