Learning Android Application Programming : A Hands-On Guide to Building Android Applications

Learning Android™ Application Programming will help you master modern Android programming by building a fully functional app from the ground up. Working with the Android 4.3 toolset, you’ll solve real-world problems faced by every Android developer and learn best practices for success with any mobile development project.

 
Ideal for developers who have little or no Android experience but have basic Java experience, this tutorial teaches through carefully structured exercises that address the entire development process. Leading Android developers James Talbot and Justin McLean guide you through building a real biking mobile app that can handle everything from mileage tracking to route planning. Each chapter builds your knowledge, step-by-step, and in the end you will have a complete, working app.

Along the way, you’ll gain hands-on experience with writing code that can run on the widest spectrum of devices while still leveraging Android’s newest features. You’ll also discover proven solutions for the occasionally messy realities of Android development, from inaccurate sensor data to inadequate device battery life–pitfalls that most other Android books ignore.

Learn how to

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  Set up your Android development environment on Windows or Mac operating systems
  
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  Quickly create a simple, working app that demonstrates basic Android principles
  
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  Master core building blocks, such as Activities, Intents, Services, and Resources
  
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  Build a functional user interface, and then make it more intuitive and usable
  
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  Professionally style your Android app
  
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  Make your app location-aware
  
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  Integrate social networking features
  
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  Build highly efficient threaded apps
  
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  Integrate database support to read and write data
  
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  Make your app run faster, while using less memory and power
  
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  Efficiently test and debug your app
  
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  Easily internationalize your app for multiple countries and languages
  
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  Sell your app through Google Play and the Amazon AppStore
  

Get all of this book’s sample code at www.androiddevbook.com/code.html.

Register your book at informit.com/register to gain access to the Bonus KitKat Chapter.

Download the free version of this book’s On Your Bike app from Google Play today.

James Talbot has been with Adobe for more than a decade, on both the sales engineering and training teams, and has many years of experience working with web applications. He is currently working on constructing exciting web, mobile web, and Android applications built on top of a Java Content Repository based on open source standards. He cowrote Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript 2.0 (New Riders Press, 2004) and Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source (Adobe Press, 2008). He has also recorded training videos for Lynda.com and Total Training as well as spent extensive time teaching in the classroom. He has extensive knowledge of all Adobe web products and has spoken at numerous conferences.

Justin Mclean has been writing code since the early days of the web. For fifteen years he has managed his own consulting company, Class Software, and during that time he has worked on hundreds of browser, desktop, and mobile applications. He has seen significant changes of technology in the industry, surviving the browser wars and the dot-com bubble. He is an Apache Flex committer, board member and release manager; an Adobe Community Professional; teaches training courses; and has spoken at numerous conferences all over the world. In his spare time he tinkers about with open source electronics.