Android Wireless Application Development Volume I: Android Essentials (Developer's Library)

Android Wireless Application Development has earned a reputation as the most useful real-world guide to building robust, commercial-grade Android apps. Now, authors Lauren Darcey and Shane Conder have systematically revised and updated this guide for the latest Android SDK 4.0. To accommodate their extensive new coverage, they’ve split the book into two volumes. Volume I focuses on Android essentials, including setting up your development environment, understanding the application lifecycle, designing effective user interfaces, developing for diverse devices, and optimizing your mobile app development process--from design through publishing. Every chapter has been thoroughly updated for the newest APIs, tools, utilities, and hardware. All sample code has been overhauled and tested on leading devices from multiple companies, and many new examples have been added. Drawing on decades of in-the-trenches experience as professional mobile developers, Darcey and Conder provide valuable new best practices--including powerful techniques for constructing more portable apps. This new edition contains full chapters on Android manifest files, content providers, effective app design, and testing; an all-new chapter on tackling compatibility issues; coverage of today’s most valuable new Android tools and utilities; and even more exclusive tips and tricks. An indispensable resource for every Android development team member.

 

Lauren Darcey is responsible for the technical leadership and direction of a small software company specializing in mobile technologies, including Android, iOS, Blackberry, Palm Pre, BREW, and J2ME and consulting services. With more than two decades of experience in professional software production, Lauren is a recognized authority in application architecture and the development of commercial-grade mobile applications. Lauren received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

 

She spends her copious free time traveling the world with her geeky mobile-minded husband and is an avid nature photographer. Her work has been published in books and newspapers around the world. In South Africa, she dove with 4-meter-long great white sharks and got stuck between a herd of rampaging hippopotami and an irritated bull elephant. She’s been attacked by monkeys in Japan, gotten stuck in a ravine with two hungry lions in Kenya, gotten thirsty in Egypt, narrowly avoided a coup d’etat in Thailand, geocached her way through the Swiss Alps, drank her way through the beer halls of Germany, slept in the crumbling castles of Europe, and gotten her tongue stuck to an iceberg in Iceland (while being watched by a herd of suspicious wild reindeer).

 

Shane Conder has extensive development experience and has focused his attention on mobile and embedded development for the past decade. He has designed and developed many commercial applications for Android, iOS, BREW, Blackberry, J2ME, Palm, and Windows Mobile--some of which have been installed on millions of phones worldwide. Shane has written extensively about the mobile industry and evaluated mobile development platforms on his tech blogs and is well-known within the blogosphere. Shane received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California.

 

A self-admitted gadget freak, Shane always has the latest smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. He can often be found fiddling with the latest technologies, such as cloud services and mobile platforms, and other exciting, state-of-the-art technologies that activate the creative part of his brain. He also enjoys traveling the world with his geeky wife, even if she did make him dive with 4-meter-long great white sharks and almost get eaten by a lion in Kenya. He admits that he has to take at least two phones with him when backpacking--even though there is no coverage--and that he snickered and whipped out his Android phone to take a picture when Laurie got her tongue stuck to that iceberg in Iceland, and that he is catching on that he should be writing his own bio.

 

Darcey and Conder coauthored Sams Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours.