This is the first article in what will be a series of tutorials about Android development. This is meant as an introductory class to Android: it's for people who are already programmers but new to Android.
We will be covering the basics and focusing on features introduced in Honeycomb, going through the most common steps to build a fully functional Android application. Although we focus on Honeycomb, everything is still valid for Ice Cream Sandwich.
We got the idea for this guide when we were building a Google Buzz client called Honeybuzz. When Google+ was announced we decided to abandon the app, but at least make use of the knowledge we learned to help other people. We were still going to publish the app (as a demonstration), but when the shutdown of Google Buzz was announced, we realized it would be useless after a short while.
We will use the app as a reference point, serving as an example of how each topic might be applied in a real app. Following are a couple of screenshots of Honeybuzz.
These are the chapters of this guide:
- Development environment and project creation
- Working with Google Buzz API
- Error handling and reporting
- Using Google Analytics in your Android application
- Storing and retrieving user preferences
- How to create an options menu for the Action Bar
- Styles and Themes
- Use Fragments to handle different screen orientations
- Services, AsyncTasks and Notifications
- How to monetize your Android application
- How to create a StackView widget
- Publish to the Android Market
An hyperlink will be added to each chapter after it is published.
We hope you enjoy this series of tutorials and we look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions.