Learning Android programming using Android Studio (Android for beginners Book 1)

Learning Android programming using Android Studio (Android for beginners Book 1)

You can develop your own Android apps. It€s fun and it€s easy! <br />We€ll show you how to build your own Contacts app. <br />Download a FREE working version of the app. Try it out. Get a feel of what you€ll build. <br />Check your progress as you build the app, download the project code. It€s FREE! <br />Using the latest development environment €“ Android Studio - we take you through the building process step-by-step. <br />We show you the basics first. Then we build on that. When you€re finished, you€ll have a solid foundation on which to build any app. <br />Using lots of images and detailed explanations, we make it easy for you. <br />It€s the simplest way to learn Android development. <br />And there's a bonus too! We include links to our popular tutorials as well as to the official documentation. <br />Android apps are made up of many parts. We cover the essentials that you will need to build any Android app. <br />This is what you'll learn: <br />The manifest file €“ this is where you declare crucial information about your app which the Android system needs to know <br />Activities €“ an important component of any Android app. It provides the screen that the user interacts with <br />The activity lifecycle €“ we€ll show you how to make use of the different life stages of an activity to execute tasks at critical points <br />ActionBarActivity €“ Action bars are the strip at the top of the screen containing the app icon, title and perhaps the menu button. It€s only been around since Honeycomb. Using the ActionBarActivity class lets you use an ActionBar on earlier devices <br />ListActivity - list activities are specialised activities that we use to display scrolling lists <br />Adapters - we use adapters to link data to a view. We€ll show you how to use one to link our contacts data to the list that we display <br />Alert dialogs - dialogs are small windows that pop up on the screen which require the user to do something, like press a button. We€ll show you how to build and display an alert dialog <br />Shared preferences - we use shared preferences to save primitive data in a file which we can access from anywhere in the app <br />Toast messages - toast messages are short messages that appear onscreen for a second or 2, informing the user about something. We€ll show you how to use them in your app <br />LogCat messages €“ we€ll show you how to use the LogCat to debug your app <br />Listener interfaces such as the OnEditorActionListener and the OnClickListener - we€ll show you how to use them to listen for critical events such as when the user presses a button <br />Intents €“ intents are a crucial part of the Android messaging system. We€ll use them for passing primitive data and for starting activities <br />Layouts €“ We€ll use layout files to define our screen layouts <br />Text views, Image views, Buttons and Radio buttons - these are some of the views that we use in our app <br />Keyboard €“ the soft keyboard is useful for capturing a user€s input. We€ll use one to capture a contact€s data <br />Menus €“ we€ll use a menu to navigate between the different screens. We€ll also create a menu class which makes it easier to add menu€s to an activity <br />Resources like strings, dimensions, colours, arrays and drawables - these are the essential extras for any app. We€ll show you how to create them, where to put them and how to use them