Developing for Android-Types of Android Application

SRI KRISHNA ARTS AND SCIENCE COLLEGE
DEPARTMENT OF BCA & M.Sc SS
ANDROID PROGRAMMING (12SSI56)
UNIT-I
PPT- 6-7
Types of Android Applications - Developing for
Mobile and embedded Devices: Developing for
Android- Android Development Tools

Topics to be Discussed
• Types of Android Applications
– Foreground Applications
– Background Applications
– Intermittent Applications
– Widgets and Live Wallpapers
• Developing for Mobile and Embedded Devices
– Developing for Android
• Android Development Tools

Types of Android
Applications
• Foreground:
– application that’s useful only when it’s in the
foreground and is effectively
– suspended when it’s not visible
• Background
– application with limited interaction
– spends most of its lifetime hidden

Types of Android
Applications
• Intermittent Applications:
– well-designed applications
– applications that expect limited interactivity
but do most of their work in the background.
• Widgets and Live Wallpapers
– applications are represented only as a home-
screen Widget or as a Live Wallpaper.

Foreground Applications
• Need to consider carefully the Activity lifecycle so that
the Activity switches seamlessly between the
background and the foreground.
• little control over their lifecycles and a background
application with no running Services is a prime
candidate for cleanup by Android’s resource
management.
• Need to save the state of the application when it leaves
the foreground, and then present the same state when
it returns to the front.
• present a slick and intuitive user experience

Background Applications
• run silently in the background with little user
input.
• listen for messages or actions caused by the
hardware, system, or other applications, rather
than relying on user interaction.
• can create completely invisible services, but in
practice it’s better to provide at least a basic
level of user control
• let users confi rm that the service is running

Intermittent Applications
• application that can accept user input and that also reacts
to events when it’s not the active foreground Activity.
• applications are generally a union of visible Activities and
invisible background Services and Broadcast Receivers.
• application needs to be aware of its state when
interacting with the user

Widgets and Live Wallpapers
• application may consist entirely of a Widget or Live
Wallpaper.
• provide interactive visual components that can add
functionality to user’s home screens.
• Widget-only applications are commonly used to display
dynamic information, such as battery levels,weather
forecasts, or the date and time.

DEVELOPING FOR MOBILE
AND EMBEDDED DEVICES
• Developing for Android
– Android has some particular considerations.
• The Android design philosophy demands that
applications be designed for:
– Performance
– Responsiveness
– Freshness
– Security
– Seamlessness
– Accessibility

Developing for Android
• Being Fast and Efficient

Downloading and Installing
the Android SDK

the Android SDK
• The screen that appears shows each of the packages available for
the download.
• This includes a node for the platform tools, each of the platform
releases, and a collection of extras, such as the Android Support
Package and billing/licensing packages.
• You can expand each platform release node to see a list of the
packages included within it, including the tools, documentation,
and sample code packages.
• To get started, simply check the boxes corresponding to the
newest framework SDK and the latest version of the tools,
compatibility/support library, documentation, and sample code.

the Android SDK
• For testing the backward compatibility of your
applications, it can often be useful to download the
Framework SDK
• To use the Google APIs (which contain the Maps APIs), you
also need to select the Google APIs by Google package
from the platform releases you want to support.
• When you click the Install Packages button, the packages
you’ve chosen will be downloaded to your SDK installation
folder.
• The result is a collection of framework API libraries,
documentation, and several sample applications.

Updates to the SDK
• you can use the Android SDK Manager to download and
install updates.
• All future packages and upgrades will be placed in the
same SDK location.

Developing with Eclipse
• using Eclipse with the ADT plug-in for your
Android development offers some
significant advantages, primarily through
the tight integration of many of the
Android build and debug tools into your
IDE.
• Eclipse –popular open source IDE for Java
development.

Developing with Eclipse
• Eclipse 3.5 or Above required to use the ADT Plugin.
– Eclipse 3.7 (Indigo) (Eclipse Classic download)
– Eclipse Java Development Tools (JDT) plug-in
– Web Standard Tools (WST)
– The JDT plug-in and WST are included in most Eclipse IDE
packages.
• Installing Eclipse consists of uncompressing the
download into a new folder, and then running the
eclipse executable.
• Create New Workspace

ANDROID DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS
• ADT plug-in conveniently incorporates
many of these tools into the Eclipse IDE,
where you can access them from the DDMS
perspective, including the following:

ANDROID DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS
• The Android Virtual Device and SDK Managers:
– Used to create and manage AVDs and to download SDK
packages.
– The AVD hosts an Emulator running a particular build of
Android, letting you specify the supported SDK version,
screen resolution, amount of SD card storage available, and
available hardware capabilities
• The Android Emulator
– An implementation of the Android VM designed to run
within an AVD on your development computer.
– Use the Emulator to test and debug your Android
applications.

