by Kibui Kenneth Maina. May,13 2010 11:22am

If you are looking for a challenging good looking operating system that is virus free maybe then you should be considering Ubuntu 10.4 lts. download here.

You do not have to format your hard drive that is if you have enough space you can easily install it as a second OS and just choose between the two at startup. Installation is so easy even novice computer users would have little if any problem setting it up. I have two operating systems running on my machine currently; the native Vista that came with the machine and Ubuntu.

HOWEVER BEFORE YOU JUMP TO INSTALLATION: And I have to say this is where I have an axe to grind with Ubuntu, you will need a working Internet connection (You can not download programs or updates from a machine with a working Internet connection then transfer them to one without easily; if at all you will be successful. The Ubuntu team needs to take into account users with little and no programming or computing knowledge and make this process easier). When finalizing installation Ubuntu downloads some files from repositories, if you dont have an Internet connection you will experience small problems after the installation terminates such missing updates and drivers e.g sound and graphics you can however install them later after completing the O/S installation to reduce O/S installation time.
After installation you will also need a working Internet connection to allow you to play most of your media files, here you can choose to download and install codecs for already resident applications or you can download the many available applications for Ubuntu such as VLC (I recommend VLC media player since it plays almost all media types)

HOW TO INSTALL VLC (go to)

1. Applications>Accessories>Terminal.
2.Type: sudo apt-get update
3.If you created a login password during Operating System O/S setup you will be asked for this password, type it and press enter.
4.Wait for the system to finish updating
5. Type: sudo apt-get install vlc
6.Press enter and wait for it to finish

After O/S installation I recommend updating the system for security patches. Go to system>Administration>Update Manager.

All in all the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, this is a good Operating System and Kenya should embrace it with both arms since it will help improve our ICT uptake by removing the expensive software barriers that are hindering ICT uptake.

Kenyan It professionals should also start developing on and learning the Ubuntu Operating Systems (Workstation and Server editions) who knows maybe we have been sitting on a golden metallic egg waiting for it to hatch and complaining of how poor we are instead of pawning the egg and building great investments and job opportunities.


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SCARED OF THE PROGRAMMING ASPECT OF UBUNTU? WORRY NO MORE:

Download Ubuntu PDF Edition of Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference.





Opticom Solution cares.

Today well start learning about text widgets in Android.

A widget is any UI component in Android - a button, a text field, a slider, etc. You have a set of pre-built widgets to create your application with.

Today we will start learning about text widgets. There are two classes responsible for displaying text: TextView and EditText. The TextView class simply displays text on screen, without giving the user the ability to edit the text. If you want the text to be editable, use EditText.

Both of these classes inherit many properties and methods from the View class, and it should also be noted that EditText is a subclass of TextView.

In this tutorial well start learning about the first class I mentioned - TextView.

Its a simple but at the same time one of the most used widgets in Android applications. It is also used in other widgets for displaying text data, and quite a few widgets are actually extensions of this class. So, anything with text in it is related to TextView class one way or another.

You should keep that in mind, because TextView class has a few unique attributes and methods that are also available in any classes that extend TextView.

Properties for this class can be defined in XML layout file, or programmatically in a Java class.

For example, if you want to apply a text value to a TextView object, you can use that using the android:text XML attribute, or using the setText() method in Java. Usually the attribute and method names are similar (android:textColor and setTextColor();), but not always (android:textColorHighlight and setHighlightColor();).

Ive already wrote about ids in Android, they can be defined using the android:id attribute and generally look like this:


And to refer to this object later, the plus symbol is emitted:


The text values can be defined using an id, which refer to separate objects in res/values/strings.xml file.

For example, if you set the text value of a TextView like this:


It would refer to this part in the strings.xml file and use that value:


To set the value similarly in Java:


The Java syntax might look strange to you if youve never dealt with it before. Here is what the same code would look like in AS3 syntax (note: not working code):


The strings.xml should be used most of the time to declare text values, instead of hardcoding the values directly into the attribute. This is done mainly because of the ability to add new languages.

Thats all for today. Well continue next time.

Thanks for reading!