Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself -- Hours)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Finally, I finished reading this book 24 hr is a misnomer, if you are thinking to finish the book in a day (it took me 13 days 2 hr a day cover to cover). One of the nice thing is the book is in Full Colour version these include screenshots, code and references to Eclipse (especially helpful if you are new with eclipse development). The book is easy to read, font and spacing were pleasing.

I should confess this is a beginner's book. You need some basic understanding of java and its concepts. The game the author picked was too basic for me, I wish I would have stated with this book months ago as it covers androids basic concepts and the first 6 chapters builds up the ground work for development on how to use eclipse and introduction to device debugging and logging( Eclipse DDMS, Android LogCat Logging).

A very good early introduction to debugging in chapter 2 right place before you get your hands dirty with coding, which i haven't seen any other books covering in that details. The author also mentions the reason they selected to use a particular android API or functionality at places and provide links for further reading.

There are also examples and exercises and although they are simple and primitive they give you the idea how to implement or use specific functionality and the solution for exercises are missing (it would have been helpful if there was a downloadable version on the website).Tips at some places are very useful and practical, some places it was an eye opener for an advance developer like me.

You will find this book useful and I'm sure it can be used as manual (not for expert android developer).

The first thing that hits you when you flip through the pages of this book is the color. The example screens, diagrams and tables really stand out. It's a delight to read a full color book and I'm thinking, why have I never come across more full color IT books?

The target audience are developers with a Java programming background who want to start Android development. And the book fulfills this promise very well.

The first couple of chapters are introductory, but aren't a drag to read (although the concepts of Activities, Intents and the manifest file are better explained in a book like "Hello, Android!" from the Pragmatic Programmers)

A second thing which really stuck out and is well worth mentioning are the "Did you know", "Watch out!" and "By the way" text boxes which really showed the authors have real programming experience with Android. Those little text boxes sometimes really contained little gems of information. These alone are worth reading every page of this book since you don't want to miss out on these.

The chapters are called "Hour 1..." and "Hour 2..." and are really targeted to be digested in an hour, max. I sometimes simply read a chapter in half an hour, without working out the examples in the development environment. I know, maybe not the way to go to really learn programming Android very well, but considering the time (we all have so little of) just reading a quick chapter was fulfilling for me anyway ;-)

Every chapter concludes with a Q&A section which was a bit tedious. The questions were very simple and the answers were right below the questions, so I skipped those sections further down the book. Apart from the Q&A section each chapter also included some exercises, which really are a challenge, because no 'answer' is given there. Just a task. I liked those!

A lot of Android books (or programming books in general) use a sample application which is enhanced throughout the whole book. This book is no different. However, where other books might focus on forms and list this book's example is a nice trivia game, which makes use of the camera, the network, social features and many other cool Android framework features.

The way the example program is set up and worked out is really the way you (or I in this case) would start fiddling around with Android. At some point it states: "You can copy the QuizSplashActivity five more times..." A very pragmatic approach, and again something programmers do daily. Maybe not the most elegant suggestion, but if you want to achieve something fast (learning Android) that's just the way I like.

Before you dive into a new chapter, a concept or screen layout a nice diagram is often presented first, which really helps in getting your brain in design / conceptual 'mode' (so to speak).

The majority of the Android concepts are covered really well. Shared preferences, context- and normal menus, dialogs, views, view switchers, image media, location based services, progress bars, communicating with a network server, creating home screen app widgets, and many more. Also 'development' activities like testing and developing for different devices and 'deployment' activities like placing your app in the Android market are present in the book.

The majority of the chapters have sample code, which you can download from a website. The examples all worked in my case. No problems there.

The author's are active bloggers on mobile application development and Android development in particular. If you don't buy the book you should definitely check out their blog (at [...]) and the mobile tuts website ([...]), with many of their contributions.

Advanced topics like OpenGL 2D/3D, the SQLite database, content providers and the various sensors, etc. are each described in half to a full page of text, but not more. I would have wanted to see a chapter on SQLite database and one on content providers though, since these are very common in Android apps, even for beginners.

