Book Image

Mastering Android Wear Application Development

By : Siddique Hameed, Javeed Chida
Book Image

Mastering Android Wear Application Development

By: Siddique Hameed, Javeed Chida

Overview of this book

Wearable technology is the future of mobile devices. It looks set to be a breakthrough technology, just like the iPad was before it. With the Apple Watch being widely regarded as a success, all eyes are now on Google to provide a similar device for its users. Keep your skills ahead of the competition and be one of the first to fully understand this powerful new trend. This book will give you a very solid understanding of the philosophy, thought process, development details, and methodologies involved in building well-designed, robust Android Wear applications. We cover the advantages and disadvantages of the wearable computing paradigm and provide a good foundational knowledge for you to build practical, real-world wearable apps. You will learn about the various tools, platforms, libraries, SDKs, and technology needed to build Android Wear apps. By the end of the book, you will be an expert in building Android wearable apps.

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Mastering Android Wear Application Development
Siddique Hameed | Javeed Chida
Dec, 2016 | 224 pages
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Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Mastering Android Wear Application Development
Mastering Android Wear Application Development
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to Wearable Computing
Introduction to Wearable Computing
Evolution
Moore's law
Ubiquitous computing
Mobile meets wearables
Hello Android Wear
Summary
2
Setting up the Development Environment
Setting up the Development Environment
Android Studio
Installation
Git and GitHub
Gradle
Android SDK packages
Android Virtual Devices
Let's build a skeleton application
Summary
3
Developing Android Wear Applications
Developing Android Wear Applications
Skeleton app
The Android manifest file
Gradle build files
App activities
Let's build an Android Wear app
Summary
4
Developing Watch UI
Developing Watch UI
Wearable UI
The Android manifest file
The TodayActivity activity
Main activity layout file
The WearableListItemLayout component
The DayOfYearActivity class
Summary
5
Synchronizing Data
Synchronizing Data
What is a companion app anyway?
Setting up an Android Wear virtual device
Revisiting the Today app
Messages not coming through to your Wear app?
Summary
6
Contextual Notifications
Contextual Notifications
Getting notified
Today app with to-do notifications
To-do list view
Adding to-do items
Summary
7
Voice Interactions, Sensors, and Tracking
Voice Interactions, Sensors, and Tracking
Voice capabilities
New feature - adding to-do items through voice commands
The AddTodoItem activity in the wearable app
Handling speech inputs
Handheld app
Motion sensors
New feature - tracking our steps
Summary
8
Creating Custom UI
Creating Custom UI
Android Wear UI design
Common UI patterns
Revisiting the OnThisDay activity
Summary
9
Material Design
Material Design
Approaching material design
To-do item menus
The TodosActivity class
The TodoItemTypeFragment class
The NavigationAdapter class
Navigation item
The WearableDrawerLayout class
Menu items
Menu listener
Switching to-do types
Summary
10
Watch Faces
Watch Faces
Telling the time
Let's build a watch face
The TodayWatchFace service
The TodayWatchFaceService class
The onTimeTick method
Drawing the watch face
Ambient mode
Customizing the watch face
Summary
11
Advanced Features and Concepts
Advanced Features and Concepts
Keeping the watch running
An always running step counter
Debugging wearable apps
The way forward - reviewing Android Wear 2.0
Summary
12
Publishing Apps to Google Play
Publishing Apps to Google Play
Testing
App distribution
Summary

App activities

The skeleton project consists of two activities, MainActivity and GridExampleActivity. The MainActivity activity contains a header text with Main Activity and three buttons inside ScrollView layout.

Let's take a look at the main_activity.xml file to see how the component layout is structured. One of the biggest advantages to developing Android applications using Android Studio is its layout editor. Although it may not be precisely the same during runtime, it can give a closer idea in terms of how the UI components are rendered during runtime.

After you have opened the main_activity.xml file, make sure you have the Preview tool window selected on the right side of Android Studio:

The Android Studio layout editor will display the live preview for changes to layout files. It also helps to get an understanding of how the components will be laid out for different form factors. As we know, Android Wear comes in square and circle-shaped form factors, so it will be a good idea to check...

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