Android Question Left behind...

Kevin

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For various reasons, I haven't so much as looked at my code for several years. I'd like to get back into it and in the meantime, I have kept up my Enterprise license. Wow! Things have changed! :eek:

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at all of the changes between the IDE and reading about Google enforcing minimum API levels in the near future. My apps currently available on Google Play had already gotten complicated and now I see that I have a lot of catching up to do to bring them up to today's standards.

A couple questions if anyone can help:

I have long despised ads and have never put them in any of my apps, but I think this is the only way to go in order to monetize some of them. Which one pays the best for simple banner ads? Do I need to go the Firebase route or just a few extra lines in the manifest? I know nothing about putting ads in my app. Some will never have ads but I do plan to make some other apps with ads.

1) Is it complicated to add support for in-app purchases? I would likely only have this as an option for people to pay to get rid of ads.

2) Just how do "unlocker" apps work? I assume you would check for a valid license in the unlocker app and then have the main app and unlocker somehow communicate with each other to validate the paid features or hide ads.

3) Is OKHttp pretty much a drop-in replacement for HttpUtils? Or is it complicated? One of my apps, in particular, does a lot of network stuff.

4) What is the easiest way to use customized non-standard dialogs? I think I can use the custom layout dialogs where you design them in the designer. The biggest issue would be having them size appropriately depending on how much text they contain. This sounds like it will be complicated but perhaps not. My reasons for wanting to use custom dialogs is so that they are uniform across Android versions and fit nicely with the app's overall look and feel. I would almost prefer to just somehow assign a 9-patch and black background to the default dialogs. Is that even possible? I don't know much about 9-patch or how to utilize them.

5) Any other tips or suggestions would be appreciated. To give you an idea of how long I've been away, the last version of B4A I actively used was v3.82! To say I am lost and wary of working on these apps again is an understatement! ;)

6) Another question: I might try to get away from using DirExternal just to avoid needing the user to approve of it. The thing is, I don't know how else to achieve the same effect. Basically, I have three apps that are all related to each other and I store a copy of their settings in an external folder just so they can read each other's settings. One example is so that when the user tries the free version of one app then buys the paid version, I wanted the paid version to read the settings without having to re-do it all. How else can I achieve this other than using external storage?
 
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Erel

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