The 10 best fonts for programming: A guide

Here, we'll look at ten fonts favoured by programmers, including some of the latest typefaces and some retro classics. Let's get right into it. Fira Code Fira Code is one of the most popular fonts for developers, having been developed with special programming ligatures from Mozilla's Fira Mono typeface. You can see these used in the Sublime Text 3.1 screenshot above, with the != and <= operators being represented via a single glyph to aid readability. It also appears a little softer than...

16 May 2018 | Development Tools

Efail exploit circumvents PGP and S/MIME email encryption

If you rely on encrypted email via PGP or S/MIME, you may want to temporarily switch to a new form of communication, as serious issues have been found with how these standards are implemented in many popular email programs on Windows, Linux, macOS and Android.

Following an initial advisory on Monday, European researchers published an exploit called Efail in a paper called Breaking S/Mime and OpenPGP Email Encryption Using Exfiltration Channels.

The paper outlines...

15 May 2018 | Developer

Learn through doing with Build Your Own X

Swiss developer Daniel Stefanovic has created an impressive resource for developers, called Build Your Own X. This GitHub repository is a carefully vetted list of tutorials, designed to help you actually understand a topic by building a simple - yet functional - implementation.

The idea

For example, if you wanted to know more about how blockchain or cryptocurrencies work, you could create your own in an afternoon. Going through that process means that you can't just fake...

14 May 2018 | Development Tools

Android Studio gets Chrome OS emulation

Last week, we covered the exciting news that Google had added Linux app support to Chrome OS, allowing apps like Android Studio to run on Chromebooks. Now we're looking at things from another angle, as Google have added a Chrome OS emulator to Android Studio.

That means developers can now test how Android apps will run on Chrome OS, without needing to have physical access to a Chromebook themselves. 

Given the impressive sales numbers of Chromebooks, particularly...

14 May 2018 | Android

Apple removes location leaking apps ahead of GDPR deadline

This week Apple has started outright removing iOS apps that don't comply with their location privacy standards. After tacitly permitting these apps for months, Apple has begun delisting leaky iOS apps and sending emails to app developers who have fallen afoul of the rules.

The move comes just two weeks before the EU-wide General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force, although it's not clear whether Apple is moving in response to the new rules or merely...

11 May 2018 | Android

Notepad gets *nix EOL support, Sublime Text adds ligatures and more

Here are the latest updates to your favourite text editors. This week, we've got a long-requested change to the venerable notepad.exe, and a raft of changes to Sublime Text.

Notepad finally adds *nix line ending support

It's finally happened -- Microsoft has added Unix line ending support to Notepad, the default text editor on Windows machines.

The update, which comes perhaps a decade after anyone expected it, finally allows Notepad to open text files created on...

11 May 2018 | Development Tools

Vulkan 1.1 on Android P brings VR improvements and more

In March, the first major update to the Vulkan cross-platform GPU API was released, and as of this week, Google have confirmed version 1.1 will be supported by Android P. Here's what you need to know about Vulkan 1.1 for Android development.

First of all, there are several features here are big news for the update as a whole, but aren't likely to be relevant to Android P devices. Multiple GPU support is perhaps the headline feature in this category, as it requires two or...

11 May 2018 | Android

Googles 4K Android TV dongle available to devs now

While Google's Android OS has become a giant in the smartphone industry, it's failed to catch on in other form factors. Android TV is one case in point; announced in 2014, the OS for TVs and set top boxes has remained a bit player in the Android ecosystem. This year, Google is trying to get more app makers to target the platform with a particularly juicy hook: an Android TV dongle running Android P, offered exclusively to developers.

This 4K-capable Android TV device...

9 May 2018 | Android

Linux app support coming to Chrome OS

Google's I/O developer conference kicked off yesterday, bringing with it a raft of announcements of interest to programmers and users alike. While demonstrations like Google Assistant's natural call to a hair salon took centre stage, Google also slipped in a big scoop for developers: Linux app support will soon be added to Chrome OS.

Historically, developers interested in working on Chromebook hardware such as Google's line of Pixelbooks have had to boot Linux on their...

9 May 2018 | Android