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Product Description
Product Description
Pro Android 3 starts with the basics, giving you a firm foundation in Android development. It then builds on this foundation to teach you how to build real-world and fun mobile applications using the new Android 3.0 SDK. This book covers advanced concepts in detail including maps, geocoding, services, live folders, drag and drop, touchscreens, and the new Android 3.0 features: fragments and ActionBar. Pro Android 3 is uniquely comprehensive: it covers sensors, text to speech, OpenGL, live widgets, search, and the audio and video APIs.
Using the code-heavy tutorials and expert advice, you’ll quickly be able to build cool mobile apps and run them on dozens of Android-based smartphones. You’ll explore and use the Android APIs, including those for media, sensors, and long-running services. And you’ll check out what’s new with Android 3.0, including the improved UI across all Android platforms, drag and drop, fragment dialogs, and more, giving you the knowledge to create stunning, cutting-edge apps, while keeping you agile enough to respond to changes in the future.
What you’ll learn
- How to use Android to build Java-based mobile applications for Google phones with a touch screen or keyboard
- How to design and implement irresistible user interfaces for touch screens with Views and layouts
- How to populate your application with data from data sources, using Content Providers
- How Android works on the inside, so you better understand how to design great mobile apps
- How to create 3D graphics with OpenGL and custom components
- How to build multimedia apps using Android’s Media APIs
- How to use Android’s location-based services, network-based services, and security
- How to use new Android 3.0 features, such as fragments and the ActionBar
Who this book is for
This book is for professional software engineers/programmers looking to move their ideas and applications into the mobile space with Android. It assumes a passable understanding of Java, including how to write classes and handle basic inheritance structures.
Table of Contents
- Introducing the Android Computing Platform
- Setting up your Development Environment
- Understanding Resources
- Understanding Content Providers
- Understanding Intents
- Building User Interfaces and Using Controls
- Adding Menus
- Implementing Dialogs
- Working with Preferences and Saving State
- Security and Permissions
- Working with Services
- Exploring Packages, Processes, and Library Projects
- Exploring Processes, Components, Threads, and Handlers
- Exploring Broadcast Receivers and Long Running Services
- Exploring the Alarm Manager
- Unveiling 2D Animation
- Exploring Maps and Location Services
- Using the Telephony APIs
- Understanding the Media Frameworks
- Programming 3D Graphics with OpenGL
- Exploring Live Folders
- Home Screen Widgets and Live Wallpaper
- Android Search
- Exploring Text to Speech and the Google Translate API
- Touchscreens
- Using Sensors
- Understanding the Contact API
- Deploying your Application: Android Market and Beyond
- Fragments
- Action Bar
- Selected Topics in Android 3.0
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Book content
Unfortunately, Pro Android 3 has the same problem than so many other books. It starts from the very beginning of Android development. Topics like Android structure, Dalvik overview, downloading and installing SDK don't belong into book like this. This is especially unacceptable in case of Pro Android book series as the same publisher has another book titled "Beginning Android"in their selection.
Why does this matter? Can't the readers just skip the first few chapters to get to the good content? Not really. The authors have included relevant bits and pieces that are relevant in the middle of these chapters. For example gems like Strict mode are buried in there.
If you're an Android dev with experience building few apps already you'll probably skip chapters 1 - 8. In my opinion all those chapters should have been compressed down into 1 - 2 chapters only talking about advanced features. Once you've read the rest of the book it might be worth getting back to these chapters to browse through and see if some of the subsections have additional info for you.
The rest of the chapters in this book all handle one Android API each(for example, home screen widgets, search, etc). Any of these chapters have potential to help a developer to get up to speed with an API he or she has not used before. To get started on a chapter you should take few minutes to browse the chapter through to get good overview of the topic. The book will give you good understanding what features and advanced features each API has and you can then get back and read the relevant parts..
The book covers pretty much all of the big APIs in the Android OS. Skimming thought the whole book will help you understand what bits of Android can help you with your project and you can go back to them to get deeper knowledge.
Source code examples in this book are very well thought out but reading code from a book is always a bit painful. The examples can help you understand the more complex APIs though.
Updates from Pro Android 2 - Android 3.0 Honeycomb
Google's speed of Android development is very fast. Print media is having difficulties to keep up with the developments. In this latest edition of this book the authors have added three new chapter to talk about Android Honeycomb features.
Of course Google has already moved on and released Android 3.1 (still Honeycomb). The section about Honeycomb widgets should already be updated with the new resizable widget APIs.
Who is this book for?
This book can be used for two purposes. It is easily one of the best books to start Android development with as long as you know Java already. The first chapters can be used as crash course for Android development.
This book is also a very functional as a reference book. The chapters are clearly separated and can function as stand alone manuals of each topic.
What's good?
This book covers all the essential APIs of Android platform. It is well organised and easy to use as reference book. In the multitude of Android books out there it is one of the best. It doesn't just go through the very basic but also takes a look with more advanced APIs.
