Many people ask me how to get started in Android application development. As a result, I’ve always wanted to write a tutorial for Android beginners to help them accomplish that. Such an undertaking is easier said than done, but here it goes.
For this tutorial, I’m mixing media types. I go over some of the important stuff through video; I recount most of the process through text such as this, and there will be pictures galore. If I missed anything, feel free to comment and I’ll add to this tutorial. Let’s get started, shall we?
Okay – now that you’ve watched that video, let me flesh out some of the ideas presented therein.
- Planning is important: That’s the first thing we’re going to do. I drew a rough mock-up of what the application is going to be / do in the second half of that video. I’ll expand upon it and make it neater below through making some application mock-ups in an image editor.
- In this tutorial I’m going to focus on the points of Android development, not developing this app per se. Of course we will develop this app to completion, but I will be highlighting the components that you’ll likely see throughout creating your own development.
Mock-ups
This is the homescreen for our app. In the coming tutorials, I will show you how to write this homescreen, some of the design thinking behind said homescreen, and more. This is where you will learn basic Android UI.
This screen will be your wishlist screen. The same template will be used for the My Library screen. It will consist of a custom ListView which will be populated with data we pull from both databases and APIs.
Being the tease that I am, I’m going to hold my ideas for the search screen back for now. Come up with a design for it yourself. Feel free to send it in to me by emailing triplemwebdesigns@gmail.com. If it’s good enough, I might choose it and design it in an upcoming tutorial. Until next time: Happy developing!