Android Wireless Application Development [Paperback]

Shane Conder (Author), Lauren Darcey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321627091 | ISBN-13: 978-0321627094 | Publication Date: September 7, 2009 | Edition: 1

This start-to-finish guide to Android development combines all the reliable information, sample code, and best practices professionals need to build, distribute, and market successful Android mobile applications. The CD-ROM contains all of the book's code samples and more.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

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Shane Conder

Lauren Darcey

 

The start-to-finish guide to Android development—from concept to market!

 

Android Wireless Application Development combines all the reliable information, sample code, and best practices you need to build, distribute, and market successful Android mobile applications. Drawing on their extensive experience with mobile and wireless development, Shane Conder and Lauren Darcey cover everything you need to execute a successful Android project: from concept and design through coding, testing, packaging, and delivery.

 

Conder and Darcey explain how mobile development differs from conventional development, how Android differs from other mobile platforms, and how to take full advantage of Android’s unique features and capabilities. They present detailed, code-rich coverage of Android’s most important APIs, expert techniques for organizing development teams and managing Android projects, and dozens of time-saving tricks and pitfalls to avoid.

 

• Master the latest Android development tools and Android SDK 1.5
• Use the Eclipse Development Environment for Java to develop and debug Android applications
• Design Android applications that are more efficient, reliable, and easier to use and offer better performance
• Work with Android’s optional hardware-specific APIs
• Use Android’s APIs for data, storage, networking, telephony, Location-Based Services (LBS), multimedia, and 3D graphics
• Leverage advanced Android capabilities such as Notifications and Services
• Ensure quality through solid test planning, efficient testing, and comprehensive defect tracking
• Make more money from your Android applications

 

This book is an indispensable resource for every member of the Android development team: software developers with all levels of mobile experience, team leaders and project managers, testers and QA specialists, software architects, and even marketers.

 

Shane Conder is an experienced developer who has specialized in mobile and embedded development for over a decade. He has designed and developed many commercial applications for BREW, J2ME, Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and Android and has written extensively about the mobile industry and mobile development platforms. Lauren Darcey is the CEO of a small software company specializing in mobile technologies. With almost two decades of experience in professional software production, Darcey is a recognized authority in enterprise architecture and the development of commercial grade mobile applications.

About the Author

Shane Conder has extensive development experience and has focused his attention on

mobile and embedded development for the past decade. He has designed and developed

many commercial applications for BREW, J2ME, Palm,Windows Mobile, and Android.

Shane has written extensively about the mobile industry and evaluated mobile development

platforms on his tech blogs and is well known within the blogosphere. Shane

received a B.S. degree in computer science from the University of California.

A self-admitted gadget freak, Shane always has the latest phone or laptop. He can

often be found fiddling with the latest new technologies, such as Amazon Web Services,

Android, iPhone, Google App Engine, and other shiny, new technologies that activate the

creative part of his brain. He also enjoys traveling the world with his geeky wife, even if

she did make him dive with 4-meter-long great white sharks, and he almost got eaten by

a lion in Kenya. He admits that it was his fault they got attacked by monkeys in Japan

and that perhaps he should have written his own bio. (Author’s note:Wait, what?!)

 

Lauren Darcey is responsible for the technical leadership and direction of a small software

company specializing in mobile technologies–Android being the most exciting

and promising for the future.With almost two decades of experience in professional software

production, Lauren is a recognized authority in enterprise architecture and the

development of commercial-grade mobile applications. Lauren received a B.S. degree in

computer science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Lauren spends her copious free time traveling the world with her geeky mobileminded

husband and is an avid nature photographer. Her work has been published in

books and newspapers around the world. In South Africa, she dove with 4-meter-long

great white sharks and got stuck between a herd of rampaging hippopotami and an irritated

bull elephant. She’s been attacked by monkeys in Japan, gotten stuck in a ravine

with two hungry lions in Kenya, gotten thirsty in Egypt, narrowly avoided a coup d’état

in Thailand, and walked part of the Great Wall of China, where she took the photograph

that graces the cover of this book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (September 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321627091
• ISBN-13: 978-0321627094
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #493,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of four books, March 17, 2010

By 

J. L. Gillaspy "Author: "A Larger Univers... (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Android Wireless Application Development (Paperback)

This is my fourth Android book and by far the best. Concepts that I was uncertain about are explained clearly and completely. I especially like the order in which the topics are covered. The other books launched into developing an application without much underlying explanation of the individual topics - putting that off until later, and not doing it as well. If I had bought this book first, I probably wouldn't have or need the others.

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exactly what I look for in a development book!, October 20, 2009

By 

Rory Rezzelle "fireshaper" (Augusta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Android Wireless Application Development (Paperback)

As I have used Android more and more my developer sense started to tingle and I wanted to create my own Android app. I looked at a couple of development books but they all just seemed to be the same: how to install the development environment and then all about how great the Android is to develop for. Nothing I could find actually moved past walking you through your first app on the code side. So when I was emailed about a new book by authors Shane Conder and Lauren Darcey all about Android Application Development I jumped at the chance to review it!

Android Wireless Application Development is a hefty book, weighing in at 573 pages with appendices and a CD, it is chock full of wonderful little tidbits of information that make Android so much fun to develop for. I was never a fan of Java in my programming classes but now that I see it in another light I'm slowly coming around to it. Of course the book starts you off by getting you to install Eclipse (Win/Mac/Linux) and all the tools necessary to create that app that's going to make you rich in the end, then you are walked through how to write your first app, run it on the virtual Android phone, and then how to install it on a device to test. The book follows that with introductions in design, interface essentials, common Android APIs, 3D graphics, and finally how to deploy and sell your marvelous app through the Marketplace.

I found the book a marvellous teaching tool, it keeps your attention and has plenty of screenshots, images, and code snippets to satisfy even a beginner (like myself). I was so excited in the intro app when I was able to get my app to play a media file from the web with a small bit of code. The authors have the perfect balance of teaching and explaining that this is one book you will not get bored reading, you will definitely be ready to use what you've learned to make a new app as soon as you are done reading about it.

I'll be looking for YOUR app in the marketplace soon!

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A detailed inventory of Android features, November 2, 2009

By 

Gabor Paller "paller" (Guildford, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Android Wireless Application Development (Paperback)

Gee, there are SO MANY THINGS in Android - that was the lingering feeling after having read the book. Because the authors' strong intention is not to make compromises. They methodically go through every feature of the Android API, including 1.5 features. Have you heard about AppWidgets before? Or LiveFolders? I admit that I have not but now I know about them because the book mentioned it.

The enormous breadth of the discussion comes with a cost, however. Even though everything (or almost everything) is mentioned, very few topics are discussed in depth. For example I checked the most popular topics of my blog - unit tests, adapters. The Android unit testing framework is discussed as a bulleted list (no code examples) and the ArrayAdapter example uses Strings as backing data which causes so many problems for developers.

It is best to handle this book as an inventory of Android features and as such, it is very valuable. Such an inventory takes 573 pages, as of version 1.5. I wonder what that number will be in 3 years time.