Abstract

Last Updated: February 23, 2014

The article describes back screen notification types and gives an example of implementation.The document is intended for third – party back screen applications developers.

1. Back screen notification types and display lifecycle

Ability to display user notifications is one of the main features of the back screen.

There are three types of back screen notification. Type of notification is defined by parent application, as well as position and time of display.

  • Full Screen Notification
    Full screen notification is notification that covers whole back screen. It is good for displaying pictures or considerable amount of text.

image

  • Half Screen Notification
    Half screen notification is notification that covers only bottom half of the screen. It can mainly be used for displaying short messages.

image

  • Bar Notification
    Bar Notification is the smallest type of notification - it takes only a fraction of the screen and has standartized design. Application can display application icon with text.

image

Notification changes its type in certain sequence. Full and Half screen notifications are minimized to bar notification in 60 seconds after notification is fired. Next 60 seconds later bar notifications are minimized into counter. Counter shows only a number of unread notifications received by the user.

2. Code example

YotaPhone SDK has two main classes for working with notifications:

BSNotification

and

BSNotificationManager

Thеsе two classes are very similar to Notification and NotificaionManager classes of Android.As an example let's create a full screen notification, which will be minimized to bar notification in 60 seconds.

BSNotification bsNotification = new
BSNotification.Builder().setNotificationType(BSNotification.FULL_SCREEN_NOTIFICATION)
.setContentTitle("Do not forget") //This is the title that will be visible on bar notification
.setContentText("YotaPhone is always on")//This is the description that will  be visible on bar notification
.setSmallIcon(icon) //This is a small icon that will be visible on bar notificaion
.setContentIntent(pintent) //This is an intent that will be fired if notification will be activated
.setFullScreenBitmap(mImageBitmap) //Your full-screen notification bitmap
.build();
BSNotificationManager nm = new BSNotificationManager(this);
nm.notify(1, bsNotification); //”1” - is notification ID