Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) 1st Edition

by Reto Meier (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0470344712

ISBN-10: 0470344717

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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.

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

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

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wrox; 1st edition (November 24, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0470344717
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0470344712
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.4 x 0.92 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #6,576,857 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,219 in Mobile App Development & Programming
- #3,642 in Java Programming
- #5,345 in Software Design & Engineering

Customer Reviews:
34 ratings

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Reto Meier

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Reto Meier has been helping Android developers create the best applications possible for their users since the initial Android release in 2007.

Reto is an experienced software developer with more than 20 years experience in application design and development. Reto has been involved in Android since the initial release in 2007, and has spent 10 years as a Developer Advocate, contributing countless articles, online training, conference talks, and YouTube videos to the developer community.

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

Customer reviews

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4 star		16%
3 star		24%
2 star		18%
1 star		12%

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Amazon Customer

Beginners beware: Not the best book for those new to Android or Java

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2010

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I bought this on the strength of the other Amazon reviews, but was disappointed. I have years of programming and application design experience, some in Java, but none with mobile applications or Android. At the beginning of the book is a section on "who this book is for" and it says you don't have to know Java, mobile development or Android to get through the book. This is false. While there is a lot of information in here, it is presented piecemeal and in a disorganized fashion, leaving one to hunt all over Google's Android website to complete the partial explanations one finds in the book. In addition, take note that it was written for Android 1.0;the most current Android version is 2.0 and is somewhat different. Having used other Wrox books and having found most of them very logically organized, with clear explanations of the code, I was surprised by this one. I'd suggest the author include more complete descriptions of the code and the terms used, how to set oneself up in the IDE, and some appendices containing information about the most used classes. The book has useful information, but it is not for those new to Android.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

cut and paste is not your friend

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2009

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I really wanted to like this book more - at times the information is really good, like the "working in the background" section. However most of the book feels like bits and pieces were cut and pasted into place. Thus author seems to repeat himself often, especially early on. What's worse, the repetition doesn't reinforce any major points of the platform either. I'm left guessing that the book was rushed to print before it was fully edited.

There is some good information here though. And this gives a solid glossing over many of the major themes of Android - which makes this a decent compendium. So if you are looking for an overview of simple GUI development, general, small applications, and some talk about background processes and communications and some of the hardware you could do a lot worse.

However, you could also go to the Android development website and get the same information there as well.

2 people found this helpful

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Gerard H.

Be aware, old edition, poor print quality.

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

OK - this is not as much a review of the content of the book, but more about the print quality and the confusion about the edition. At the time a bought the book it showed a release date of September 9, 2014, and I thought that it was a newer (and updated) edition . Silly me. It has a new cover, but internally it is just the oldest edition (2008), but what is even worse is that this seems to be a printed on demand version with pretty poor printing quality. A lot of the heading titles have weird spacing between the letters, and it seems printed on a regular laser printer on a letter format page, so you get huge margins around the text, which might be great if you want to make a lot of notes, but not what I expect of a good quality book. Big disappointment, and not what I had expected on Amazon.

One person found this helpful

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Terrance Shaw

Not newcomer friendly AT ALL

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2010

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I bought this book as my first foray into Android development, based on the reviews here so far. Now, though, I know that I probably should've actually read the reviews, as they may be a bit more thorough than their simple star-based ratings convey.

The book touts itself as, being 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."

From the "making your first foray, via Android, into writing mobile applications" part, I'd assume it meant newbies. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The book is inconsistent with the way topics are handled, and it feels almost entirely non-linear within any given chapter.

There are many different issues with the book, among those:
* This book targets Android somewhere back around the 1.0 release. As we're now on the 2.0 release of Android (and moving on to 2.1), this book is quite a bit obsolete. Most of the coding is still functional of course, but if you're new to development in general, you're most likely not gonna be able to figure out how to retool the code.
* Though he walks you through sample applications to familiarize you with the concepts he teaches, he seems to lose interest fast and goes on seemingly random tangents throughout the book. Case in point: Chapter three had you making a revision to the layout of a ToDo List app you were designing. After making a minor change to the code, he starts you off on a Compass app.

All that being said, if you're completely new to Android development, I would suggest you avoid this book as your first option. Instead, you should go with something a bit more simple like "Hello, Android". And while you're at it, you'll probably want to pick up a book on Java development, since both Android books assume some level of knowledge in Java development. The one I purchased to go along with "Hello, Android" is "Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours". I've finished the first of the two, and it's quite a bit easier to follow than PAAD. What's more, it's linear, and he doesn't stray from the current lessons to go on some sort of tangent about how robust Android is like Mr. Meier does.

I didn't even finish this book.

I can't.

And I probably never will.

Not with so many other fine choices available.

2 people found this helpful

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A bookworm

O.k., but has some gaps

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2009

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It seems the book was written before the first release of Android was actually finished - it contains numerous references to nonexistent/changed Java entities (although the author does identify and point these out).
I would recommend this book for the absolute beginner, but for more experienced Java programmers you can probably get even better information freely by searching Android online forums and by also looking through Google's Android code samples on the Android project homepage.

6 people found this helpful

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A. Morath

DeveloperConferences for Google in Deutschland

Reviewed in Germany on January 28, 2009

Verified Purchase

Nach der Developmen-Conference Sept. 2008 in München war dies das Einzige Buch, dass ich zu der Zeit finden konnte und hat mich inspiriert mit der Entwicklung auf Androide Applikationen zu beginnen, noch bevor das Handy am 02.02.2009 in Deutschland auf dem Markt kam.
Das Buch von Retro Meier ist anspruchsvoll und besonders zu empfehlen, wenn der Umgang mit Javascript und der Entwicklungsumgebung Eclipse bekannt ist.

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Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) 1st Edition

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Reto Meier

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