Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) [Paperback]

Reto Meier (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470344717 | ISBN-13: 978-0470344712 | Publication Date: November 24, 2008 | Edition: 1

A hands-on guide to building mobile applications, Professional Android Application Development features concise and compelling examples that show you how to quickly construct real-world mobile applications for Android phones. Fully up-to-date for version 1.0 of the Android software development kit, it covers all the essential features, and explores the advanced capabilities of Android (including GPS, accelerometers, and background Services) to help you construct increasingly complex, useful, and innovative mobile applications for Android phones.

What this book includes

• An introduction to mobile development, Android, and how to get started.
• An in-depth look at Android applications and their life cycle, the application manifest, Intents, and using external resources.
• Details for creating complex and compelling user interfaces by using, extending, and creating your own layouts and Views and using Menus.
• A detailed look at data storage, retrieval, and sharing using preferences, files, databases, and Content Providers.
• Instructions for making the most of mobile portability by creating rich map-based applications as well as using location-based services and the geocoder.
• A look at the power of background Services, using threads, and a detailed look at Notifications.
• Coverage of Android's communication abilities including SMS, the telephony APIs, network management, and a guide to using Internet resources
• Details for using Android hardware, including media recording and playback, using the camera, accelerometers, and compass sensors.
• Advanced development topics including security, IPC, advanced 2D / 3D graphics techniques, and user–hardware interaction.

Who this book is for
This book is for anyone interested in creating applications for the Android mobile phone platform. It includes information that will be valuable whether you're an experienced mobile developer or making your first foray, via Android, into writing mobile applications. It will give the grounding and knowledge you need to write applications using the current SDK, along with the flexibility to quickly adapt to future enhancements.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Professional Android Application Development

Offering an open development environment, Android represents an exciting new opportunity to write innovative applications for mobile devices. This book provides you with a hands-on guide to building these applications using the Android software development kit. It takes you through a series of sample projects, each introducing new features and techniques to get the most out of Android. You'll learn all about the basic functionality as well as discover how to utilize the advanced features with the help of concise and useful examples.

Beginning with an introduction to the Android software stack, the author examines the philosophy behind creating robust, consistent, and appealing applications for mobile phones. You'll get the grounding and knowledge that is needed to write customized mobile applications using the current Android 1.0 SDK. Plus, you'll also gain the flexibility to quickly adapt to future enhancements in order to build the most cutting-edge solutions.

What you will learn from this book

• Best practices for Android mobile development

• An introduction to Activities, Intents, the manifest, and resources

• How to create user interfaces with layouts and custom views

• Techniques to store and share your application data

• Instructions for creating map-based applications, using location-based services including GPS, and geocoding locations

• How to create and use background Services and Notifications

• Working with the accelerometers, compass, and camera hardware

• All about phone and networking hardware such as telephony APIs, SMS, and network management

• Advanced development topics, including security, IPC, and some advanced graphics and user interface techniques

Who this book is for
This book is for anyone interested in creating applications for the Android mobile phone platform. It includes information that will be valuable whether you're an experienced mobile developer or just starting out writing mobile applications.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Reto Meier now lives in London.
Reto is an experienced software developer with more than 10 years of experience in GUI application architecture, design, and development. He’s worked in various industries, including offshore oil and gas, before moving to London and into fi nance.
Always interested in emerging technologies, Reto has been involved in Android since the initial release in 2007. In his spare time, he tinkers with a wide range of development platforms including WPF and Google’s plethora of developer tools.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (November 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470344717
• ISBN-13: 978-0470344712
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #428,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > Computers & Technology > Networking > Telephony
  • #74 in Books > Computers & Technology > Mobile & Wireless Computing > Programming

More About the Author

Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Reto Meier now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reto is an experienced software developer with more than 10 years of experience in GUI application architecture, design, and development. He's worked in various industries, including offshore oil and gas, before moving to London and into finance. Early in 2009 Reto became Google's Android developer advocate for Europe, and in 2011 moved to Google's head office in Mountain View to become the Tech Lead for Android Developer Relations.

Always interested in emerging technologies, Reto has been involved in Android since the initial release in 2007. In his spare time, he tinkers with a wide range of development platforms including Google's plethora of developer tools.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction for new Android developers, December 14, 2008

By 

Jeffrey Smith (Plano Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

The author clearly and concisely explains the fundamental aspects of Android programming. The coverage of Android topics is pretty comprehensive and the depth of coverage was just right for my needs. Mr. Meier provides some background information about mobile programming platforms in general, so the only real prerequisite for this book is familiarity with Java programming. The examples are also very informative and build new features incrementally, which keeps the focus on the most recently covered material, and reflects modern incremental development practices. This book, in conjunction with the excellent materials available online from Google, anddev.org and elsewhere, provide an effective staring point for developers looking to get started quickly on the Android platform.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Dense and organized like spaghetti, September 6, 2009

By 

Dream a little - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

This book was clearly written for seasoned developers. However, other books in this series are far more understandable. I'm really not sure why I did not like this book at all. I'll try to narrow it down. First, the writing style is not very engaging. It's also full of jargon that is never defined. For example, he uses the term URI, which has several component parts that he never defines. Worse, most of the code that he gives you to follow is never explained, at all. Not annotating code and using terms that you have never defined are a very bad trait. Third, alot of the material is a paraphrase of the android development documents, and there is really no new insight here. I think the core issue here is that we look for books not to sound like esoteric, terse documents, but this is what this book is. You will not learn how to program from this book. The code snippets jump all around and he tries to include everything about Android in this book which makes it seem just too much with incomplete treatment of many topics. I actually found the android tutorials less confusing.
Here is a typical example:

SimpleCursorAdapter
The SimpleCursorAdapter binds Views to cursors returned from
Content Provider queries. You specify an XML layout de'nition and then bind the value within
each column in the result set, to a View in that layout.

Upon re-reading it slowly and thoughtfully, this explanation does make sense. But we have not gone over content providers yet, and he has not talked about SQL queries with SQLLite in Android yet. Nowhere does he mention this, and again it's more like it's lifted from the android documentation without any explanation. This is an example of the style of writing that you'll be seeing. It's abstract, dense, and drab.

An example of the odd chapter organization is Chapter 5: Intents, broadcast receivers, adapters, and the internet. So we talk about intents and broadcast receivers, then view-related database interaction (which is what ch. 6 is all about), and then network communication (as opposed to putting it in its own chapter). It is like I am learning everything out of order with constant references back and forth (like a to do list example followed by an earthquake example, then going back to a to do list example). This is why I said it's dense and organized like spaghetti with no clear beginning and end.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Probably worth reading, just isn't fantastic, January 7, 2009

By 

Brian Williammee (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

At its worst, this book is a copy and paste of the android docs already available online. At its best, it is a paraphrase of the android docs already available online, with additional insight and code samples.

The extra insight is enough for me to be glad I bought it - it occasionally gave just enough additional perspective beyond the android web docs to make things "click" that I had not yet fully grokked. The code samples are useful, but the author himself says that they are sprinkled with bad habits, and I agree. He explains that it was for the sake of simplicity. I think it's more likely that he wrote the code, then wrote the section on best practices, and then realized that the code was suboptimal but had to meet a deadline.

In summary, worth my money and my time, but not truly impressed.