Android developers rejoice. In a recent post on the Android Developers Blog, Android software engineer Brad Fitzpatrick discusses in full techie detail, the new Gingerbread StrictMode API (application programming interface), and what it means for you.
While the common user, myself included, will not have hardly any idea what Fitzpatrick is talking about, the basic idea of Strictmode is simple enough. Strictmode is used as a developers tool to help detect and bring to attention any issues. Some of these problems could be accidental disk or network access on an apps main thread where UI operations and animations take place, causing response issues. The API will let developers set a policy which will declare what is allowed on a thread, and what the penalty is if its violated. By default everything is allowed, with the ability to flag:
- detect disk writes
- detect disk reads
- detect network usage
- on a violation: log
- on a violation: crash
- on a violation: dropbox
- on a violation: show an annoying dialog
In the end this is all to make our devices run smoother, faster, and be more efficient. Fitzpatrick does say that StrictMode and its capabilities with be expanded on and that they are lining up more improvements for Honeycomb. If you’re a developer or just curious, be sure to hit the Developers Blog link above for plenty of detailed information about the StrictMode API.