Practical Android Projects

Ask yourself...how do you learn best? Well, like most programmers, you may well prefer to have a solid, real app that you can tear apart and analyze bit by bit. Featured on phones like the Google Nexus One, the Motorola Droid, the Samsung Galaxy S, a variety of HTC phones, and the many Android-based tablet computers, Android is a powerful, full-featured, open source mobile platform that is ready for discovery, use, and creative programming.

This Android Projects book provides you first with a brief and concise introduction to the Android platform. It then dives right into setting up the Android SDK. Starting from scratch, you will learn how to set up the tools and configure Eclipse and Netbeans with their appropriate Android plug-ins on top of the Android SDK. Then you will build and extend fun mobile applications using the Android SDK, Java, Scripting Layer for Android, and languages such as Python, Ruby, Javascript/HTML, Flex/AIR, and Lua.

What you’ll learn

• The quickest way to get a working Android virtual device up and running your code
• Key Android platform architecture concepts and application principles
• Build, debug, and sign your Java Android apps with the SDK tools, Eclipse, and Netbeans
• Code for an open, accessible, component-based, mobile, and powerful computing platform
• Code Android applications with open web development technologies for maximum cross-platform compatibility
• Code Android applications with Python, Ruby, Javascript/HTML, and Flex
• Extend Android Java application code with free and open source scripting languages
• Develop Android applications that interact with social web applications
• Get up and running with Android graphics and game development

About the Authors

Lucas L. Jordan is a life long computer enthusiast and has worked for many years as a Java developer. He is currently interested in mobile development and in using JavaFX to finish the many computer games he has started over the years.

Pieter H. C. Greyling admits to falling for the joys of coding on Turing complete Texas Instruments and Casio programmable calculators. This was duly followed by the Zen of desk checking pencil-coded COBOL programs, mainframe hex dumps on many a midnight, over two decades of corporate IT, the birth of the Internet, and grappling with myriad platforms and programming languages. He has great enthusiasm for the potential of little devices, the web, and free and open source computing.