What's bad?
The book should be much more compact.
What's missing?
Pro Android 3 is basically an API reference. It lacks any information that would make the readers better Android developers. Knowing APIs is a good start but good developers need to know best practices and patterns. Currently there are not many books out there that contains that info. I'd hope Pro Android series would shift their focus to that direction and let the Beginning Android series be the tutorial / reference book.
Unfortunately, Pro Android 3 has the same problem than so many other books. It starts from the very beginning of Android development. Topics like Android structure, Dalvik overview, downloading and installing SDK don't belong into book like this. This is especially unacceptable in case of Pro Android book series as the same publisher has another book titled "Beginning Android"in their selection.
Why does this matter? Can't the readers just skip the first few chapters to get to the good content? Not really. The authors have included relevant bits and pieces that are relevant in the middle of these chapters. For example gems like Strict mode are buried in there.
If you're an Android dev with experience building few apps already you'll probably skip chapters 1 - 8. In my opinion all those chapters should have been compressed down into 1 - 2 chapters only talking about advanced features. Once you've read the rest of the book it might be worth getting back to these chapters to browse through and see if some of the subsections have additional info for you.
The rest of the chapters in this book all handle one Android API each(for example, home screen widgets, search, etc). Any of these chapters have potential to help a developer to get up to speed with an API he or she has not used before. To get started on a chapter you should take few minutes to browse the chapter through to get good overview of the topic. The book will give you good understanding what features and advanced features each API has and you can then get back and read the relevant parts..
The book covers pretty much all of the big APIs in the Android OS. Skimming thought the whole book will help you understand what bits of Android can help you with your project and you can go back to them to get deeper knowledge.
Source code examples in this book are very well thought out but reading code from a book is always a bit painful. The examples can help you understand the more complex APIs though.
Updates from Pro Android 2 - Android 3.0 Honeycomb
Google's speed of Android development is very fast. Print media is having difficulties to keep up with the developments. In this latest edition of this book the authors have added three new chapter to talk about Android Honeycomb features.
Of course Google has already moved on and released Android 3.1 (still Honeycomb). The section about Honeycomb widgets should already be updated with the new resizable widget APIs.
Who is this book for?
This book can be used for two purposes. It is easily one of the best books to start Android development with as long as you know Java already. The first chapters can be used as crash course for Android development.
This book is also a very functional as a reference book. The chapters are clearly separated and can function as stand alone manuals of each topic.
What's good?
This book covers all the essential APIs of Android platform. It is well organised and easy to use as reference book. In the multitude of Android books out there it is one of the best. It doesn't just go through the very basic but also takes a look with more advanced APIs.
What's bad?
The book should be much more compact.
What's missing?
Pro Android 3 is basically an API reference. It lacks any information that would make the readers better Android developers. Knowing APIs is a good start but good developers need to know best practices and patterns. Currently there are not many books out there that contains that info. I'd hope Pro Android series would shift their focus to that direction and let the Beginning Android series be the tutorial / reference book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a BIG book and I think it waffles on way too much and misses basic stuff in the process. I'm a professional Java developer that is learning Android. I found that the book didn't explain a lot of things and I only realized when I was looking at the javadocs. For instance I was reading the chapter on content providers thinking it was the way to access database data, which it can do, however I then realised you only use the providers if the data is to be available over multiple applications. If you only want the data in one application its better just to use the SQLite classes.
The sections on GUI design didn't even cover the new gui builder tools in eclipse, it just talked about building gui's via xml. Learning Android which is a slightly older book covers using the builder!
The examples are not very good really and I found them not great for the explaining what was going on.
Over all it's too big (800 pages), looks rushed, doesn't go into enough detail on some subjects and waffles on too much in others.
I'm now reading Learning Android which so far seems better thought out and has more realistic useful examples.
The sections on GUI design didn't even cover the new gui builder tools in eclipse, it just talked about building gui's via xml. Learning Android which is a slightly older book covers using the builder!
The examples are not very good really and I found them not great for the explaining what was going on.
Over all it's too big (800 pages), looks rushed, doesn't go into enough detail on some subjects and waffles on too much in others.
I'm now reading Learning Android which so far seems better thought out and has more realistic useful examples.
Format:Paperback
It would be a lot easier to list what this book does not cover. Extensive if somewhat disjointed with chapters not appearing to be in a logical order. I'm guessing this was because there are three authors but this is still a great book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Most complete Android book out there
I've got about 5 Android books so far, and I've virtually read them all (of course skipped parts where I think I've really assimilated the concept). Read more
Published 10 months ago by Pedro N. Veloso
Good Solid Title
Pro Android 3 is a well written and well edited book that fits well into the highly regarded Apress Pro series. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Dave Lowe
Not entirely specific to Android 3 development
One must be careful not to be blinded with excitement at the name of this book. Despite the title "Pro Android 3", and the description stating that "Pro Android 3 shows you how to... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Steven
Listmania!
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