Advanced Android Update, and Parcel Reboot

My theme for 2010 has been “reuse”, as the Android developer community really needs to build a stronger collection of reusable components, to package up patterns for easier use by newcomers to Android.

To that end, I started The Android Parcel Project earlier this year, with an eye towards replicating the Ruby gems success. Alas, I bit off more than I could chew, and my implementation was shoddy at best.

To that end, I am reorienting the parcel effort to describe various practices for making Android library projects be reusable components. This lines up with Google’s apparent direction, since they elected to distribute their License Verificatiion Library (LVL) as a library project.

This required a change to The Busy Coder’s Guide to Advanced Android Development. Unfortunately, my timing stinks, as I was planning on releasing a new print edition, and so my previous edition was Version 1.9.

The new one is Version 1.9.1. This does not change much outside of the reusable components chapter. But, it is available to subscribers in all formats.

I am going to hold off updating the print edition until after Gingerbread is released. I am still guessing that Gingerbread will ship before early November. Shortly after its release, I will publish Version 1.9.2 of the Advanced Android book, updated to be Gingerbread-compatible and with some coverage of new SDK features. Version 2.0 and the 2nd Edition in print should follow a month later.