The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Version 4.3 Released

Subscribers now have access to the latest release of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, known as Version 4.3, in all formats. Just log into your Warescription page and download away, or set up an account and subscribe!

I apologize for the delay in getting this out, caused by a wee hurricane last week. However, it adds over 100 pages of material, so hopefully the delay will be worth it.

Specifically, this update adds:

  • Coverage of using a ContentProvider as a pipe between your app and some consumer or publisher of a stream, with an example of serving a PDF (theoretically from an encrypted data store) in this fashion

  • A new chapter on audio recording, including using the aforementioned pipe to allow near-real-time receipt of the audio data

  • A completely rewritten chapter on drawables, including coverage of all the XML drawable types

  • An updated chapter on service binding, with an emphasis on remote services

  • Coverage of single-header PreferenceActivity implementations, both using the conditional preference headers that I blogged about recently and the EXTRA_SHOW_FRAGMENT Intent extra

  • Coverage of the SecretAgentMan NFC sample app, as seen at the 2012 droidcon UK conference

  • A new chapter on progress indicators, from ProgressBar through animating a “refresh” action bar item

  • A new “widget catalog” entry on StackView

  • Coverage of tying a ViewPager to action bar tabs, and the limitations imposed by this technique

  • Better coverage of using Eclipse for editing basic resources

  • A bit more coverage of building x86 binaries as part of your NDK work

  • A new section on the network monitor in DDMS

  • And the beginnings of a new chapter outlining anti-patterns in Android development

Notably, this release does not include anything on Android 4.2, because (::ahem::) there is no new SDK at the time of this writing. With luck, and assuming I get 4.2 hardware in time, I will be covering Android 4.2 in the next update to the book.

If you encounter any problems with this update or your Warescription in general, please contact wares@commonsware.com, and be sure to provide your Warescription user ID.