This week, we look at minimum sizes and minimum states. We work with the new Maps Compose library, write some snapshot tests, and carve some new shapes. We implement showcase views, video players, and radial color pickers. Plus, I hope for more official composable wrappers, like Maps Compose, coming out of the Googleplex.

The advent of Maps Compose is just one of several such wrappers that I hope that Google will roll out over the coming months and years.

“Wrapper” is the key word in that previous sentence. In the end, Maps Compose is using AndroidView to wrap a MapView, no different than you or I might create on our own. The overall map engine has not been rewritten from the ground up using Compose, and it is unclear when (or even if) that will be done.

Still, wrappers are useful. The developers of Maps Compose know Maps better than you or I, and they can focus on creating a wrapper that implements a clean API that (hopefully) they will support for quite some time. All else being equal, officially-supported wrappers tend to be better choices than ones that you create yourself. Over time, more developers will already have knowledge of the official wrapper, whereas nobody but your team knows your custom one.

(“all else” sometimes is not equal, and if you feel that you can do a better job at a wrapper, by all means build it!)

I expect that 2022 will be a big year for official composable wrappers. Compose has had a stable release for six months, and many Google teams might have wanted to wait until a stable release before committing resources to building a relevant wrapper.

My eye is on ExoPlayer; in the meantime, we have independent wrappers, such as the one listed in the “Resource Roundup” section.