Kristen Halper, Author at Surface Duo Blog

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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 ...

Write foldable tests quickly with Test Kit

March 24th, 2022

Hello Android developers! This week, we’re super excited to announce that we’ve released the first version of our foldable Test Kit. The Test Kit currently includes two testing utility libraries, one for layouts built with views and another for layouts built with Jetpack Compose, and we’re looking forward to adding more ...

Jetpack Compose UI testing

March 3rd, 2022

Hello Jetpack Compose developers! We’re excited to announce that UI tests have been added to all our Compose samples! We learned a lot throughout the process of adding these tests, so we hope this week’s blog post makes it easier for you to start testing your own Compose layouts, especially when testing for compatibility ...

Jetpack Compose WindowState preview

January 20th, 2022

Hello Jetpack Compose developers! This week, we’d like to announce the release of WindowState, a new utility library that’s part of our Compose SDK. Our goal was to provide easy access to all the window information provided by the Jetpack Window Manager library and to simplify the logic required to enhance your apps for large ...

Get started with Jetpack Compose

November 18th, 2021

Hello (future) Jetpack Compose developers! This week, we want to talk about how to get started on building applications with Jetpack Compose. A few of us on the Surface Duo Developer Experience team recently began learning Compose, so we’d like to share some advice and resources with you. To read more about the work we’ve...

Jetpack Compose Navigation Rail

November 4th, 2021

Hello Jetpack Compose developers! This week, we released a new sample that demonstrates how to use the NavigationRail component with large screen and foldable devices. These guidelines were also introduced recently in the Microsoft Surface Duo Design Kit 2.1. Create a NavigationRail with Compose We first blogged about NavigationRail in ...

Kristen Halper

SW/FW Engineer, Surface Duo Developer Experience