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- Wallace Jackson
Learn Android App Development isa hands-ontutorial and useful reference. You'll quickly get up to speed and master the Android SDK and the Java that you need for your Android Apps.The Android SDK offers powerful features, and this book is the fastest path to mastering themand the rest of the Andorid SDKfor programmers with some experience who are new to Android smartphone and tablet apps development. Many books introduce the Android SDK, but very few explain how to develop apps optimally. This book teaches both core Java language concepts and how to wisely but rapidly employ the design patterns and logic using the Android SDK, which is based on Java APIs.You'll also learn best practices that ensure your code will be efficient and perform well. Get an accelerated but complete enough treatment of the fundamentals of Java necessary to get you started. Design your first app using prototyping and other design methods. Build your first Android app using the code given over the course of the book. Finally, debug and distribute your first app on Google Play or other Android app store. After reading this book, you'll have your first app ready and on the app store, earning you the prestige and the money you seek. What youll learn How to get a quick start to learning Android to build your first Android app How the Android development process works and what is the usual workflow How to design an Android app User Interface (UI) How to add interactivity and functionality to your Android appsWho this book is for This book is for those who have some programming experience but who are new to the Android mobile platform. This book is ideal for those who may be coming from iOS programming/development to learn about this other most popular mobile platform, Android. Table of Contents Building Your Android Software Development Environment Exploring Android App Development: Building Your First Hello World App using the Lingo A Java for Android Primer: Enhancing our Hello World Application Designing User Interface Layouts via Android ViewGroup and Activity Classes Using Intents and Events to make an Android Application Interactive Populating a UI Design with Android Widgets via Androids View Class Introduction to Graphics Design in Android: Concepts and Techniques Compositing in Android: Advanced Graphical User Interface Design Android Image Animation: Frame Animation Using XML Constructs Android Vector Animation: Procedural Animation via XML Constructs An Introduction to Digital Video: Video Concepts and Data Optimization Playing Digital Video in Android Apps using the Android VideoView Class An Introduction to Digital Audio: Audio Concepts and Data Optimization Playing Digital Audio in Android Apps using the Android MediaPlayer Class Audio Sequencing for Android Apps using the Android SoundPool Class Using Services to make your Android Application Functional Using Broadcast Receivers to allow an Android Application to Communicate Using Intents to Invoke Android Inter-Application Programming Using Androids SQLite Class to store and access Custom Data Appendix A
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- Learn Android App Development
Reviews
Dan Emanoil Grigoras
The popularity of Android devices is a stimulus to authors to publish new books on how to develop apps for them. Each new book has to bring something really useful in order for it to be successful. This book has met the challenge. In addition to discussing Android concepts and programming characteristics, it includes within the development environment a set of highly interesting open software packages. Indeed, this free software for digital imaging, audio, video, 3D modeling, and animation increases the book's likely appeal to future Android developers. The first two chapters take readers step by step through the process of creating the app development environment and starting their first application. Readers can turn on their computers and expect to enjoy their first results in a matter of minutes or hours. The third chapter is about Java, with simple explanations about objects, classes, packages, and so on. Obviously, programmers already familiar with Java can skip it. The next three chapters introduce the Android user interface (UI), starting with the most commonly used layouts and activities, proceeding to the key concepts of intent and event, and wrapping up with UI design. All of these features are implemented in the sample app, which starts simple and becomes more complex as the book progresses. The next four chapters present a tutorial on imaging and animation. After an introduction on graphics concepts and techniques in the context of Android (for example, the drawable class), the author discusses multi-state UI elements and compositing of graphics elements, frame-based animation using Extensible Markup Language (XML) constructs, and vector animation. All techniques are applied to the ongoing sample app. The next topics addressed are mobile video and audio, which makes sense considering Jackson's experience in multimedia writing. Each of these is covered in two chapters, the first laying the foundations of the topic and the second describing Android support for its implementation. The remaining chapters focus on more advanced concepts, including services, broadcast receivers, and content providers (databases). They are well placed toward the end of the book and could be a nice reward for the committed reader. Although the author discusses performance aspects briefly when introducing video and audio, the book could have paid more attention to performance and resource management (especially with regard to the battery), perhaps even devoting a full chapter to this. Many users are not aware of these issues and may get tripped up if they ignore performance. Also, the level of detail is occasionally too high. These small criticisms aside, programmers will find this book of interest, and even novices could use it to learn how to program Android apps. Readers will find everything clearly explained in this self-contained book. More reviews about this item: Amazon Online Computing Reviews Service
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