What this Book [Beginning Android Application development] covers
Beginning Android Application development covers the fundamentals of Android programming using the Android SDK. It is divided into 11 chapters and three appendices.
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Android Programming covers the basics of the Android OS and its current state. You will learn about the features of Android devices, as well as some of the popular devices in the market. You will then learn how to download and install all the required tools to develop Android applications and then test them on the Android Emulator.
Chapter 2: Activities and Intents gets you acquainted with the two fundamental concepts in Android programming: activities and intents. Activities are the building blocks of an Android application. You will learn how to link activities together to form a complete Android application using intents, the glue to links activities and one of the unique characteristics of the Android OS.
Chapter 3: Getting to Know the Android User Interface covers the various components that make up the UI of an Android application. You will learn about the various layouts you can use to build the UI of your application, and the numerous events that are associated with the UI when users interact with the application.
Chapter 4: Designing Your User Interface Using Views walks you through the various basic views you can use to build your Android UI. You will learn three main groups of views: basic views, picker views, and list views.
Chapter 5: Displaying Pictures and Menus with Views continues the exploration of views. Here, you will learn how to display images using the various image views, as well as display options and context menus in your application. This chapter ends with some additional cool views that you can use to spice up your application.
Chapter 6: Data Persistence shows you how to save, or store, data in your Android application. In addition to learning the various techniques to store user data, you will also learn file manipulation and how to save files onto internal and external storage (SD card). In addition, you will learn how to create and use a SQLite database in your Android application.
Chapter 7: Content Providers discusses how data can be shared among different applications on an Android device. You will learn how to use a content provider and then build one yourself.
Chapter 8: Messaging and Networking explores two of the most interesting topics in mobile programming — sending SMS messages and network programming.
You will learn how to programmatically send and receive SMS and e-mail messages; and how to connect to web servers to download data.
Finally, you will see how Web services can be consumed in an Android application.
Chapter 9: Location-Based Services demonstrates how to build a location-based service application using Google Maps. You will also learn how to obtain geographical location data and then display the location on the map.
Chapter 10: Developing Android Services shows you how you can write applications using services. Services are background applications that run without a UI. You will learn how to run your services asynchronously on a separate thread, and how your activities can communicate with them.