Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners

By : John Horton, Paresh Mayani
Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners

By: John Horton, Paresh Mayani

Overview of this book

Android is the most popular OS in the world. There are millions of devices accessing tens of thousands of applications. It is many people's entry point into the world of technology; it is an operating system for everyone. Despite this, the entry-fee to actually make Android applications is usually a computer science degree, or five years’ worth of Java experience. Android Programming for Beginners will be your companion to create Android applications from scratch—whether you’re looking to start your programming career, make an application for work, be reintroduced to mobile development, or are just looking to program for fun. We will introduce you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the Java basics to working with the Android API. All examples are created from within Android Studio, the official Android development environment that helps supercharge your application development process. After this crash-course, we’ll dive deeper into Android programming and you’ll learn how to create applications with a professional-standard UI through fragments, make location-aware apps with Google Maps integration, and store your user’s data with SQLite. In addition, you’ll see how to make your apps multilingual, capture images from a device’s camera, and work with graphics, sound, and animations too. By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to start building your own custom applications in Android and Java.
Table of Contents (37 chapters)
Android Programming for Beginners
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Building the project and gathering resources


Let's create our new project now. Create a new project and call it Note to self. Leave the other settings at their default values, including choosing a blank activity.

Downloading the images

Open a web browser and visit the Android developer website, https://www.google.com/design/icons/index.html.

We want to download four icon sets, which are listed as follows:

  • An add icon that we will add to the action bar later in this chapter

  • An item that looks like a light bulb that we will use for an icon to represent an idea

  • An exclamation mark icon that we will use to represent important notes

  • A blank checkbox icon that we will use to represent something that the user needs to do

We saw all these icons when we looked at the final appearance of our app.

You can find all these icons at the previous URL in the categories described as follows:

  1. Find an image called add under the Content category. Select white (white is the best with a dark default action bar). Click on...