September 2016 Summaries

App monetization should be incorporated into development strategy early, with options including in-app purchases, subscriptions, and advertising selected according to the app’s value and audience motivations. Developers can experiment with approaches and use A/B testing and click-through rates to evaluate their effectiveness. Firebase supports monetization through AdMob, which provides ad revenue and engagement insights and access to multiple ad networks, and can be connected to a Firebase project after creating an AdMob account.

Part three of the Play services Task API series explains how Android developers can create and manage their own asynchronous Tasks, either through Firebase or the standalone play-services-tasks library. Using `Tasks.call()`, developers can run `Callable` work on the main thread or an `Executor`, while `continueWith()` enables modular processing pipelines in which each `Continuation` transforms the prior Task’s result into a new Task, potentially with a different result type. The example demonstrates splitting, shuffling, and recombining a string through chained continuations, with executors used to keep potentially expensive work off the UI thread. It also describes how exceptions propagate through a task chain to final failure listeners, how continuations can check task success, and how intermediate Tasks can be retained and observed independently without disrupting the overall pipeline. The post concludes that Tasks support flexible, sequential, reusable asynchronous workflows and previews a subsequent discussion of running work in parallel.

The third installment in a Pirate Metrics with Firebase series focuses on activation, the stage after user acquisition where the goal is to encourage new users to engage with a product before they forget about or uninstall it. It emphasizes identifying data-driven activation milestones, such as adding friends in a social app or completing levels in a game, then experimenting to move more users past those points. Firebase Remote Config supports these experiments by allowing developers to change server-side key/value settings that alter in-app experiences without requiring app updates, while random-percentile targeting can create A/B tests. Teams can measure results through analytics, expand successful experiments dynamically, and improve activation by first defining target metrics and then testing alternatives such as tutorials, signup methods, or introductory game difficulty.

Firebase Hosting has introduced HTTP/2 support for all firebaseapp.com traffic and newly provisioned custom domains, providing performance benefits such as multiplexed requests, compressed headers, efficient binary data transfer, and experimental server push. HTTP/2 is automatically used by compatible browsers, and developers are encouraged to avoid excessive file concatenation and domain sharding, serve a manageable number of cacheable files from one domain, and load nonessential resources on demand. Firebase Hosting’s experimental server push can be configured through Link headers in firebase.json to preload or push critical JavaScript and CSS assets, although developers should avoid pushing cached or unnecessary files because of bandwidth costs. The rollout also moves SSL certificates to Server Name Indication (SNI), requiring some older custom-domain users to update CNAME or A-record DNS settings before receiving HTTP/2 support, with a full migration planned by the end of 2016.

Firebase and Google Play Services Tasks support asynchronous API results through success, failure, and completion listeners, with listener registration options that affect lifecycle and threading behavior. A listener added without additional parameters runs on the main thread, making it suitable for UI updates but potentially causing an Activity memory leak if an unfinished Task retains an anonymous listener that implicitly references a destroyed Activity. Supplying an Activity as an argument scopes the listener to that Activity and automatically removes it at onStop(), though developers must preserve task state separately if work should continue across Activity replacements such as orientation changes. Alternatively, supplying an Executor runs callbacks on developer-controlled background threads, enabling blocking or concurrent processing but requiring careful executor lifecycle management. Completion listeners provide a single callback for both successful and failed Tasks, allowing code to inspect isSuccessful(), retrieve a result, or handle an exception, while separate success and failure listeners offer equivalent behavior in a different style.

Registration has opened for the Firebase Dev Summit, a full-day developer event in Berlin, Germany, focused on using Firebase to build applications for iOS, Android, and the web. Following Firebase’s expansion into a unified app platform announced at Google I/O, the summit will feature presentations from Firebase staff and partners, potential product updates, networking with local developers, and opportunities to meet product managers and engineers. Attendees will also participate in hands-on workshops and codelabs covering Firebase features, with engineers available to provide guidance and answer questions. Space is limited and registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Firebase 3.6 for iOS introduces bug fixes and features supporting iOS 10, with developers encouraged to update their CocoaPods dependencies or frameworks and recompile their projects. Firebase Cloud Messaging now supports iOS 10 user notifications through the newer notification center handler while retaining compatibility with older remote-notification methods. In response to updated App Store review guidelines, the release removes certain usage-description errors and discontinues technology used to measure iOS Search app-install ads from Safari; Firebase Invites users must add an NSContactsUsageDescription message because the feature accesses contacts to suggest invitation recipients. Firebase Auth also adds a simulator workaround for Xcode 8 keychain issues by using NSUserDefaults in the simulator while continuing to use the keychain on physical devices, restoring the ability to develop and test authentication flows there.

Firebase and Google Play services use the Task API to handle asynchronous operations, such as network requests, file access, and long computations, without blocking Android’s main thread and causing interface lag or application-not-responding errors. Introduced with Play services 9.0.0, Tasks provide a lightweight, Android-aware mechanism through which APIs such as Firebase Storage return a result that can later trigger success or failure listeners, often on the main thread so applications can safely update views. A Task represents a one-time operation, retains its final result for listeners added after completion, and uses generic types to define successful result data, while failures deliver exceptions that may need type-specific handling. This differs from persistent Firebase listeners such as Firebase Authentication’s AuthStateListener, which immediately reports the current state and continues reporting future changes. Developers should also manage Task listener lifetimes carefully to avoid leaking Activities, invoking obsolete UI state, or performing unnecessary work, while recognizing that Tasks complement rather than replace Android threading tools such as Services, Loaders, and Handlers.

Effective user acquisition requires more than simply launching a product, and Firebase is presented as a suite of tools for measuring and improving this stage of Pirate Metrics. Its AdWords integration lets developers track app opens and campaign performance, assess which campaigns attract both cost-effective and engaged users, attribute installs from more than 30 additional networks, and organize users into audiences by acquisition source. Advertisers can also optimize campaigns around important in-app events, such as starting a multiplayer game, and retarget defined Firebase Analytics audiences with tailored offers. Firebase Dynamic Links complement these capabilities by providing shareable URLs that direct users to the appropriate app store or, for existing users, directly into relevant app content, while preserving custom data through installation to support personalized deep links for channels such as social media.