Kristen Halper

SW/FW Engineer, Surface Duo Developer Experience

Works in the Surface Duo Developer Experience team to help with all aspects of dual-screen SDK development and customer engagement.

Post by this author

Relay Anchor Leg: Overall impressions

January 26th, 2023
Hello Compose developers, Over the last two weeks, I’ve given a brief introduction to Relay, as well as talked about some of the tips and tricks I picked up while using the tool. This week, I’ll share my thoughts on the current state of Relay from the developer point of view. As a reminder, Relay is in alpha, so please go...

Relay Leg 2: Tips and tricks

January 19th, 2023
Hello Compose developers, Last week, I gave a brief introduction to Relay, the new Figma to Compose tool developed by Google. This week, I’ll dive deeper into some tips and tricks I learned when testing out Relay, As a reminder, Relay is in alpha, so please go try it out and send the Relay team your feedback! Putting Relay...

Pass the design baton with Relay

January 12th, 2023
Hello Compose developers, Over the holidays, I finally got the chance to test out Relay, the new tool released by Google late last year. The goal of Relay is to simplify the “handoff problem” between designers and developers by translating Figma designs directly into Compose code. Figure 1. Viewing the StatusCard and Chip...

Compose TwoPaneLayout updates

December 8th, 2022
Hello Compose developers, This week, we’d like to announce two major updates to our TwoPaneLayout component that come with version 1.0.1-alpha05. We hope these updates will help make the library even more flexible and useful for you all. We also have some other Compose SDK updates to announce! New value in PaneMode ...

droidcon New York and London

December 1st, 2022
Hello Android developers! It has been great to see the community face-to-face at droidcon events around the world in 2022. The Surface Duo team really enjoyed meeting folks, presenting, and discussing foldable app development face-to-face. If you didn’t make it to an event (or if you did but want to re-live it) more sessions are ...

Jetpack Compose Accompanist TwoPane

September 22nd, 2022
Hello Compose developers! This week, we’d like to talk about the TwoPane layout from Google’s Accompanist Adaptive library! Not to be confused with our own Microsoft Compose SDK TwoPaneLayout component, TwoPane from Accompanist is a fold-aware UI component that works great for cases when you always want to show two pieces...

Improving app accessibility with Jetpack Compose

September 15th, 2022
Hello Jetpack Compose developers! This week, we’d like to share how we started improving the accessibility of our Compose samples. Accessibility in Android can relate to many different aspects of your apps, ranging from content descriptions and color contrast to layout hierarchy and touch target size. Regardless of where ...

Dual-screen example adds Jetpack Compose to the experience

September 1st, 2022
Hello Compose developers! This week, we’re excited to announce two big updates to our dual-screen experience example: a Compose refactor of the catalog page and a brand new order history page. The dual-screen experience example provides an end-to-end experience centered around a travelling guitar salesperson, with options ...

Jetpack Compose TwoPaneLayout update

June 23rd, 2022
Hello Jetpack Compose developers! This week, we’re excited to announce some big updates to TwoPaneLayout, our Jetpack Compose component for foldables and large screens. We’ve just added a new TwoPaneLayout constructor with highly customizable navigation support, and the TwoPaneScope interface has been upgraded to provide ...

Foldable ExoPlayer video… plus trivia

March 31st, 2022
Hello Android developers! Video is an important element of many different types of mobile apps, including those designed for viewing TV and movie shows, livestreaming, social sharing, voice calling, meetings, training, and anything in-between. Large screen and foldable devices are ideal for this type of content because there’s ...

Feedback usabilla icon