Tutorials
Hands-on experience with Android
All the tutorials come with the full source, javadoc documentation, project settings for Eclipse and the Android installable APK files for download. Where java source is shown, you'll find the links are Android friendly, so for example clicking the Paint keyword will open up the Android Paint API page.
The projects use Eclipse (Galileo) and Android SDK 1.6 or later, but they all follow the standard Android layout so shouldn't be too difficult to use in other development environments.
If you are browsing this site on an Android device you can download the APK's by selecting the link and following your devices instructions - they will then be installed directly to it.
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Tuesday, 03 November 2009 20:35 |
When developing apps which use the sensors, the more realistic the environment for testiing the better. The earlier SensorArrow tutorial showed how to create an app which uses the OpenIntents simulator to let you send events via a wireframe handset representation. This is great, and extremely useful in many situations, but it has some drawbacks. To complement it we present the SensorPlayer, an app to record and sensor movements from your physical device and replay them either back there or on the emulator.
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Monday, 12 October 2009 10:21 |
This tutorial shows how to add sparkle to your apps with an animated splash screen. Making heavy use of the Android Animation classes, it shows how to add an image as the splash screen and tweak it interactively, so you can get it just right without having to constantly restart the app just to see the effect. For good measure, the Preferences system is given a hearty workout too, so whatever tweaks you apply are stored ready for when your app is next run. The splash screens can be entirely graphical, so don't have to be rectangular any more!
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Sunday, 27 September 2009 19:43 |
Its great to see so many new Android devices appearing. Developers love this, unless their apps look ugly on hardware they hadn't tried them on! The problem is having to cater for all the new screen sizes. Even worse - the same device can change orientation any time, like when rotating from portrait to landscape. To show a few techniques to help with this heres FlexiMaze, an app to plonk our little mouse buddy in a maze with some cheese to hunt. All the elements are scaled according to the screen size and orientation.
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Tuesday, 22 September 2009 13:38 |
Test first development is now a main feature in projects which use agile techniques. I'm still in awe of seeing complex software being put through its paces by thousands of tests repeatedly, accurately and without a hint of the errors that could be introduced by tired or bored humans. Android supports and encourages this approach as a major factor in helping you create high quality code. But theres a new twist now - most Android apps are heavily UI driven. Is there anything the framework can do to help us here?
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Sunday, 08 March 2009 18:54 |
Android supports little magnetic gizmos inside the handset which can tell your app which way up the phone is, how far its tilted, if it's moving and so on. This opens up a whole new world to developers, be it in utility apps, navigation, games or whatever they can dream up. Accessing these readings in code isn't always straightforward, and if you don't have a physical handset available it might seem impossible. Not so - in this tutorial we show how to make use of the values your app can listen to, and go through the process of building the necessary hooks in your code to test it without a real phone.
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