Ultimate Guide To Learning Android Development
The 21st century marks the beginning of a new era i.e. the era of “Information and Technology.” The advancements in information and technology turned out to be revolutionary. I.T. greatly influenced the sociological, economic conditions and functions of the entire world. Among many contributions by I.T., Android development is quite a popular and impactful one.
Android development was initiated about 12 years ago in 2007 and still holds its position high up in the market. We can easily admit the fact that Android has captured a major chunk of the smartphone market and is by far the leader! Are you not convinced yet? Well, you better be, because studies reveal that the mobile operating system has grown to include a whopping 1.4 billion active users. And guess what; 80% of smartphones today run on Android software. Over 1 billion Android phones were sold in 2014 alone. Amazing, right? So, let’s try and understand the Android software to have a better idea about what it really is? Let’s learn how Android did its brand positioning and how it became so successful?
How Android came into existence?
More than a decade ago, in the year 2005 when Google had already marked its 7th anniversary, it was secretly planning for another milestone. That was the time when Google had started planning on buying Android. Inc.
Android Inc. was a start-up that was a software development company for mobiles specifically. Basically, it was the company that created Android software. However, after a lot of effort, Google bought the start-up and successfully released the Android to the world in 2007. Being the competitor of Apple, it was really hard for Google to be vigilant and smart enough to launch and publicize the software before its competitor, Apple. As a result, Android easily managed to get recognized and was being used in different smartphones for multiple companies, soon after it got out into the market.
What is the fundamental concept of Android development?
As mentioned before, Google Inc. was attempting to purchase Android Inc., which created the Android software that could be accessible in mobiles. After several negotiations, Google bought the company and allowed the software to rule the world. Android is an open-source mobile platform in the form of software. Android development has its science and a lengthy process and definition to describe. But, I’ll try and keep it simple! So, the basic concept of Android Development is pretty easy that defines it as a process used to create applications in Android mobile phones, comprising an android operating system. The Android Development process utilizes Kotlin, C++ languages, and Java languages to write and develop Android applications. Apart from language usage for Android development, it can also be done through non-language resources e.g. Go, Java script and even using cross-platform app support to create applications.
A brief explanation of Android development functions:
To learn the core elements of Android development, it is important to know a few things that include various notable points.
— First of all, focusing on the development of a bug-free application is necessary.
— Secondly, the fragment plus lifecycle of an application is vital to be learned.
— The third point includes the learning of debugging the application.
— Fourthly, have an idea of what navigation is and how it is done.
— The fifth ability includes know-how about the context during Android development.
— The sixth point is about getting to know the threading in detail.
— The last point covers the essential tasking about content providing.
A person should have the knowledge to share data between applications and could encapsulate the data. However, there are other various points too to be absorbed for understanding and handling the process of Android development. There are separate courses for learning the process and to be eligible and recognized as an Android developer.
How Android became so successful?
Android has been an amazing software and its huge demand is evident to stamp its authority. Its prosperity has a core cause behind it. The main reason behind its success is because it being open-source. It means that Android has permitted developers to create and manage applications without any restrictions. So, how does Android make free access possible? Easy and free access to developers became plausible just because of the ease of access ability in the app builder libraries of Java code. Therefore, it becomes the most important advantage for Android to increase its worth and number of users at the same time.
Secondly, the best part of Android being open source has also become advantageous for its Play Store. The Android being maker friendly allowed free installation of apps, resulting in more than 1 million launches of apps in its Play store, popularly known as Google Play Store. It is because of this free access for people around the world, to launch the app in the play store, Android has seen a rise in its number of applications. As a result, an increase in the number of applications has also increased the number of users around the globe. The diversity and availability of a large number of applications’ options attracted a large number of customers and mobile developers. This, ultimately, established the image of Android as a game-changer.
Lastly, Android development has proven to be a successful launch and progress of software that promises to hold its significant position in the future as well. Android is one of the most prosperous software that gives a new direction to run the businesses, to interact socially, and to create start-ups in the form of app launch freely, etc. Android has given a new idea that directed the world to run differently and today, Android development becomes one of the most significant causes of changing a traditional world into a modern one. A great thanks to Android for creating easy and free access as an open-source, to benefit all.
