Mastering Android Programming

Explore Java access modifiers and generics to write typesafe code, using lists and maps with generics, wildcards, and wrappers; learn static, final, abstract, and basic collection usage.

Explore streams in Java, including byte and character streams, file and memory I/O, and data streams, and learn to handle exceptions and close resources safely.

Explore inheritance in Java, demonstrating polymorphism, abstract classes, and interfaces through Animal, Bird, and Fish examples, and show how methods like move, eat, and make sound are overridden.

Explore how activities enable user interaction, navigate between screens, and manage the lifecycle with onCreate, onStart, onResume, onPause, onStop, onDestroy, and restart flows.

Explore how content providers enable data sharing between apps via content resolvers, queries, and cursors, including insert, update, delete, and required permissions.

Explore how the contacts content provider underpins the Android contacts app by querying with a cursor, iterating over results, and logging retrieved names.

Explore Android services running in the background, including started and bound services, and learn to use an intense service to manage long-running tasks with intents.

Learn to debug Java in Eclipse using type and subtype hierarchies, outline view, and breakpoints; watch variables, step through code, and diagnose array and type overflow issues.

Explore objects and classes in java, including fields, getters and setters, and private versus public access. Learn constructors, default and no-arg constructors, and the this keyword with a square example.

Learn how android uses threads to run tasks off the main user interface thread to avoid blocking the user interface, with runnable examples, synchronization, volatile, and wait/notify for inter-thread communication.

Discover Android concurrency using AsyncTask to run long tasks in the background, avoiding UI blocking, with doInBackground, onPreExecute, onProgressUpdate, onPostExecute, and single-use constraints.

Explore how intents enable communication between Android components and apps, using explicit and implicit intents, filters, and the manifest to launch activities and browsers.

Understand Android process lifecycles for activities, services, broadcast receivers, and content providers, including when processes are created, destroyed, or reclaimed under low memory.

Create Android layouts in Java with Eclipse, set up a new Android project, and build a calculator user interface using linear and table layouts, text views, and string resources.

Wire up android layouts and ui objects with on click listeners to handle digit button presses, update the display, implement clear, and dismiss the soft keyboard by configuring input types.

Learn to detect touches and recognize gestures on Android by wiring on click handlers, implementing gesture detectors, and using a gesture overlay view with a gesture library for custom gestures.

Explore how action bars work in the Android SDK, promote items to the action bar with show as action, and manage overflow and option menus for phone versus tablet layouts.

Explore Android dialogs, including alert dialog, progress dialog, date picker, and time picker, and learn to implement them with static final ids, onCreateDialog, and alert dialog builder.

Explore android menus across sdk 2.3 and below, honeycomb and later, including options menus, action bars, and dialogs, and inflating xml menus from resource files while handling item selections.

Learn to create and display Android status bar notifications from a background service using a notification manager, pending intents, icons, a unique ID, and content details.

Define Android styles and themes in XML under values, inherit from parent styles, and apply them to layouts or activities via the manifest using dot notation for attributes.

Explore how view groups serve as container views that hold and manage child views within layouts, including indexing, adding, removing, and toggling visibility.

Add views to a linear layout at a chosen index using child count and get child at. Update the text to reflect the count as an image view is inserted.

Explore drag and drop in Android, from manual handling before Android 3.0 to the Honeycomb API after 3.0, using a custom drag source and drop target with touch handling.

Master the Android honeycomb drag and drop system by handling drag events, start and end actions, and passing data via clip data and tags in a practical example.

Explore Android resources in the res folder, including layouts, strings, colors, and images, exposed through the generated R class. Use resource IDs to separate design from code and localize strings.

Plan localization early in Android development by handling strings, numbers, and layouts. Apply locale qualifiers and default values folders with professional translations.

Mastering Android programming covers handling configuration changes by saving state across orientation, language, and other qualifiers, using resource variants and layout files for portrait and landscape.

Explore how Android uses a security sandbox and explicit permissions to access data and components across apps, and implement custom permissions to protect activities and content providers.

Learn to draw on Android canvases using bitmap, paint, and path within a custom view, creating shapes, text, images, and transform operations via onDraw.

discover view based animation in Android, translating, scaling, and rotating views in an xml defined set started with loadAnimation and startAnimation, and contrast it with honeycomb's property animation.

Explore property-based animation in Android using ValueAnimator and ObjectAnimator, controlling properties beyond views, including the X coordinate and alpha, with AnimatorSet to orchestrate multiple animations.

Learn to implement audio playback on Android using the MediaPlayer class: set datasource, prepare, start, pause, and release, with local raw resources or SD card files.

Learn to implement video playback on Android using a video view and a media controller, set the video path, and start playback with built-in controls on a real device.

Learn to use Android camera via intents to capture images or videos, handle permissions and manifest requirements, and process results in onActivityResult.

Explore OpenGL ES on Android, with Java bindings to the C API, setting up a GL surface view and understanding eye point, look at point, up vector, frustum, and viewport.

Develop an Android OpenGL renderer by implementing a surface view renderer that draws a triangle from vertex buffers, using onSurfaceCreated, onSurfaceChanged, and onDrawFrame with a perspective projection.

Explore Android file handling in internal storage using getFilesDir, getDir, deleteFile, and fileList to save, load, and manage app files with simple dialogs and result-based interactions.

Master android networking with web view using webkit to load urls and perform get and post requests via http client with name-value pairs, including emulator localhost handling.

Persist Java primitives across app sessions with shared preferences by using get shared preferences or get preferences, editing with an editor, and committing changes in onStop after reading in onCreate.

Learn to subclass the sqlite lite open helper to create and upgrade a database, obtain a writable database, and perform inserts, updates, and queries in Android.

Learn to create custom Android UI views by extending view or view group, implementing constructors with context and attribute set, and overriding on measure and on draw.

Learn to set up Google Maps in Android by obtaining an API key and configuring Eclipse. See a short demo and basic steps to display latitude and longitude.

Geocode an address to latitude and longitude with a geocoder, convert to a geo point, and center a map on Dallas with zoom, handling io exceptions and emulator limitations.

Learn how to get latitude and longitude on Android using a location manager and listener, handle on location changed updates, and test with emulator GPS coordinates.

Load and test android apps by building an apk from the emulator, install on a device via usb or adb, and ensure release mode and debugging removal before market deployment.

Register as an Android developer with a Google account and a $25 fee, create a release signing key with keytool, sign the app, and publish after manifest validation and testing.

Explore the Android software development lifecycle, from planning and vision to analysis, design, implementation, testing, and support and maintenance, with real-world practices like MVC and alpha/beta testing.