For some years now it's been clear that Android is a force to be reckoned with in the mobile OS landscape. This Java-based technology has sparked a new gold rush, with programmers competing to make money from their mobile apps. Android jobs are also plentiful, as shown by a quick job search using Indeed.com.
To be successful, Android developers need a good grasp of the Java language (or Kotlin), Android APIs, and Android application architecture. It's also important to use an appropriate and effective development environment. For many years, Eclipse IDE with the ADT plugin was the preferred platform for Android development. Today, it's Android Studio.
If you're new to Android Studio, this tutorial series will get you started. I'll briefly introduce the Android development platform, then show you how to download, install, and run the software. After that, we'll spend most of our time actually using Android Studio to develop an animated mobile app:
Android Studio is Google's officially supported IDE for developing Android apps. This IDE is based on IntelliJ IDEA, which offers a powerful code editor and developer tools. Android Studio 3.2.1 includes the following features:
Google provides Android Studio for the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms. You can download Android Studio from the Android Studio homepage, where you'll also find the traditional SDKs with Android Studio's command-line tools. Before downloading Android Studio, make sure your platform meets the following requirements:
Once you've ensured that your operating system is compatible with Android Studio 3.2.1 or higher, download the appropriate Android Studio distribution file. The Android Studio download page auto-detected that I'm running a 64-bit Windows operating system and selected android-studio-ide-181.5056338-windows.exe (927 MB) for me to download.
android-studio-ide-181.5056338-windows.exe includes an installer and the Android SDK command-line tools. If you don't need or want to use Android Studio, you can download only the Android SDK command-line tools.
I chose to keep the default settings. After clicking Next, I was taken to the Configuration Settings panel, where I was asked to choose where to install Android Studio.
Clicking Show details causes the names of files being installed and other activities to be displayed. When installation finished, the Installation Complete panel appeared.
This dialog box is used to start up a new Android Studio project, work with an existing project, and more. It can be accessed by selecting Android Studio from the Windows Start menu, or the equivalent on another platform.
The quickest way to get to know Android Studio is to use it to develop an app. We'll start with a variation on the "Hello, World" application: a little mobile app that displays a "Welcome to Android" message.
From our setup so far, you should still have Android Studio running with the Welcome to Android Studio dialog box. From here, click Start a new Android Studio project. Android Studio will respond with the Create New Project dialog box shown in Figure 19.
Click Next, and you will be given the opportunity to choose a template for your app's main activity. For now we'll stick with Empty Activity. Select this template (if necessary) and click Next.
The Gradle Scripts branch identifies various .gradle (such as build.gradle) and .properties (such as local.properties) files that are used by Android Studio's Gradle-based build system.
Each branch/subbranch corresponds to a directory name or to a file name. For example, res corresponds to the res directory and strings.xml corresponds to the strings.xml file.
You've installed and configured Android Studio and created a project for your first Android Studio mobile app; now you're ready to build your Android application. In Android Studio, this means populating your new project with Java source code and resource files. Turn to Part 2 when you're ready to code your first Android animated mobile app.
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