Tag Archives: ios

J2ObjC 1.0 Release

We are pleased to announce the 1.0 release of J2ObjC, a Google-authored open-source compiler that lets iPhone/iPad applications use Java code. J2ObjC's goal is to support the sharing of an application's non-UI code (such as data access, or application logic) by writing it once in Java, then building it into the iOS application. This same code can be shared with the Android and web versions of the application (the latter using the GWT compiler), as well as with server-side code. J2ObjC is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
J2ObjC is not a Java emulator, but instead translates Java to Objective-C classes that extend the iOS Foundation Framework. It supports the Java 8 language and runtime required by client-side application developers. JUnit and Mockito test translation and execution is also supported.  J2ObjC can be used with most build tools, including Xcode and Make, and there are Gradle and Maven plug-ins.
J2ObjC does not translate user interfaces, as world-class apps need to have world-class user interfaces that adhere closely to the different iOS and Android design standards. J2ObjC instead focuses on writing common abstractions once, and verifying them with a common set of unit tests. This ensures that an app's features work the same across platforms, improving customer experiences. Teams developing multi-platform apps still need great engineers for each platform, but with J2ObjC they don't waste time rewriting each others' code.

Using continuous integration, J2ObjC helps product velocity. As each feature is added or bug fix made to the application's shared code, all platforms are automatically rebuilt and tested. And because common features are shared across platforms, a bug found on one platform is fixed once for all platforms.

Several of Google’s iOS applications use J2ObjC for these reasons, including Inbox by Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides and Google My Business. Each team has dedicated iOS designers and engineers, but application logic common to all platforms is written once.

By Tom Ball, Google Engineering

Maps Minutes Hack #9: Get home quickly and safely on New Year’s Eve

Part of our series on how to save time this holiday season with Google Maps.

Whether you’re heading to a friend’s house for a cozy gathering, going to watch the ball drop in Times Square or attending an extravagant masquerade ball, the last thing you want to worry about on New Year’s Eve is driving.

With the Google Maps app, you can get where you’re going without ever getting behind the wheel. Earlier this year we launched a new feature that allows you to see various transportation options and compare travel times–all on one screen.

Once you enter your destination in the Google Maps app, you’ll see four options to get there: driving, walking, biking or transit (bus/train). You can quickly compare ETAs and switch between the transportation modes for more details and up-to-date information for each option.



If you’re heading to a casual celebration not so far from home, walking or public transit might be your best option. The Google Maps app will give your walk time ETA along with a few transit route options with real-time schedules, updates and fares.



Google Maps can also help you grab an Uber, if arriving by bus or train isn’t your holiday style. You can see the estimated trip duration, pickup time and estimated cost once you scroll down to the bottom of the app's transit option screen.

Stay safe with Maps Minutes Hacks and enjoy your New Year’s celebrations wherever they take you.

Posted by Dai Pham, Head of Geo and Google Maps Marketing

Source: Google LatLong


Maps Minutes Hack #8: Set your home and work addresses for easy navigation

Part of our series on how to save time this holiday season with Google Maps.

It’s crunch time. There are holiday parties to attend and last-minute gifts to be bought and wrapped. When the holidays are only days away even the small things can make a difference. So here’s another helpful trick for how you can save a few extra minutes every time you use Google Maps for directions or navigation.

You can save your home and work addresses in Google Maps, and then select “home” or “work” rather than typing the locations every single time. Just go to “your places” on the side menu and you’ll see “home” and “work” under “labeled places”. Enter the address for each and next time you’re navigating to or from home or work, you can get your directions a little quicker and easier than before.



Every minute matters. Save more every day with Maps Minutes Hacks. Next up: how to get home fast and safe on New Year’s Eve.

Posted by Olga Suvorova, Product Marketing Manager, Google Maps

Source: Google LatLong


Maps Minutes Hack #7: No signal, no problem. Navigate your holiday travels with Google Maps offline

Part of our series on how to save time this holiday season with Google Maps.