ANDROID DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS
• Dalvik Debug Monitoring Service (DDMS) —
– Use the DDMS to monitor and control the Emulators
on which you’re debugging your applications.
• Android Debug Bridge (ADB) —
– A client-server application that provides a link to
virtual and physical devices. It lets you copy
files, install compiled application packages
(.apk), and run shell commands.

ANDROID DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS
• Logcat
– A utility used to view and filter the output of the
Android logging system.
• Android Asset Packaging Tool (AAPT)
– Constructs the distributable Android package files
(.apk).

ANDROID DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS
• Additional tools are also available
• SQLite3 — A database tool that you can use to
access the SQLite database fi les created and used
by Android.
• Traceview and dmtracedump — Graphical
analysis tools for viewing the trace logs from your
Android application.
• Hprof-conv — A tool that converts HPROF
profiling output files into a standard format to view
in your preferred profiling tool.

ANDROID DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS
• MkSDCard — Creates an SD card disk image that
can be used by the Emulator to simulate an
external storage card.
• Dx — Converts Java .class bytecode into Android
.dex bytecode.
• Hierarchy Viewer — Provides both a visual
representation of a layout’s View hierarchy to
debug and optimize your UI, and a magnified
display to get your layouts pixel-perfect

ANDROID DEVELOPMENT
TOOLS
• Lint — A tool that analyzes your application and its
resources to suggest improvements and optimizations.
• Draw9patch: A handy utility to simplify the creation of
NinePatch graphics using a WYSIWYG editor.
• Monkey and Monkey Runner: Monkey runs within the VM,
generating pseudo-random user and system events. Monkey
Runner provides an API for writing programs to control the
VM from outside your application.
• ProGuard — A tool to shrink and obfuscate your code by
replacing class, variable, and method names with
semantically meaningless alternatives. This is useful to make
your code more diffi cult to reverse engineer.

New Android Project
• The final page allows you to specify the application
properties. The Application Name is the friendly name
for your application; the Package Name specifies its Java
package;
• The Create Activity option lets you specify the name of a
class that will be your initial Activity; and setting the
Minimum SDK lets you specify the minimum version of
the SDK.

New Android Project
• Create Activity, the ADT plug-in will create a new project
that includes a class that extends Activity.
• The default template implements Hello World.
• Before modifying the project, take this opportunity to
configure launch configurations for running and
debugging.

Creating an Android Virtual
Device
• AVD used to simulate the hardware and software configurations
of different Android devices you need to create at least one
before you can run and debug your applications.
• 1. Select Window-> AVD Manager (or select the AVD Manager
icon on the Eclipse toolbar).
• 2. Select the New... button.
• The resulting Create new Android Virtual Device (AVD) dialog
allows you to configure a name, a target build of Android, an SD
card capacity, and device skin.
• 3. Create a new AVD called “My_AVD” that targets Android 4.0.3,
includes a 16MB SD Card,and uses the Galaxy Nexus skin
• 4. Click Create AVD and your new AVD will be created and ready
to use.

Creating Launch
Configurations
• Launch configurations let you specify runtime
options for running and debugging applications.
• Using a launch configuration you can specify the
following:
 The Project and Activity to launch
 The deployment target (virtual or physical device)
 The Emulator’s launch parameters
 Input/output settings (including console defaults)

Creating Launch
Configurations

Creating Launch
Configurations
• Select Run Configurations… or Debug
Configurations… from the Run menu.
• 2. Select your application from beneath the Android
Application node on the project type list,
• or right-click the Android Application node and select
New.
• 3. Enter a name for the configuration. You can create
multiple configurations for each project,
• so create a descriptive title that will help you identify
this particular setup.

Creating Launch
Configurations
• 4. Choose your start-up options. The
first (Android) tab lets you select the
project to run and
• the Activity that you want to start when
you run (or debug) the application.
Figure 2-9
• shows the settings for the project you
created earlier.

Creating Launch
Configurations
• 5. Use the Target tab, as shown in Figure 2-10,
to select the default virtual device to launch
on,
• or select Manual to select a physical or virtual
device each time you run the application. You
• can also confi gure the Emulator’s network
connection settings and optionally wipe the
user
• data and disable the boot animation when
launching a virtual device.

Developing for Android-Types of Android Application

More Related Content

What's hot

Viewers also liked

Similar to Developing for Android-Types of Android Application

Recently uploaded

Developing for Android-Types of Android Application