Conclusion: I really liked the full color pages, the text boxes with invaluable information from real programmers and the digestibility of the chapters a real plus. Maybe some advanced features (like SQLite databases and content providers) could have been described in their own chapter, but then again, the target audience is the beginning Android developer. The book is very complete in the sense that it describes the whole process of setting up your dev environment, programming your app, testing it and deploying it on the Android market. I would really recommend this book for beginning Android developers. If you already read one or two Android books and consider yourself a mid-level to seasoned Android programmer don't buy the book. Maybe skim the pages and read the "Watch out!", "By the way" and "Did you know" text boxes ;-)

I bought this book a few days ago at SIGGRAPH - and it's great.

Android is a HUGE topic - it's utterly impossible for a single book to cover even a small portion of Android in depth.

But the authors have done a really admirable job of getting you started from scratch:

* Installing the Android IDE (Eclipse)

* Writing a simple "hello world", and executing it on the Android emulator

* Step-by-step chapters on building up a simple application that touches on key aspects of the Android

* Etc

The same authors have written another book (published by New Riders, instead of SAMS) with a lot more detail. But frankly, this is the better choice for a "first book".

You definitely ought to be at least familiar with Java before starting this book, just as it would be good to know a little Objective C before starting out on iPhone (and ESSENTIAL to know MORE than a little C++ before starting out on Nokia/Symbian). But, as the authors point out, Android can be a great way to learn Java.

I highly recommend Lauren Darcey's and Shane Conder's book.

I used to write PHP scripts and edit Java Scripts. I wrote a few programs in BASIC as well. I wrote scripts for mIRC and other programs that allowed script-based customization. And I still write my own webpages in HTML. So I've been around the block with programming, but I've never done anything close to today's programming languages. That being said, I saw this book and I have an Android phone so I figured why not give it a try just for fun.

This is not a "just for fun" type of book unless you are already a skilled programmer. I was able to get the book's examples to work, but with a lot of trouble and some Google searching for external help. And I was not able to understand enough to start programming on my own. I ended up giving up.

Having programmed before, I understand the terminology and the structure of the book, and someone who already programs apps for other phones could (I presume) use this book to translate their programs into Android format. However, I did not find it helpful as a beginner's guide to programming mobile phone apps for the first time.

The book's topic is complex and one that is changing rapidly. Other reviews stated that this book is not for beginners and I agree. It would help for the reader to be familiar with the Eclipse IDE and with Java before tacking this book.

There book includes an appendix on downloading and installing the tools needed. I found that the instructions didn't exactly follow my experience installing on an Ubuntu Linux system, but with some help from Google and some creative thinking, I was able to get the tools installed and working. The hurdles that I ran into were more due to the lack of a simple one-button install than of this book. It would have been nice if the authors (or someone else) created a single simple tool to inspect your system and download and install the necessary components.

Back to the book ...as with the tool installation, I ran into problems due to the system not behaving exactly the way the book said it would. It took me a while, due to my linear approach to reading books, to realize that if something didn't work I needed to keep reading and look for the next "By the way" gray box. These sections had hints for cases where your system didn't match the instructions.

One big hint that should have been in the beginning of the book, is that Eclipse, Java, and Android are all evolving technologies. You may encounter something that doesn't work or an unexpected error message. In these cases, enter the error message or the problem description into Google's search box to find solutions. I know this is obvious, but the book makes Android seem cookie-cutter-simple and it isn't in reality.

The book has examples of a lot of Android app capabilities and is a good book to have in one's Android library. But I wouldn't make it my first Android book.

The publisher provides a website to download 15 zip files of sample code. Having to download 15 separate files instead of one single archive file is consistent with some of the roughness of the book itself.

If you're new to programming and can't tell Java from a cup of coffee, then this is *not* the book for you. Android programming is a complex and detailed subject. Just installing the programming environment can be tricky and is not for the novice. The target user for this book falls somewhere between the novice and experienced programmer, and will get you started with basic applications. As other reviewers have pointed out, you really should know Java first (or learn it while reading this book.) The book will provide a solid foundation, but to really build anything complex you'll need the advanced book and lots of trial and error (pretty much true of any programming language.) 24 Hours? More like a couple of weeks, unless you have a few empty days to spare.

