Tips, tricks and insights into OOP & UI development. Learning to design & develop for the Android platform
I have been tinkering with Android dev quite a bit lately and figured since Arni mentioned in the meeting the other day that the company is flirting with doing more mobile development, I would share some resources with you all since a few of you showed interest in learning.
Even if you are not a developer I highly recommend gaining an understanding of the UI architecture, styles/themes, event model for the android and other mobile platforms, in the event that you are called upon to design for mobile you are familiar with the canvas on which you will be asked to paint.
There is allot of know how that goes into designing for mobile that most would not consider; For instance OpenGL full 3D gaming, heads-up display, 2D Sprite Animation, audio in addition to the basic web-like functionality. In the big picture there is a vast landscape that is waiting to be explored.
For those Flash developers out there, Android on many devices is capable of running Flash and soon to include AIR (now in its final beta stage), so be prepared to dial those skills for a smaller build out, and a sleeker stack.
Android development tools/emulator/SDK are all free; can be used on, Windows, Mac OS, & Linux; can be deployed onto any android phone and are easy to get up and running. There are tons of resources out there to get your feet wet with application development & user interface design.
Here are a couple links to get you started and hopefully inspired to create for what will surely be the largest leap for global communication in the years to come.
SDK & IDE:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
If you need to install or update Eclipse, you can download it from this location:
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
A Java or RCP version of Eclipse is recommended.
Tutorials:
http://www.thescreencast.com/2007/12/how-to-google-android-in-eclipse.html
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