The Android tutorial covers all important concepts that will allow a new programmer to learn how to develop mobile applications for the Android platform. The tutorial is written  from a programmer perspective and dives after few topics into simple and do-by-example applications which are easy to follow. Despite the apparently simplicity, each topic highlights important aspect of the Android platform and synthetize aspects described in detail on the developer.android.com portal.

Topics posted until now:

1. Android Tutorial (01) – Setting the development environment

Android is an open source software toolkit created by Google and Open Handset Alliance. Initially developed for mobile phones, it has become a major application platform for a wide range of mobile devices.

The scope of this post is to summarize the steps needed to set the development environment and to start learning and developing Android applications.

2. Android Tutorial (02) – Applications key concepts, activities and resources

In order to understand the Android application architecture you need some basic knowledge regarding Android applications key concepts. Understanding these elements will allow you to control:

• application components
• application lifecycle
• application resources

In this post are described all these key concepts  in order to highlight their role, utility and importance. Other posts will describe in more detail how are used in order to develop an Android mobile application.

3. Android Tutorial (03) – How to create, run and read your first application, Hello World

In this article we will see how to use the Eclipse IDE and the ADT (Android Development Toolkit) Plugin for Eclipse to create a very simple Android mobile application, the classic Hello World !. Despite its simplicity, the application just prints a message on the screen, its is very important to understand it, because its structure represents the core for any other Android mobile application.

Other topics highlighted in this article will help you to:

• create an Android mobile application project using Eclipse and ADT (Android Development Toolkit) Plugin;
• run the mobile application using different mobile Android emulators;
• understand and read the structure of the Android project.

4. Android Tutorial (04) – Procedural vs. Declarative Design of User Interfaces

Android mobile applications are relying for efficiency and usability on user interfaces composed on dialog windows, visual controls, 2D graphics and other multimedia elements. The Android platforms allows programmers to use two methods for designing user interfaces: procedural or declarative.

In this post we analyze a simple Android mobile applications in order to make an analysis on procedural vs. declarative design of user interfaces.

5. Android Tutorial (05) – How to create a new Activity class with the Manifest editor or without it

Behind any window or form in the Android mobile application there is an Activity instance. In order to develop a mobile application with multiple windows you must create, for each display, a new class that extends Activity class.

In this post we will see how to create a new Activity programmatically or using the Manifest WYSIWYG graphical editor that comes with the Android ADT Plugin for Eclipse.

6. Android Tutorial (06) – How to create and display a new form, window or activity

In this post we will see what are the basics for developing an Android mobile application that has multiple windows or activities. To do that, we need to know how to create and display a new form, window or activity (for the rest of the post we will use the Android vocabulary and call it just activity).

7. Android Tutorial (07) – How to debug the Android mobile application with LogCat

In this article we will see how to debug the Android mobile application using the Android LogCat. Despite this Android SDK tool, the application can be debugged in Eclipse like any other Java application (i.e using breakpoints).

8. Android Tutorial (08) – How to add a menu, programmatic vs. declarative solution

A menu is a group of options (items) that are accessed using the device Menu key. The menu items are represented by single options or by groups of options, which are organized in submenus.

In this article, we will see how to add a menu to the Android application. The solution is implemented using both the programmatic and the declarative solution that uses menu.xml files. For the declarative solution we will use also the Android visual editor for menus.

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