This is clearly a home side project so don’t expect much real work information here. I read a little about the Android SDK and since its free and I can quickly get up and running in Eclipse I decided to mess around with it in my spare time. I also bought the book, Pro Android 2, which has been an excellent primer and reference so far. If you want a really good introduction to the Android architecture you must watch the introductory videos, the platform is pretty impressive. One of the best things I like about the platform is it supports multiple processes and has a focus on HTML 5 and HTML content in general. I also love the fact it natively support OpenGL which I have a lot of previous experience with.
After playing a little, I realized this is a very intuitive and powerful project structure in Eclipse. They have done a great job with how the generated class files and resources are defined and better yet, the way the resources are referenced in the XML and code is brilliant. For instance, I started messing around with graphics and the first thing I had to do it create a custom view and then reference that custom view in the layout XML. You do this by extending android.view.View and then overriding the onDraw() event. Viola, you instantly have a custom view for your own graphics drawing!
This is what I like best, you reference your custom view in the XML by specifying the class name as the element name:
<net.balfes.views.custom.MainView android:id="@+id/ViewPort" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>
So what I did was lay out a simple checkers user interface and then started playing with the different listeners and graphics API’s.
Funny because I could write almost the same post 🙂
Just started to play with the Android SDK. And it’s pretty.
Very easy to learn.
I played with SQLite, Google Maps, Reminders…
Integration with Google Maps is very well done.
I like a lot the use of XML too.
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