Develop Reference

How do I give a user an option to use my app as default with android

I am making an app that is filtering videos through ID when a link is clicked through deep links. It works but the user has to set the app to open as default. How do I make the little window asking if they would always want to open YouTube links with my app within an activity?

Android screen has a half-transparent black layer after asking for permissions the first time

So, this peccadillo has lingered for too long in my application but there doesn't seems to be any advice related to the problem I face.
I made an Android application which works as an online folder browsing mechanism by showing content in form of folder/file icons and text using a Custom Gridview. The problem I face is only occurs for once and not the second time when I replicate the same process.
The process is of asking for a permission to access the external storage and after use denies or accept it, the screen turns a bit of a semi-transparent layer of black and goes away after I close the application. It only happens in the Activity where GridView is used as a part of the whole layout. Obviously it wouldn't pop up the second time when I accept the permission but when I deny the permission and replicate the same process, the issue doesn't happen again once it's occurred but I'd like to assess what could be behind this weirdness.

The Android "back" button

I am an Apple iPhone user. I have never owned an Android of any type so I am used to the button I have to tap on the screen to go back a screen instead of the physical "back button" that Android has. An iPhone developer has to code the back button in for the user to operate the game but an Android developer does not necessarily have to code a back button and can just rely on the physical button on the phone.
My question is if it is okay for me not to code a button for my Android app and just let the user use the hardware back button on their phone? If there is no back button to tap, will an Android user instinctively know to hit the physical back button to jump back a screen? I don't really know this answer since I have never owned an Android and always rely on the iPhone coded in buttons.
The picture below is me coding in the back button instead of relying on the physical button on the phone. I am wanting to back out the back button from my code.

You shouldn't code a back button on your app. See the pure android guidelines here for more info on android apps look and feel.

Every Android Device contains Back Button. And Android users using the Back button since first version of android released. They All have idea on Back button , No need to implement it separately, User already Habituated it.

I have developed for both iOS and Android, and find the best answer to be using both. Android users know to use the hardware back button, but new users, or former iPhone users, often expect an on-screen button. There is no harm in having both, and an on-screen button may be a nice visual touch.
Cases where you may decide not to have a back button include layout for smaller screens - when screen real-estate is very precious. Just keep in mind that the most important part of an application is the user experience.
The key is to make your app as user friendly to all users - but don't take away the expected experience from dedicated Android users (for instance, if you are developing a single-activity app with multiple popup Views, the ideal performance of the back button will close the view, rather than closing the whole app).

Also if you want to have a button to go back at the top right of the activity, there is a way to add one on the action bar. Take a look at the Android Developers page if you want.

Create a shortcut button with icon and name like samsung's clock app

I want to make a Button or ImageView or something like that to launch an app. At some point i want to make several to keep adding shortcuts like the Samsung desk clock app.
At the moment ive set up some blank Button's in which i want to be able to click, choose the app i want then the app create the icon and name to the button (like above) and it launch the intent when i click it afterwards.
Any ideas, examples etc are brilliant ive got brain ache searching for a way to do this :/

Check out this post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/7107138/1337412
You're basically trying to create a custom "launcher app" if you search StackOverflow and Google, you should be able to find plenty of examples of launcher apps.

Phone gap camera - is there a more powerful option?

I'm looking to build a companion photo capture app for my photo capture website. I was planning to do this with phone gap.
Upon triggering the camera I want to grab a frame (a still, really) up to five times a second and send it to the server (barring any surprises, The sending part should already be dealt with in code I have). I suppose the realtime video from the camera itself should be displayed to the user as well, though I could just use the stop motion frames for that part.
Unfortunately, according to the phone gap docs, one can only launch the phone's cam app, manually take a picture, then return the user to the app.
I am looking into plugins, but I don't see any massive phonegap plugin repository out there, so I am not sure where to begin. I am just rambling now, so here is a list of bulleted questions:
Is there a plugin out there that does something like this already?
Is there a giant repository of phone gap plugins that I am too foolish to find?
If I try to roll my own java plugin (this is for an android app), what am I really getting myself into? Will I need to know enough to just make the damned thing native? I am pretty exclusively in the JS world at the moment, and am trying to get this out the door asap.
Am I missing something and there is a way to to this with vanilla phone gap?
Any other suggestions?
Thanks!

The phonegap plugins are here:
https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins