Saturday, December 8, 2012

Path to Building Apps for Android

By Erika Smith-Jones


Google has built the Android operating system so that just about anyone together with the appropriate knowledge can build apps to run on an Android mobile phone or tablet. Google's approach to developing smartphones is entirely opposite to Apple, who prefer control over the software that folks can add to their iPhones. The open design of Android indicates that you can literally create whatever you desire and folks will be able to download and install the app.. A large number of programmers have jumped ship from iPhone apps to developing apps for the Android mainly because of the freedom it offers them.

For those who create an application for the iPhone it is at the disposal of a reviewer who determines if the app is good enough to be sold on iTunes or if it's right for the app store. Many apps don't get released due to Apple's censorship policies. Besides this, research firm, NDP Group claimed that one half of all smartphone purchases are for Android mobile phones. By the end of 2010 some 32 million handsets were running the Android OS. Not suprisingly everybody is researching the way to build Android apps.

Android applications are coded in Java. An individual will need to learn this language or employ a programmer who does. The next thing is to download and set up the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) from Google. The SDK is made up of libraries, classes, examples plus an interface to test out your new Android software. You can also download the Google APIs Add-On extension, which incorporates libraries specific to Google's various web services.

You will usually style and design the ui in Illustrator and save in vector format. However, it really is better to find a qualified designer to build the user interface. The libraries in the SDK additionally contain some standard vector graphics that can be used when creating an Android application. Should your app creates data that should be stored and referenced later like a weight tracker in which you enter your weight and track trends on a graph over time then you've got to hold the data inside of an SQLite database. You will additionally need to craft the necessary code to create, insert, delete and retrieve data from the database.

Getting the completed app from your pc to your Android smartphone is a bit bit complex given it needs to be converted, compiled and deployed. Android uses a system referred to as Dalvik Virtual Machine. Your Java Class files need to be converted in to .dex files by using a tool known as DX. After this is successfully done it must be packaged in to an .apk (Android Package) file using something referred to as the Android Asset Packing Tool. Not until this is done can the app be deployed to an Android handset.

Fortunately there are vast libraries of freely available code on the Android developers website and on 3rd party websites which provide tutorials on how to get started developing your first Android application.




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