Rapid Android Development

Create mobile apps for Android phones and tablets faster and more easily than you ever imagined. Use "Processing," the free, award-winning, graphics-savvy language and development environment, to work with the touchscreens, hardware sensors, cameras, network transceivers, and other devices and software in the latest Android phones and tablets.

Whether you're a student, teacher, hobbyist, or experienced developer, Rapid Android Development puts the fast-growing market for Android phone and tablet applications within your reach. Without needing to master the complexities of Java, Eclipse, or the Android SDK, you'll find yourself writing dazzling graphics displays and location-aware programs in no time.

With more than 30 ready-to-run demos, applications, and games, you'll find yourself diving deeper than you thought possible into the treasure trove of software and hardware packed into today's Android devices. You'll learn how to:

* Access the Android touch screen, keyboard, and gestures to create eye-popping user experiences.

* Tap into Android's on-board sensors for orientation, location, motion, geolocation, and more to build environment-aware applications.

* Use Android's built-in networking devices to access the Internet, network with nearby Android devices, and interact with NFC-formatted RFID tags.

* Create OpenGL accelerated 2D and 3D graphics.

* Integrate camera images, video, and face-detection into your mobile apps.

* Take selected apps cross-platform with new Processing support for HTML 5 and JavaScript.

And once the prototyping is done, you can easily move your work to Eclipse for debugging and deployment.

What You Need:

Users will need to install Version 2.0 of the Processing open source language and environment, a free download at processing.org. Readers also need to install the free Android SDK (Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 or higher) and the Ketai library for Processing. An Android phone or tablet is required to test most of the examples in the book.

Daniel Sauter is an artist and educator with eight years of experience teaching Processing. His work has been shown internationally in numerous exhibitions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Sauter is an Associate Professor of New Media Arts at University of Illinois at Chicago, and organizer of the Chicago Mobile Processing Conference.