\n In today\u2019s post, we\u2019ll walk through a widget example for the Surface Duo, which can run on any Android device.\n<\/p>\n
Surface Duo blog reader widget<\/h2>\n
\n The blog reader widget sample code<\/a> provides a complete widget implementation, including an RSS feed reader that can display a blog summary on your phone\u2019s home screen. When you touch a blog post in the widget, the full text is opened in Microsoft Edge, as shown in this screenshot:\n<\/p>\n \n Figure 1: Blog reader widget and post showing in Microsoft Edge<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \n App widgets are a special kind of view, with some restrictions on how the user can interact with them (due to their presence on the home screen). Only touches and vertical scrolling is allowed. There is also a specific mechanism you must use to update the data shown in the widget. The high level steps are shown below, and you can also visit the documentation for App Widgets<\/a> for more information.\n<\/p>\n \n The following entry in AndroidManifest.xml<\/strong> declares the widget:\n<\/p>\n \n There are three important parts in this declaration:\n<\/p>\n \n The WidgetApp class must implement AppWidgetProvider<\/strong> and provide an onUpdate<\/strong> method which gets called every update period. There can be multiple instances of the widget added to the home screen so the update method must deal with a collection of widgets, updating each one appropriately.\n<\/p>\n onUpdate<\/strong> is the only required overload, however you can also overrode onReceive to handle other callbacks such as ACTION_APPWIDGET_UPDATE as well as delated, enabled, disabled, and options changed intents.\n<\/p>\n \n Notice it refers to an app_widget_info.xml<\/strong> file, which contains widget configuration information needed for an AppWidgetProviderInfo<\/strong> object. The XML file specifies information like the layout for the widget\u2019s user interface, its initial dimensions, whether it\u2019s resizable, and the data refresh frequency:\n<\/p>\n \n Note that the update frequency can have an effect on battery life \u2013 see the documentation for an alternative using AlarmManager<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n The RSS blog reader sample uses a custom RssFeed<\/strong><\/a> class to download and parse the blog XML and render the list in the widget. Refer to our sample repo<\/a> for more details on the download and display of the blog data, and the Android widget docs<\/a> for more details on widget customization.\n<\/p>\n \n We would love to hear from you about your experiences building apps and widgets for the Surface Duo. Please visit the docs<\/a> and samples<\/a>, and let us know what you think.\n<\/p>\n \n Reach out using our\u00a0feedback forum<\/a>\u00a0or message me on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0GitHub<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello Android developers! In an earlier post, we talked about the steps to bring your app to Microsoft Surface Duo. One great approach to get ready for dual-screen devices like the Surface Duo is to implement Android features that work well on two screens, like app widgets. Widgets are particularly great for dual-screens because they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":570,"featured_media":574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,46],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-surface-duo-sdk","tag-dual-screen-development","tag-surface-duo"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Hello Android developers! In an earlier post, we talked about the steps to bring your app to Microsoft Surface Duo. One great approach to get ready for dual-screen devices like the Surface Duo is to implement Android features that work well on two screens, like app widgets. Widgets are particularly great for dual-screens because they […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/570"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Surface](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/surface-duo\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/53\/2020\/08\/word-image.png\")
\n<\/p>\nAndroidManifest.xml<\/h3>\n
<receiver android:name=\".WidgetApp\">\r\n <intent-filter>\r\n <action android:name=\"android.appwidget.action.APPWIDGET_UPDATE\" \/>\r\n <\/intent-filter>\r\n\r\n <meta-data\r\n android:name=\"android.appwidget.provider\"\r\n android:resource=\"@xml\/app_widget_info\" \/>\r\n<\/receiver>\r\n<\/pre>\n
\n
WidgetApp class<\/h3>\n
Widget metadata<\/h3>\n
<appwidget-provider xmlns:android=\"http:\/\/schemas.android.com\/apk\/res\/android\"\r\n android:initialKeyguardLayout=\"@layout\/app_widget\"\r\n android:initialLayout=\"@layout\/app_widget\"\r\n android:minWidth=\"250dp\"\r\n android:minHeight=\"250dp\"\r\n android:previewImage=\"@drawable\/widget_preview\"\r\n android:resizeMode=\"horizontal|vertical\"\r\n android:updatePeriodMillis=\"86400000\"\r\n android:widgetCategory=\"home_screen\"\/>\r\n<\/pre>\n
Widget functionality<\/h3>\n
Resources and feedback<\/h2>\n