This time of year, millions take a road trip home for the holidays or adventure to faraway places all over the world. Whether you’re traveling abroad or rediscovering your own hometown, it helps to be able to navigate quickly and easily, even with limited mobile data or a spotty internet connection.

Google Maps offline, now available on iOS and Android, can help you get the most out of your holiday travels. You can browse pre-downloaded map areas, search for places, get directions and turn-by-turn navigation–all offline. Because exploring the world shouldn’t require a data connection or excessive roaming charges.

To navigate offline, simply open the Google Maps app and save any area on the map while you have a connection. Search for a place like San Francisco or Mexico City, open the place card and tap the download button. You can adjust the size of the map area you want to download and name it. Once downloaded, that area will be automatically added to your Offline areas in the side menu.



Once you’ve saved a map area, you can search for places and get directions offline. Looking for that famous art gallery or a neighborhood watering hole? You can check out addresses, opening hours, phone numbers and even navigate there–all without internet access.

To explore and navigate the world offline, install the Google Maps app on your iPhone before your holiday journey, or open it on Android along the way.

Get the most of your holiday time with Maps Minutes Hacks. Next up: how to get around faster and safer.

Posted by Dai Pham, Head of Geo and Google Maps Marketing

Source: Google LatLong


Announcing IMA SDK for iOS v3.1.0

We are pleased to announce the release of the IMA SDK for iOS v3.1.0. This release contains support for Picture in Picture in iOS 9 and HTML5 companion ads. It also introduces a new API, [IMAAdsManager discardAdBreak], for discarding ad breaks. In addition, we have changed where IMAContentPlayhead is passed to the SDK.

Picture in Picture (PiP) is a feature that was introduced in iOS 9, and now IMA publishers can add it to their existing IMA implementation. For more information, please see our PiP guide.

The IMA SDK now supports HTML5 companion ads. There is no implementation change required to use HTML5 companion ads. The SDK uses the same companion ad slot classes and delegates as before.

We have also introduced a new API for discarding ad breaks. Publishers can use [IMAAdsManager discardAdBreak] to implement timeout policies for their apps and to have more control over ad playback.

IMAContentPlayhead is now passed into IMAAdsRequest instead of the IMAAdsManager. This change will require an update to existing implementations.

If you have any questions about these changes, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team

Announcing the Google Mobile Ads API Demo apps

The Google Mobile Ads API Demo apps for Android and iOS are now available. These new apps contain advanced examples for both AdMob and DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) that demonstrate features of the Google Mobile Ads SDK that can help you improve the user experience and maximize ad revenue. Whether you’re a new publisher or a seasoned veteran of the SDK, the API Demo apps showcase new ways to customize ad requests, experiment with multiple ad sizes, and compare AdMob and DFP technologies.

Download the API Demo apps for Android and iOS today and explore new ways to improve your integration with the Google Mobile Ads SDK!

If you have any questions regarding the new API Demo apps, feel free to contact us through our forum.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Handling App Transport Security in iOS 9

The rollout of iOS 9 is expected to come this Fall and will introduce a new privacy feature called App Transport Security (ATS) to enforce best practices in secure connections between an app and its back end. This change may need your action if you are developing with the Google Mobile Ads SDK and building an app against the iOS 9 SDK.

We recommend using HTTPS exclusively if you’re developing a new app. If you’re working on an existing app, we suggest using HTTPS as much as possible and creating a plan to migrate the rest of your app toward ATS compliance.

All iOS 9 devices running apps built with Xcode 7 that don’t disable ATS will be affected by this change. The following log message appears when a non-ATS compliant app attempts to serve an ad via HTTP on iOS 9:

“App Transport Security has blocked a cleartext HTTP (http://) resource load since it is insecure. Temporary exceptions can be configured via your app’s Info.plist file.”

While Google remains committed to industry-wide adoption of HTTPS, there isn’t always full compliance on third party ad networks and custom creative code served via our systems. To ensure ads continue to serve on iOS9 devices for developers transitioning to HTTPS, the recommended short term fix is to add an exception that allows HTTP requests to succeed and non-secure content to load successfully.

