Book Image

Android UI Development with Jetpack Compose - Second Edition

By : Thomas Künneth
5 (1)
Book Image

Android UI Development with Jetpack Compose - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Thomas Künneth

Overview of this book

Compose has caused a paradigm shift in Android development, introducing a variety of new concepts that are essential to an Android developer’s learning journey. It solves a lot of pain points associated with Android development and is touted to become the default way to building Android apps over the next few years. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect all changes and additions that were made by Google since the initial stable release, and all examples are based on Material 3 (also called Material You). This book uses practical examples to help you understand the fundamental concepts of Jetpack Compose and how to use them when you are building your own Android applications. You’ll begin by getting an in-depth explanation of the declarative approach, along with its differences from and advantages over traditional user interface (UI) frameworks. Having laid this foundation, the next set of chapters take a practical approach to show you how to write your first composable function. The chapters will also help you master layouts, an important core component of every UI framework, and then move to more advanced topics such as animation, testing, and architectural best practices. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to write your own Android apps using Jetpack Compose and Material Design.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Fundamentals of Jetpack Compose
5
Part 2: Building User Interfaces
10
Part 3: Advanced Topics

Introducing Compose Multiplatform

While Jetpack Compose is the new UI toolkit on Android, its underlying ideas and principles make it attractive for other platforms, too. Let’s see why this is the case:

  • The declarative approach was first implemented on the web
  • SwiftUI, Apple’s implementation of a declarative UI framework, works well for iPhones, iPads, watches, and macOS devices
  • Jetpack Compose UI elements use Material Design, which is designed for different platforms, device categories, and form factors

Most importantly, core concepts such as state and composable functions are not Android-specific. Therefore, if someone provides the toolchain (for example, the Kotlin compiler and the Compose compiler), any platform capable of showing graphics may be able to execute Compose apps. Certainly, there is an awful lot of work to be done.

For example, the Compose UI must be hosted somewhere. On Android, activities are used. On the web, this would be...