Book Image

Android Studio 4.0 Development Essentials - Java Edition

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Android Studio 4.0 Development Essentials - Java Edition

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

Android rolls out frequent updates to meet the demands of the dynamic mobile market and to enable its developer community to lead advancements in application development. This book focuses on the updated features of Android Studio (the fully integrated development environment launched by Google) to build reliable Android applications using Java. The book starts by outlining the steps necessary to set up an Android development and testing environment. You’ll then learn how to create user interfaces with the help of Android Studio Layout Editor, XML files, and by writing the code in Java. The book introduces you to Android architecture components and advanced topics such as intents, touchscreen handling, gesture recognition, multi-window support integration, and biometric authentication, and lets you explore key features of Android Studio 4.0, including the layout editor, direct reply notifications, and dynamic delivery. You’ll also cover Android Jetpack in detail and create a sample app project using the ViewModel component. Finally, you’ll upload your app to the Google Play Console and handle the build process with Gradle. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the skills necessary to develop applications using Android Studio 4.0 and Java.
Table of Contents (88 chapters)
88
Index

71.2 Introducing the Android MediaController Class

If a video is simply played using the VideoView class, the user will not be given any control over the playback, which will run until the end of the video is reached. This issue can be addressed by attaching an instance of the MediaController class to the VideoView instance. The MediaController will then provide a set of controls allowing the user to manage the playback (such as pausing and seeking backwards/forwards in the video time-line).

The position of the controls is designated by anchoring the controller instance to a specific view in the user interface layout. Once attached and anchored, the controls will appear briefly when playback starts and may subsequently be restored at any point by the user tapping on the view to which the instance is anchored.

Some of the key methods of this class are as follows:

setAnchorView(View view) – Designates the view to which the controller is to be anchored. This...