The Android framework makes many native resources available, providing you with various strings, images, animations, styles, and layouts to use in your applications. Accessing the system resources in code is similar to using your own resources. The difference is that you use the native Android resource classes available from android.R, rather than the applicationspecifi c … Read more
Android supports three types of animation: Property animations — A tweened animation that can be used to potentially animate any property on the target object by applying incremental changes between two values. This can be used for anything from changing the color or opacity of a View to gradually fade it in or out, to … Read more
It’s always good practice to keep non-code resources, such as images and string constants, external to your code. Android supports the externalization of resources, ranging from simple values such as strings and colors to more complex resources such as images (Drawables), animations, themes, and menus. Perhaps the most powerful externalizable resources are layouts. By externalizing … Read more
Each Android project includes a manifest file, AndroidManifest.xml, stored in the root of its project hierarchy. The manifest defines the structure and metadata of your application, its components, and its requirements. It includes nodes for each of the Activities, Services, Content Providers, and Broadcast Receivers that make up your application and, using Intent Filters and … Read more
Android applications consist of loosely coupled components, bound by the application manifest that describes each component and how they interact. The manifest is also used to specify the application’s metadata, its hardware and platform requirements, external libraries, and required permissions. The following components comprise the building blocks for all your Android applications: Activities — Your … Read more
The Android Virtual Device Manager is used to create and manage the virtual devices that will host instances of the Emulator AVDs are used to simulate the software builds and hardware configurations available on different physical devices. This lets you test your application on a variety of hardware platforms without needing to buy a variety … Read more
The Android SDK includes several tools and utilities to help you create, test, and debug your projects. A detailed examination of each developer tool is outside the scope of this book, but it’s worth briefly reviewing what’s available. The Android Virtual Device and SDK Managers — Used to create and manage AVDs and to download … Read more
Most of the applications you create in Android will fall into one of the following categories: Foreground — An application that’s useful only when it’s in the foreground and is effectively suspended when it’s not visible. Games are the most common examples Background — An application with limited interaction that, apart from when being confi-gured, … Read more
Android Studio runs on Java Runtime Environment (JRE). JRE can be installed on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. We need to follow the steps given below for the installation of Android Studio independent of our operating system Installation of Java: Java is developed by Oracle Inc. There are basically two Java packages: Java Runtime Environment … Read more
Android is an open-source mobile operating system. It is a variant of Linux hence providing extensive security, modularity and productivity at the mobile device level. Android is developed and maintained by the organization called “Open Headset Alliance” (OHA). OHA was established in 2007 with Google being its foremost member. OHA includes a lot of prominent … Read more