Welcome... to Google IO 11; ooops...

sorry,
GTUG welcomes you to the Android launch

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Location: San Francisco, California

Friday, May 6, 2011

 nah!! just Kidding...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Google Uganda - Android Developer Launch
Kampala, Uganda
May, 2011

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Android Awesomeness

Victor Miclovich, Android developer + enthusiast

twitter:@vicmiclovich
http://cwezi.com
http://mspoti.com
http://storyspaces.org
http://thekuyuproject.org
Friday, May 6, 2011
 Introducing Android Devices

Fun and Easy to use

communication on the go
Online
You won’t get lost
You can get rid of keys

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Fun and Easy to use
Cool graphics

lots of power under the hood for

gaming

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 Key-lessness
lose the key pad... new devices designed to be touch-
screen compatible; Android takes it a notch higher:
multitouch

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Communication
Gmail

And obviously:
Web browser,
Basic BT,
etc.

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Online connectivity...

Android OS is designed to enable device

connectivity to the networked world

Friday, May 6, 2011

 A-O-B
very true... Android OS
lays out hardware
requirements and
conditions that phone
manufacturers should
follow in order to have
well optimized
operations

Lots of power under the hood >>> in comes “App

development”

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Application Development
$> Assumptions
$> Framework
$> Piecing the UI together
$> Basic networking
$> Services (RESTful web service intro)

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Assumptions

You’ve read the

handout or have it
close by to guide you...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 About Android }-*->F-work

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 What is a mobile app?

a set of user interfaces arranged to form a pattern

these patterns tend to accomplish tasks!!!

Friday, May 6, 2011

 How to design an app?
Start with an idea
Research the idea (ask around: UCD)
Concept it (use storyboards, write! write!)
Prototype it
Start coding
Iterate (repeat step 1 or 2)

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Isn’t that easy?

Friday, May 6, 2011

 How?
?
?
?
?
?
how?

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Android UIs

2 ways of working magic with apps-->>

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 One way is...

through a declarative approach...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Declarative user interface
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/
res/android"
android:orientation="vertical"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent">
<TextView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:text="@string/splash"
/>
</LinearLayout>

Friday, May 6, 2011

 another way is to...

examples:
*swing
use a programmatic approach...
*gwt

Google advises programmers to choose option 1)

why?
->It is cleaner + keeps your code easy to maintain
->In case you make app changes, it is easy to do

Friday, May 6, 2011

 what to do?

You’ll use both approaches

Declarative approach to describe how something
looks or appears such what a button should look like
Programmatic approach to give life to the UI
component such as a button

Friday, May 6, 2011

 user interface design...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Android UID

Views
Layouts

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Views

Everything you see through your screen is a view

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 Examples of Views

ImageView (image)
TextView (text) MapView (to view
ButtonView (buttons) maps)

ListView (lists) WebView (embedded

web + webkit
EditView (text boxes) rendering)

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 Layouts

Organize views
group view components together

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Examples Layouts

LinearLayouts
TableLayouts
FrameLayout
RelativeLayout
AbsoluteLayout (using (x,y) coord. system)

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 Notes

Layouts are resizable (expand with content)

expand with the different device sizes (better
graphics rendering that supports)
Layouts are customizable

Friday, May 6, 2011

 What else in Android?

Services that will run in the background

Intents and broadcasting (that support in-app
notification and instructions)
lots of crazy cool stuff... just need to dig deeper than
45 minutes! lol!

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Prerequisites

Java programming
Read the handout
watch out for things like the application life cycle, etc.
Ask questions at the end

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 Code

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Layout parameters

Specify the way layouts appear

Basically in your xml files:
android:layout_height = “ <some height>”
android:layout_width = “ <some width>”

Friday, May 6, 2011

 ¿Tip!

When looking thru’ documentation, start with the

specific less abstract view/class or layout then look
at what it inherits from parent class

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 App components (java classes)
analogous to a screen
Activities
respond to broadcast intents/
BroadcastReceivers
msgs
Services
ContentProviders tasks that run in the background

apps can share data

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Activities

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 an activity (-ies)
a UI screen or what appears before the user as whole
An Activity is also a java class
Activities can also be
faceless
in a floating window
just return a value (boolean or other)

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Intents

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Intents
Intents help describe what you want done (verb words
+ objects)
Pick photo from album
Delete music
Make a call
Android matches Intent with Activity (object) that can
best provide a service

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Note

Activities and BroadcastReceivers describe what intents

they can service in their IntentFilters through the
AndroidManifest.xml file

Friday, May 6, 2011

 BroadcastReceivers

Friday, May 6, 2011

 BroadcastReceivers

components designed to respond to Broadcast Intents

also, apps can create and broadcast their own Intents

as well.

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Servers

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Services

These are components that run in the background...

A music player keeps running even when you choose
to start looking through your gallery
You can type a message while listening to music
Download a pdf while browsing Youtube
etc.

Friday, May 6, 2011

 ContentProviders

Friday, May 6, 2011

 ContentProviders
A ContentProvider enables sharing of data across
different apps
some apps can poll the address book
an app could use your gallery photos, etc.
Provides a single unified API for
CRUD operations
Content is represented by a URI and MIME type

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Other issues of great importance...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Persisting data

Some apps need to cache or store data inside of the

phone (email, messages, attachments via bluetooth,
etc.)
Android provides a couple of ways to store your data
as a flat file
in a database (SQLite)

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Note

There are lots of useful APIs to interact with the

database, file system, etc.
Android is powerful and quite large
Look around to see what you can do with it...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Going forward...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Packaging

Android apps are packaged in .apk files

Everything needed to run your app is found in the apk
It also includes your application manifest file (where
permissions for activities and other predefined settings
are saved up) {look at handout for more info in app}

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Resources

Android defines resources an app uses in the res/ folder

res/layout (contains layout rules)

res/drawable (for drawing)

res/anim (for animations your app might need)

res/values (externalized values for strings, colors, styles and lots more)

res/xml (general xml files that are needed at run time such as a settings.xml file, etc.)

res/raw (binary files like sound are defined in there)

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Assets

Friday, May 6, 2011

 Assets

A lot similar to resources (from slides before)

Any kind of file can be stored (make sure it doesn’t
complete the SD card memory or other)
Differences are:
assets are read only
InputStream class (methods) access assets

Friday, May 6, 2011

 The Networked world...

Friday, May 6, 2011

 so much to say...

Trending way of development

use an API to expose a service your mobile app can
use
Your app can persist data in a database if network is
unavailable
Apps are so much fun when connected to the
Internet

Friday, May 6, 2011

 The End...
More might come in the future,
http://cwezi.com/trainings (coming soon)

vicmiclovich{at}gmail.com

Friday, May 6, 2011