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Wednesday 12 December 2012

Road to Creating Apps for Android

By Mary Tullie


Google built the Android operating system so that any individual together with the proper skillsets can build apps to run on an Android mobile phone or tablet. Google's solution to building smartphones is completely opposite to Apple Inc, who prefer control over the applications that people can install on their iPhones. The open characteristics of Android means you can literally build anything you want and people are able to download and install the app.. Numerous programmers have jumped ship from iPhone applications to developing software for the Android mainly because of the flexibility it offers them.

Should you create an application for the Apple iPhone it's at the disposal of a reviewer who ascertains if the application is good enough to be sold on iTunes or if it's appropriate for the app store. Many programs never get released due to Apple's censorship policies. On top of this, research firm, NDP Group said half of all smartphone sales are for Android smartphones. By the end of 2010 some 32 million handsets were running the Android operating system. Not suprisingly everyone is investigating how to develop Android apps.

Android apps are programmed in Java. You will want to know this language or employ a developer who does. The next step is to download and set up the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) from Google. The SDK is made up of classes, libraries, examples plus an interface to test out your Android software. You can also download the Google APIs Add-On extension, which has libraries specific to Google's numerous web services.

You would generally style and design the gui in Illustrator and save the output in vector format. However, it really is best to get a good designer to make the UI. The libraries in the SDK additionally include some standard vector graphics that can be used when building an Android application. Should your app creates info which needs to be stored and referenced later like a weight-loss tracker where you enter your weight and show your trends using a graph over time you will have to store the data inside of an SQLite database. You will additionally need to compose the necessary code to create, write, delete and read data from the database.

Taking your completed application from your computer to your Android phone is a touch tad complex as it has to be converted, compiled and then deployed. Android works with a system known as Dalvik Virtual Machine. Your Java Class files must be converted in to .dex files using a tool called DX. After this is accomplished it needs to be packaged in to an .apk (Android Package) file by using something referred to as the Android Asset Packing Tool. Only when this is done can the app be deployed to an Android smartphone.

Luckily for us one can find huge libraries of freely available code on the Android developers website and on third party websites which provide lessons on how to get cracking creating your first Android application.




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