This Week in Mobile: Firebase, Developer Best Practices, and Motion in UX Design

This week Google released their Pixel phones along with a host of other hardware offerings. There were no big surprises at the event, but one thing is for sure; having control over the hardware and software will enable Google to be every bit as measured as Apple with new releases.

Android 

There's an excellent series going on at the Firebase blog about the Play Services Task API. The fourth and final piece, covering multi-tasking, was published this week. 

Has RxJava still got you puzzled? Although old, Dan Lew's series on the topic is the clearest explanation of RxJava terms I've seen. 

Developing for Android Wear can be pretty interested. This article helps you understand more about Accessing the Data Layer API.

Amit Shekhar shares his list of Android Development Best Practices. 

Some projects to check out: 

• groupie: Helps you display and manage complex RecyclerView layouts
• AnimatorDurationTile: A quick settings tile to quickly set the animator duration scale.
• Better-Link-Movement-Method: A less buggy and customizable way to handle URLs in TextViews.

iOS 

Essential reading for people who want to adopt, or understand MVC for iOS apps: Three Ways To Pass Data From Model to Controller. 

In one of the latest videos on Realm, you can pick up some tips from the experts at Instagram; Refactoring At Scale: Lessons Learning Rewriting Instagram's Feed.

Optionals in Swift...here's a good piece on when to unwrap them using Guard Let vs If Let.

Here's a list of Good Practices to Becoming a Great iOS Developer.

Another video worth watching; Modern Swift Networking with Swish.

This week's projects of note: 

• HubFramework: Spotify's component-driven UI framework
• CostumeKit: Base types for theming an app
• SwiftInitializerGenerator: Xcode 8 Source Code Extension to Generate Swift Initializers
• SwiftDate: The best way to manage dates and timezones in Swift

General

Going from design to execution is all about process. Here's A Practical Guide to Convert Your Sketches to Working Prototypes.

A little bit of motion goes a long way in adding polish to your app. Learn how and why in Motion in UX Design.

Take a look inside The Wierd and Wacky World of App Marketing with Jeremy Olson. 

Everything is making moves towards AI. Here are 6 Ways Designers Need to Adapt to the Age of AI.