Publishers can add an exception to their Info.plist to allow any insecure connection:


<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
    <true/>
</dict>

If you have any questions regarding these changes, feel free to contact us through our forum.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

New Swift samples for the Google Mobile Ads SDK

In response to the growing popularity of Swift development, we’ve added Swift samples for the Google Mobile Ads SDK to our GitHub repo. To make it easier for developers to get started using Swift, we’ve also added Swift code snippets to our Get Started and Interstitial guides.

If you have any questions about using Swift with the Google Mobile Ads SDK, you can reach us on our forum. Remember that you can also find us on Google+, where we post updates on all of our Google Ads developer products.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

Announcing new releases of the Google Mobile Ads SDK: v7.8 for Android and v7.4.1 for iOS

Today we’re announcing two new versions of the Google Mobile Ads SDK: version 7.8 for Android, and version 7.4.1 for iOS. Those of you using Android Studio can download Google Repository (Rev. 20) to get the latest Gradle artifacts. Eclipse developers will find it listed as Google Play services (Rev. 26) in the Android SDK manager. Publishers with iOS apps can get the latest SDK for that platform by updating their CocoaPods Podfile to pull version 7.4.1 or by downloading it manually. These releases contain a number of stability and performance improvements, as well as some new features — including beta support for MRAID v2.0 on iOS and Android!

MRAID v2.0 Beta

MRAID v2.0 offers a number of new methods that advertisers can use to improve their creatives. Ads using the new standard can store photos, resize themselves on the fly, query screen dimensions, and make calendar events using calls like this:


mraid.createCalendarEvent({
    description: “A big sale at our store!”,
    location: ‘123 Savings Street’,
    start: ‘2015-9-01T09:00-05:00’, 
    end: ‘2012-12-22T10:00-05:00’
});

The new standard creates some great opportunities for increased engagement, so for more info about MRAID, see our iOS MRAID guide, our Android MRAID guide, or the IAB’s specifications document.

Checking ad loading status on Android

In the new Android release, we’ve added an isLoading method to the AdLoader, AdView, and InterstitialAd classes so publishers can check whether an ad request is in progress. If you’re using an AdLoader to fetch a native ad, for example, you can use a call like this to see if the request has completed:


if (!myAdLoader.isLoading()) {
    /* The AdLoader isn’t busy making a request. */
    myAdLoader.loadAd(new AdRequest.Builder().build());;
}

iOS global settings

This SDK release introduces the GADMobileAds class, which provides global settings for controlling certain information collected by the SDK. In-app purchase reporting and crash reporting are enabled by default. However, if you’d like, you can disable these settings in most instances by using the disableAutomatedInAppPurchaseReporting and disableSDKCrashReporting methods. See the global settings guide for more information.

For a full list of Mobile Ads SDK changes, check out our release notes. For technical questions, post them on our forum.

 - , Mobile Ads Developer Relations

What’s new with IMA iOS SDK Beta 15?

Last week, we released beta version 15 of the IMA SDK for iOS. This release includes two new features:

  • Ad buffer events via IMAAdsManager delegates
  • Debugging mode

Ad buffer events

We’re providing more information on ad buffering by introducing new buffering events via the following optional IMAAdsManagerDelegate methods:

  • adsManagerAdPlaybackReady:
  • adsManagerAdDidStartBuffering:
  • adsManager:adDidBufferToMediaTime:

Collectively, these delegate methods provide more transparency into buffer events, giving you more control over the user’s ad experience. For more detailed information on these new methods, take a look at the reference documentation.

Debugging mode

We’ve introduced a new debugging mode setting to allow for more verbose logging to the console. You can now set IMASettings.enableDebugMode to YES to enable debug mode. This should not be used in production, as it will show a watermark on the ad player.

A note about CocoaPods

If you’re using CocoaPods with the IMA SDK, please make sure to use at least version 0.38.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.

 - , IMA SDK Team