About This Android Development Guide
This guide offers the most insightful articles, educational videos, expert insights, specialist tips and best free tutorials about android development from around the internet. The learning guide is split into four levels: introduction, basics, advanced and expert. You can learn at your own pace. Each item shows an estimated reading or watching time, allowing you to easily plan when you want to read or watch each item. Below you’ll find a table of contents that enables you to easily find a specific topic you might be interested in.
What Is the Google Android Operating System?
Android is a widely-adopted open-source project. Google actively develops the Android platform but gives a portion of it for free to hardware manufacturers and phone carriers who want to use Android on their devices. Google only charges manufacturers if they also install the Google apps portion of the OS. Many (but not all) major devices that use Android also opt for the Google apps portion of the service.
Developing for Android: An Introduction
From a developer’s perspective, Android is a Linux-based operating system for smartphones and tablets. It includes a touch screen user interface, widgets, camera, network data monitoring and all the other features that enable a cell phone to be called a smartphone. Android is a platform that supports various applications, available through the Android Play Store. The Android platform also allows end users to develop, install and use their own applications on top of the Android framework. The Android framework is licensed under the Apache License, with Android application developers holding the right to distribute their applications under their customized license.
Beginner's Guide to Android Development
Android is a popular computing platform based on the Linux® operating system. The initial commercial version of Android hit the market in 2008 in the form of a mobile phone platform, back when the most popular cell phone for a business user was the BlackBerry, when the iPhone was beginning to make meaningful waves across all sectors, and when the majority of phone users were still tapping out texts from a flip phone.
An Overview of the Android Architecture
A good Android development knowledge foundation requires an understanding of the overall architecture of Android. Android is implemented in the form of a software stack architecture consisting of a Linux kernel, a runtime environment and corresponding libraries, an application framework and a set of applications. Applications are predominantly written in Java or Kotlin and compiled down to bytecode format within the Android Studio build environment.
How to Build an Android App: Setting up Eclipse and Android SDK
In this video, Elite Recognized Developer AdamOutler covers several topics which will get you started on developing your first Android Application. This instructional video covers the entire process from start to finish of creating and loading a new application onto your device.
Cross-platform Frameworks for Mobile Development
The Android operating system dominates the mobile landscape. Individuals, small businesses, and large enterprises work hard to establish a strong mobile presence and grab their share of the market. However, not everyone has the expertise and resources required to build an app from scratch using native tools.
The aim of frameworks is to make mobile development as simple as possible.
Create and Manage Android Virtual Devices
An Android Virtual Device (AVD) is a configuration that defines the characteristics of an Android phone, tablet, Wear OS, Android TV, or Automotive OS device that you want to simulate in the Android Emulator. The AVD Manager is an interface you can launch from Android Studio that helps you create and manage AVDs.
An AVD is crucial as you need it to run and test your Android app.
Best Tools for Android Development
Android developers are able to churn out all these apps much faster and more efficiently thanks to a profusion of sophisticated, integrated development environments (IDEs) as well as other time-saving tools and applications. There are a few Android development solutions that tend to show up over and over again on Android developers’ “favorites” lists.
Android SDK: User Interface Design
We will add the layout to the first app project we created and explored over the past few tutorials and we will continue working on the project throughout this series. We will primarily work with XML and the Eclipse ADT interface in this part, but will start to use a little Java in the next two parts. Both XML and Java coding are involved in many aspects of Android development, so you will need to get a grasp of the basics in these languages if you have not already. If you are new to either language, you will use what we learn in this series as a foundation for future learning.
Android Programming: The Linear Layout
The linear layouts are used mostly by Android developers to tweak user interfaces. It is used frequently, simply because of its simplicity. As the name suggests, it classifies the controls in a linear fashion, whether it’s horizontal or vertical. For example, when the layout defines a vertical orientation, the child controls used within are all positioned in a single column and when it’s set horizontally, child controls are positioned in a single row.
Best Practices for Android User Interface
Devices with different configurations, display densities, customization options and different vendors are available exclusively for Android. Many enterprise mobile application developers look forward to Android as a cost-effective platform.
The challenging stage in application development process is the UI, since the app needs to be optimized to fit various devices with different screen sizes and OS versions.
This article explains the best practices for Android XML Layouts.
Android Intents Tutorial
Android application components can connect to other Android applications. This connection is based on a task description represented by an Intent object.
Intents are asynchronous messages which allow application components to request functionality from other Android components. Intents allow you to interact with components from the same applications as well as with components contributed by other applications.
