The Busy Coder's Guide to Advanced Android Development Version 1.6 Released

Subscribers now have access to The Busy Coder’s Guide to Advanced Android Development, Version 1.6. PDFs are available now, with EPUB and as-is Kindle editions showing up over the next day or so.

This update includes:

  • A new chapter on advanced manifest settings, notably the new android:installLocation attribute (a.k.a., “apps on SD”)
  • A new chapter on SMS
  • A new chapter on custom dialogs and preferences
  • Two appendixes on creating parcels for The Android Parcel Project
  • Brief notes on the new “library projects” capability with the r6 edition of the Android tools
  • Various errata fixes

This added close to 50 pages to the book.

Also, all samples that can run on the emulator were tested against Android 2.2 and minor repairs were made where needed.

Unfortunately, this update also has a few regressions and problems:

  • Android 2.2’s emulator is singularly lacking in search capability, so there is a note in the introduction to the chapter on search to this effect. Hence, I have no idea if what is presented in that chapter works on Android 2.2.
  • I just realized that the orientation sensor is deprecated in Android, and I have not yet been able to make sense of the replacement system. Hence, I have pulled the section on the orientation sensor from the sensors chapter. With luck, I will be able to restore it someday.
  • The section on custom preferences in the new “Custom Dialogs and Preferences” chapter is seriously messed up. I, um, was editing one hunk of code and, er, testing another. (what’s the emoticon for “mortified”?) Specifically, I botched some stuff with the CWAC-ColorMixer edition of the ColorPreference class. What is in GitHub now works, except for screen rotations. I should have all of this fixed tomorrow. It does mean, though, that the prose in that section of the book will be incorrect in spots and out of sync with the source code in the repository. That section will be repaired in the next release.

I hope to make another update to this book in about a month.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, complaints, etc. regarding the book, please join the cw-android Google Group and post there!

 

Meta


Creative Commons License