Book Image

Mastering Android Studio 3

By : Kyle Mew
Book Image

Mastering Android Studio 3

By: Kyle Mew

Overview of this book

Android Studio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed for developing Android apps. As with most development processes, Android keeps resources and logic nicely separated, and so this book covers the management of imagery and other resources, and the development and testing tools provided by the IDE. After introducing the software, the book moves straight into UI development using the sophisticated, WYSIWYG layout editor and XML code to design and test complex interfaces for a wide variety of screen configurations. With activity design covered, the book continues to guide the reader through application logic development, exploring the latest APIs provided by the SDK. Each topic will be demonstrated by working code samples that can be run on a device or emulator. One of Android Studio's greatest features is the large number of third-party plugins available for it, and throughout the book we will be exploring the most useful of these, along with samples and libraries that can be found on GitHub. The final module of the book deals with the final stages of development: building and distribution. The book concludes by taking the reader through the registration and publication processes required by Google. By the time you have finished the book, you will be able to build faster, smoother, and error-free Android applications, in less time and with fewer complications than you ever thought possible.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Summary

This chapter has served as a brief but complete introduction to Android Studio for those readers who are unfamiliar with it. We explored how the workspace is structured and the various flavors of editor available to us. This exploration led us to create a Material Design theme, use tool windows to perform a variety of useful tasks, as well as apply Instant Run to speed up the otherwise time-consuming build process.

The chapter concluded with a quick look at virtual devices and how we can import our projects from other IDEs. With this introduction complete, the following chapters will delve into the layout editor itself, as we see how to design application interfaces that work across the widest number of form factors.