Introduction to Android Application Development: Android Essentials (Developer's Library)

What Every Android™ App Developer Should Know Today: Android Tools, App/UI Design, Testing, Publishing, And More

This fully reworked edition of a proven title is the most useful real-world guide to building robust, commercial-grade Android™ apps. The content is revised and updated for the latest Android 4.3 SDK and the newest development best practices. Introduction to Android™ Application Development: Android Essentials, Fourth Edition, covers all you need to quickly start developing professional apps for today’s Android devices. Three expert developers guide you through setting up your development environment, designing user interfaces, developing for diverse devices, and optimizing your entire app-development process–from design through publication. Updated throughout, this title includes extensive coverage of the most useful new Android tools and utilities. It adds an all-new chapter on planning an amazing Android app user experience, plus extensive new coverage of unit testing, dialogs, preferences, and app publishing. Throughout, key concepts are taught through clear, up-to-date example code.

This edition offers

• Fully updated introductions to the latest Android 4.3 APIs, tools, utilities, and best practices
• Up-to-date strategies for leveraging new Android capabilities while preserving compatibility
• Navigation patterns and code samples for delivering more intuitive user experiences
• Example-based explanations of ActionBars, DialogFragments, and other key concepts
• Expert automated testing techniques to quickly improve code quality
• New Google Play Developer Console app publishing techniques that also offer more control 

For Android developers at all levels of experience, this reference is now more valuable than ever. Students, instructors, and self-learners will especially appreciate new chapter-ending questions and exercises, carefully designed to test knowledge and deepen mastery.

Annuzzi has released new source code samples for use with Android Studio. The code updates are posted to the associated blog site: http://introductiontoandroid.blogspot.com/

Note: This revamped, newly titled edition is a complete update of Android™ Wireless Application Development, Volume I: Android Essentials, Third Edition

Joseph Annuzzi, Jr., is a freelance software architect, graphic artist, writer, and technical reviewer. He usually can be found mastering the Android platform, implementing cutting-edge HTML5 capabilities, leveraging various cloud technologies, speaking in different programming languages, working with diverse frameworks, integrating with various social APIs, tinkering with peer-to-peer, cryptography, and computer vision algorithms, or creating stunningly realistic 3D renders. He is always on the lookout for disruptive Internet and mobile technologies and has multiple patent applications in process. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, with a B.S. in Managerial Economics and a minor in Computer Science and lives where much of the action is, Silicon Valley. When he is not working with technology, he has been known to lounge in the sun on the beaches of the Black Sea with international movie stars; he has trekked through the Bavarian forest in winter, has immersed himself in the culture of the Italian Mediterranean, and has narrowly escaped the wrath of an organized crime ring in Eastern Europe after his taxi dropped him off in front of the bank ATM they were liquidating. He also lives an active and healthy lifestyle, designs and performs custom fitness training routines to stay in shape, and adores his loyal Beagle, Cleopatra.

Lauren Darcey is responsible for the technical leadership and direction of a small software company specializing in mobile technologies, including Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, BREW, and J2ME, and consulting services. With more than two decades of experience in professional software production, Lauren is a recognized authority in application architecture and the development of commercial-grade mobile applications. Lauren received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She spends her copious free time traveling the world with her geeky mobile-minded 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, geocached her way through the Swiss Alps, drank her way through the beer halls of Germany, slept in the crumbling castles of Europe, and gotten her tongue stuck to an iceberg in Iceland (while being watched by a herd of suspicious wild reindeer).

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 Android, iOS, BREW, BlackBerry, J2ME, Palm, and Windows Mobile—some of which have been installed on millions of phones worldwide. 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. in Computer Science from the University of California. A self-admitted gadget freak, Shane always has the latest smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. He can often be found fiddling with the latest technologies, such as cloud services and mobile platforms, and other exciting, state-of-the-art 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 almost get eaten by a lion in Kenya. He admits that he has to take at least two phones with him when backpacking—even though there is no coverage—and that he snickered and whipped out his Android phone to take a picture when Laurie got her tongue stuck to that iceberg in Iceland, and that he is catching on that he should be writing his own bio.