After writing a post about my first android app a reader asked me by email to share my implementation of the staggered grid view. So here it is. Keep in mind that it's NOT a library, just a quick and dirty demo.
Good question!, My implementation focus on:
- Optimizations for BIG staggered grids: under 10000 elements
- RAM efficiency. It is IMPOSSIBLE to run out of memory with this demo. Even with 10k+ images in the grid view.
- Lazy loading / unloading of images = Only images visible on screen are in memory
- Supports android 2.2+. Tested and runs very well on real 2.x and 4.x devices: 4. Android 2.2 | ZTE Blade ( 512 RAM | 600 MHz ARM 11 ) 5. Android 4.1 | GalaxyTab 2 10.1 ( 1G RAM | Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 )
- You must know aspect ratio of ALL images in your grid BEFORE you load them in order to compute scroll height. This is NOT a "pull to load" staggered grid view, it just loads while you scroll.
- It is NOT a library, so please read and understand the code before using it, it is very short and well commented.
I am using a modified version of Android Smart Image View to load images. Long story short: android-smart-image-view has an internal cashing system that does NOT fit my usecase. The problem of the curent cashing sustem is that on old 2.x devices with weak RAM, your app will run out of memory... I found no way to disable caching, without updating android-smart-image-view library code... This is why i include it's source in this demo.
I changed changed 1 method: WebImage::getBitmap ;)
Big thanks to lorempixel.com for delivering fast and awesome random images
MIT