Understand programming concepts, are comfortable with Java, and want to tackle a new environment? This is the book for you.

I thought the this might be more for a person like me with no programming experience. I am more of a show me kind of guy. It appears to be well written and if I had the time to really study it and dedicate time to working on applications I think this would be good for me. I gave this three stars only because of my inability to catch on quickly.

I've just read the first 10 chapters of this book, and I had to come here and write about how pleased I am with it.

A bit of background - I'm an experienced Java developer and have already taken a stab at a couple of small if not completely trivial Android applications. My approach thus far has been to use the online docs, hammer away, google, and look at examples on the internet. Progress has been happening, but I haven't had a coherent overview of the Android language. I knew I was lacking this, so I started reading one book, I have already forgotten the name, but the writing style was pretty turgid and I put it down.

Android Programming in 24 Horus, on the other hand, has a colorful, pleasing format. The chapters are small enough that you can get through them in 1/2 hour or so (if you're just reading). The writing style is coherent, pleasing and light. The questions at the end of the chapter are simple, but nicely emphasize the key points. I read the exercises, they looked easy enough, but seemed just a bit trickier as the book progressed. The example application a nice, simple game whose structure no doubt mirrors that of many Android application - a splash page, an application menu, a play page, a settings page, a help page and a hi-scores page. There is a great mixture of layouts described for the various pages, which I have found to be tremendously enlightening. All the standard widgets such as date-picker, spinner, dialog boxes, list views, text boxes, edit boxes, buttons images etc. are covered. There is a description of how to persist program data using a shared resource API, which I think I can use in the program I'm tackling right now. I noticed a later chapter covers loading apps up to the Android store. Another chapter covers how to test on various types of phones. Many of the things I read or will soon read are either things I was looking for, had just been looking for and found, or will soon be looking for.

There is just enough description to figure out how things work, without bogging down in too much detail. Each chapter covers different aspects of the Android platform.

I wish I had read this a few weeks earlier. It's exactly the overview that I needed. I literally couldn't put it down, which is pretty amazing for a technical book. I can hardly wait to get going on it tomorrow and finish reading it. I will be - am already - far better equipped to tackle android programming having gone through this book.

This book assumes you are familiar with, or at least can learn about, both Java development and the Eclipse IDE. To me this is a plus because often these types of books waste half their content on getting you up to speed on secondary concepts. This book focuses on Android and covers nicely all the steps to create very basic applications. This will certainly get you started. What you will find is once you've completed the book and actually attempt your own application, all the fancy stuff you want to make it do - you will have to learn how to do that elsewhere. These intro books always show you the simplest way to accomplish the most basic tasks, and this book is no different.

However, for a person like me it was perfect. I'm an iPhone developer who also has several years experience with Java and Eclipse development. What I needed was a book to help me map iPhone concepts and processes to the Android world, and this book has certainly served well in that respect.

My first impression was WOW. Full Colored Syntax. That made the book a joy to read...

I really enjoyed this book. I was able to pick up several concepts and clear up others.

This book is not a reference and it is not a sequence of individual programming examples. The authors built a complete app with networking and social features. Key APIs were covered in the implementation. Some of the material need additional research to completely understand to the concepts.

Beginners may need something extra that is more structured to understand fundamental Android concepts. I would suggest the first few chapters in "Android Wireless Application Development" written by the same authors.

The "Layout Design Grids" within the book was pretty cool. I would like to see more information about layout and UI designs on Android.

"Did you know?" sections was weird because it was my first impression the book was for beginners. But they did contain useful tips.

I was surprise at the amount of material covered in this book. The book also covered the toolkit components such as ADB. It was also good to see this book covered ways to monetize your app.

The book was up-to-date with every changing Android landscape and pack with timeless concepts.

I highly recommend this book for people who are completing their first Android application for market