How to use Content Provider for Data Access
On the Android platform, all persistent data of an app is private to that app. This means that an app cannot query or manipulate the data of another app. However, if you want to enable an app to query or manipulate the data of another app, you need to use the concept of content providers.
How to Store Data Locally in an Android App
The Android platform provides developers with multiple ways to store data, with each method having its advantages and disadvantages. For this article, we’ll discuss the different data storage techniques available to Android developers, along with sample code to get you started, or to refresh your memory.
Data Backup Options Overview
Users often invest significant time and effort creating an identity, adding data, and customizing settings and preferences within your app. Preserving this data and personalization for users when they upgrade to a new device or re-install your app is an important part of ensuring a great user experience. This page describes what data you should back up and the backup options available to you.
Google Maps Android API Tutorial
Google provides via Google play a library for using Google Maps in your application. The following description is based on the Google Maps Android API v2 which provides significant improvements to the older API version.
How to Implement Multi-Threading
Multi-threading is defined as a feature through which we can run two or more concurrent threads of a process. In this process, the common data is shared among all these threads also known as sub-processes exclusively. In Android, there are many ways through which multi-threading can be established in the application.
Android Permissions Overview
The purpose of a permission is to protect the privacy of an Android user. Android apps must request permission to access sensitive user data (such as contacts and SMS), as well as certain system features (such as camera and internet). Depending on the feature, the system might grant the permission automatically or might prompt the user to approve the request.
Android Location Permissions
There may be cases where an application requires access to the users location whilst there is a continuation of user-initiated actions. For example, maybe your app delivers navigation to the user — once the user navigates to their home screen from your app, you’ll want to continue having access to their location in-order to continue serving navigation to them.
App Security Best Practices
By making your app more secure, you help preserve user trust and device integrity. When you safeguard the data that you exchange between your app and other apps, or between your app and a website, you improve your app’s stability and protect the data that you send and receive.
This page presents several best practices that have a significant, positive impact on your app’s security.
How to Make an Android App for Beginners
These days Android Development is done with a tool called Android Studio. Android Studio is kind of like the Microsoft Word of writing Android apps; it helps organize our projects and gives us a user-friendly way to create what we’re looking for. In this video, we’ll walk through installing Android Studio and then make an app. Don’t worry if you don’t have any experience with Android or even programming in general; as long as you follow along we’ll all end up at the same place.
Android Studio For Beginners
This video will demonstrate (1) how to setup a project in Android Studio, (2) how to navigate within Android Studio to build a simple Android application, and (3) how to debug and run an Android app.
Further Reading: Best Books About Android Development
Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. This is an introductory Android book for programmers with Java experience. Based on Big Nerd Ranch’s popular Android bootcamps, this guide will lead you through the wilderness using hands-on example apps combined with clear explanations of key concepts and APIs.
Android Studio 3.0 Development Essentials. Fully updated for Android Studio 3.0 and Android 8, the goal of this book is to teach the skills necessary to develop Android based applications using the Android Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the Android 8 Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Java programming language.
Practical Android: 14 Complete Projects on Advanced Techniques and Approaches. This book is a collection of practical projects that use advanced Android techniques and approaches, written by Android instructor Mark Wickham. Mark has taught a series of popular classes at Android development conferences since 2013 and Practical Android covers content from his most popular classes.
Head First Android Development: A Brain-Friendly Guide. If you have an idea for a killer Android app, this fully revised and updated edition will help you build your first working application in a jiffy. You’ll learn hands-on how to structure your app, design flexible and interactive interfaces, run services in the background, make your app work on various smartphones and tablets, and much more.
Further Learning: Best Android Development Courses
Android App Development by Vanderbilt University. This course enables learners to successfully apply core Java programming language features & software patterns needed to develop maintainable mobile apps comprised of core Android components, as well as fundamental Java I/O & persistence mechanisms.
Build Your First Android App. In this project-centered course, you’ll design, build, and distribute your own unique application for the Android mobile platform. We’ll provide you with a set of customizable building blocks that you can assemble to create many different types of apps, and that will help you become familiar with many important specificities of Android development.
The Complete Android & Java Developer Course. Learn Android development, Java programming and Android studio from scratch. Learn Java programming from a professional trainer from your own desk. Create fun, engaging and real-world Android apps (using Java) you can show to your friends and family. Learn how to work with APIs, web services and advanced databases. Visual training method, offering users increased retention and accelerated learning.