The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Version 8.5 Released

Subscribers now have access to the latest release of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, known as Version 8.5, in all formats. Just log into your Warescription page and download away, or set up an account and subscribe!

Some firm — who shall remain nameless, but whose name rhymes with “Fnoogle” — decided to ship the O Developer Preview 1 the day after I published Version 8.4 of the book. So, hot on the heels of 8.4 comes 8.5, where I:

  • Added a large new appendix on Android O, with light coverage of most significant changes and in-depth coverage of:

    • The new attacks in “the war on background processing”, such as the ban on implicit broadcasts and the limited life of background services

    • Notification channels

    • Picture-in-picture mode for phones and tablets

    • Multi-display mode, where you can run an activity on an attached TV, monitor, or projector

    • The new user flow for apps that wish to install other apps via ACTION_INSTALL_PACKAGE

  • Adds a new chapter on Android O’s autofill feature

Plus your typical roster of bug fixes and the like.

We continue to be in a Google Play Books-free zone, for those of you keeping score at home.

The next book update should be in early June, to allow me to cover anything significant coming out of O Developer Preview 2 and the Google I|O conference.