Quite a long time ago we started our series on the image loading library Glide. What was planned as a pretty short series got longer and longer over time. We appreciate your continuous interest and feedback. We hope you learned as much as we did. Let's review what topics we've covered. We urge you to take a minute and go over the list to confirm you got everything out of this Glide series.
Basics of Image, Gif and Video Loading with Glide
We started easy with an introduction to Glide and demonstrating the way Glide loads images, Gifs and local videos. This part is for everyone who is new to Glide.
Image Display & Placeholders
Next, we looked at how to use Glide in adapters for ListViews or GridViews. We also showed you Glide's implementation for placeholders and fade animations.
Image Resizing & Thumbnails
After learning how to load and display images we moved on to basic image manipulation. First, we've introduced you the possible options of Glide to change the size and scaling of images. We also showed how you can request and utilize thumbnails.
Caching & Request Priorities
Glide, just like any image loading library on Android, lives and dies on the capabilities of its caching component. In the caching basics post we've presented the architectural overview of the approach Glide is taking. Also, we're showing how to manipulate the cache behavior for single requests. In the following blog post, we've presented how you can prioritize requests and make sure more important images are getting loaded and displayed first.
Callbacks With Glide Targets
Until the next two blog posts, we've always assumed that you're loading images into standard ImageViews. In these two we go over the option on how to use Glide to asynchronously load images into various targets. If you need to load images into custom views, notifications or app widgets, these are for you:
- Callbacks: SimpleTarget and ViewTarget for Custom View Classes
- Loading Images into Notifications and RemoteViews
Exceptions and Debugging
When creating new apps, not everything will work right away during the development process. It's important to know how to approach situations where you don't know why something doesn't work. That's why we've included a special blog post just on debugging and error handling. It might not sound as appealing, but gives you important mental know-how for the issues of the future:
Glide Transformations
After showing you all the basics of Glide, we've moved on to more customized features. If you need to manipulate images before displaying them, the custom transformation blog posts are for you:
Glide Animations
Glide cannot only transform images, it can also control the display of the image. If you want to add an eye-popping animation to the display of your images, read the following blog post:
Glide Modules
Our last topic block was Glide modules. Glide modules give an abstract way of customizing literally every component and behavior of Glide. If you are seriously using Glide in your production apps, make sure you go through these. Possibly there is a gem in it for you!
- Integrating Network Stacks
- Customize Glide with Modules
- Glide Module Example: Self-Signed HTTPS Network Stack
- Glide Module Example: Customize Caching
- Glide Module Example: Optimizing By Loading Images In Custom Sizes
- Dynamically Use Model Loaders
Finally: Glide, The Book
If you've gone through one or more blog posts in this series in the past, you've seen the hints to our book. We've published the Glide book a while ago to give the interested users early access to a coherent introduction to Glide in a single PDF (or .mobi/.epub) file. Additionally, we've added some extra content as a thank you. No worries, you didn't miss too much if you're just reading the blog posts. But for all of you who did support us and future series by buying the book: thank you!
Once again, thank all of you for your interest and encouragement. We appreciate it a lot.
Lastly: Is there anything you miss in this series? Something we can do better? Let us know in the comments.
We're looking forward to see you in the next Future Studio series :)