My challenge for this year is to learn a new programming language or software development technology. While I don’t intend adopting the suggestion of The Pragmatic Programmer and learning one new language each year, I do think that there is much to be gained by seeing what else is out there. With the booming popularity of the Android platform for mobile devices I thought what better place to start? Over the past few weeks I have taken the first few steps in learning about Android application development.

1. Android Software Development – The First Few Hours Coast Nerds – 15 March 2011 Image: www.android.com

3. Why did I choose this platform?

4. What do you need to get started developing Android Applications?

5. How to create your first App?

6. Where to Next?

9. Built on modified version of the Linux Kernel

10. Android Inc. founded in 2003. Purchased by Google in 2005 as wholly owned subsidiary

11. The Open Handset Alliance (est. 2007) collaborated on development, release and on-going maintenance/development.

13. First Android Mobile Phone: T-Mobile G1 (or HTC Dream) Released October 2008

14. Android consists of Java Applications running on Java core libraries running on a Dalvic Virtual Machine. Some core libraries also written in C/++

16. Grew to 33% by Q4 2010

18. Why did I choose this Platform? Image: www.popsiculturereviews.blogspot.com

20. Apple iPhone

21. Windows Phone

22. Symbian

23. Research In Motion (RIM/Blackberry)

24. HP WebOS (Palm)

25. AndroidCanalysis – Worldwide Q4 2010

31. Install and configure the Android Plug-in for Eclipse (ADT) Start Eclipse, then select Help > Install New Software.... Click Add, in the top-right corner. In the Add Repository dialog that appears, enter "ADT Plugin" for the Name and the following URL for the Location: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/Note: If you have trouble acquiring the plugin, try using "http" in the Location URL, instead of "https" (https is preferred for security reasons). Click OK. In the Available Software dialog, select the checkbox next to Developer Tools and click Next. In the next window, you'll see a list of the tools to be downloaded. Click Next. NOTE: Selecting all tools will take some time to download. Read and accept the license agreements, then click Finish. When the installation completes, restart Eclipse. More Details Here http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html

32. Test Installation In Eclipse choose File -> New Project from the menu. You should see an option to create an Android Project and an Android Test Project

33. The SDK / AVD Manager The Android SDK is componentised allowing you to customise your development environment for your target platform The SDK Manager allows you to manage components for your specific requirements. It is located in the sdk folder (installed at step 3) android-sdk-windowsDK Manager.exe You can also access the SDK Manager from within Eclipse by clicking on the toolbar icon as shown below AVD = Android Virtual Device

34. SDK Manager showing Available packages to download

35. SDK Manager showing installed packages

36. Android SDK Supported Operating Systems Windows XP (32-bit), Vista (32- or 64-bit), or Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit) Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later (x86 only) Linux (tested on Ubuntu Linux, Lucid Lynx) GNU C Library (glibc) 2.7 or later is required. On Ubuntu Linux, version 8.04 or later is required. 64-bit distributions must be capable of running 32-bit applications. For information about how to add support for 32-bit applications, see the Ubuntu Linux installation notes.

37. How to create your first App. Hello World! Image: www.jeffbots.com

39. Enter Project Name Choose a Target Platform (if the list of platforms are blank you will need to use the SDK Manager to install some for your PC). Enter Properties Application Name Package Name Ensure “Create Activity” is checked and enter the default Activity Name. Enter the Min SDK Version Click Next

40. The next screen asks about creating a test project for your application. At this stage ignore this option and click next (… sorry to the TDD faithful!) Click Finish At this point your Hello World Application is done. By default a simple “Hello World” app is created.

56. Note that you do not need to stop the debugger or close the application in any way from Eclipse.

57. When finished debugging simply go back to your phone and disable the debugging features (enabled in the previous slide) then continue to disconnect your phone in the normal manor.

62. Debugging using the Dalvik Debug Monitor Service (DDMS). This is a more advanced debugging tool that give you more visibility and control over the debugging process.

63. Application Design – Context, Activities and Intents. These are the main building blocks to an Android app. This is where the actual coding begins!

64. More on Resources and State management. Using images and how to store app/user settings.

66. That’s All. Image: www.blogs.eveningsun.com