The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Version 5.0 Released

Subscribers now have access to the latest release of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, known as Version 5.0, in all formats. Just log into your Warescription page and download away, or set up an account and subscribe!

This update contains:

• Restored and improved coverage of taking pictures and videos directly using the Camera class, though much of the material focuses on using my CWAC-Camera library to reduce the bone-searing pain of trying to work directly with the camera.

• A new section on using HTTP stacks that provide simpler APIs layered atop HttpUrlConnection (or kin). The section focuses on Square’s family of stacks: OkHTTP, Retrofit, and Picasso.

• The GCM chapter has been brought up to date with the new Play Services-based API announced at this year’s Google I|O… including offering some replacements for the GCM client JAR that Google deprecated, despite the fact that you still need most of what’s in it.

• The plugins and reusable components chapters were freshened up a bit.

• The Maps V2 coverage was updated for the most recent Play Services SDK release.

• Your usual round of minor improvements and errata fixes.

Users of the APK edition of the book get an additional bit of “content”, in the form of full-text search. Backed by SQLite’s FTS3 engine, the full-text search supports “Google-style” search expressions and is very fast. I’ll blog more about the full-text search stuff a bit tomorrow.

Between now and Version 5.1, I will be replacing most of the lingering fill_parent references to match_parent. I will be doing that in such a way as to not generate a zillion change marks in the PDF editions.

Speaking of Version 5.1, I expect that will come out in the second half of August, particularly if an Android update arrives this week as the rumor mill is predicting.