Android 15 Brings Desktop-like Windowing UX on Tablets
The latest Beta 2 for the upcoming Android 15 release introduces desktop windowing for tablets as a developer preview. The new feature makes it possible to manage “freeform windows” that users can create to display multiple apps and resize or move around similarly to what they would do on a desktop computer.
Compiler Explorer Provides Insights Into Low-Level Android App Optimization
Android engineers at Google added support for the Java and Kotlin programming languages to Compiler Explorer, an open source tool aimed at exploring how compilers work by compiling code in real-time. Using Compiler Explorer, Android engineers can optimize the performance of their apps by observing how the compiler works under the hood instead of using a set of pre-defined best practices.
Vertex AI in Firebase Aims to Simplify the Creation of Gemini-powered Mobile Apps
Currently available in beta, the Vertex AI SDK for Firebase enables the creation of apps that go beyond the simple chat model and text prompting. Google has just made available a colab to help developers through the steps required to integrate it into their apps.
Kotlin HTTP Toolkit Ktor 3.0 Improves Performance and Adds Support for Server-Sent Events
Ktor, Kotlin’s native framework to create asynchronous HTTP server and client applications, has reached version 3. It adopts kotlinx-io, which brings improved performance albeit at the cost of breaking changes, and adds support for Server-Sent events, CSFR, serving static resources from ZIP files, and more.