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)

Android Wear

Wearable devices have become very popular of late and Android Wear is fully incorporated into the Android SDK. The setting up of a Wear project is slightly more involved than other projects as wearable devices really act as a companion device with the apps themselves running from a mobile device.

Despite this minor level of complication, developing for wearables can be a lot of fun, not least because they often offer us access to some cool sensors, such as the heart rate monitor.

Connecting to a wearable AVD

It may well be that you have access to a wearable device, but here we will be using emulators in the following exercise. This is because these devices come in two flavors: square and round.

When it comes to...