The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Version 5.6 Released

Subscribers now have access to the latest release of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, known as Version 5.6, in all formats. Just log into your Warescription page and download away, or set up an account and subscribe!

This is a bit of a lateral release.

Since I am not going to be attempting to cover every different wrist wearable device on the market, and since my SONY SmartWatch coverage was for the first generation device (and its API), I elected to replace the SmartWatch chapter with a chapter on general issues involving wrist wearable devices.

I also needed to update my own Qualcomm MDP device and the Trepn profiler. That, in turn, led me to agree to a new Trepn license agreement, and at this point I am no longer comfortable with covering Trepn in the book, due to the agreement terms. I replaced the Trepn chapter with one discussing typical problem spots with power usage and, in some cases, how to try to reduce the power consumed by your app.

Beyond this, there’s a smattering of updates to:

• the Gradle for Android coverage, particularly conditional dependencies for build types and product flavors

• the material on custom permissions, integrating what I blogged about a week ago in terms of issues with other apps defining your permissions ahead of you

• the chapter on external display support

Plus, there is a bumper crop of errata fixes, courtesy of a few contributors who went above and beyond the norm for bug reports. :-)

I apologize that this update wasn’t all I had planned on, but I ran into some challenges that stole away more time than I expected.

Version 5.7 should be out in ~4 weeks. Of note, I hope to add coverage of Google Cast to the book, in particular how to write apps that can deliver content to a Chromecast or to more traditional external displays (HDMI, MHL, SlimPort, Miracast, etc.). That, in turn, will require additional material on MediaRouter and its associated action bar support.

As always, if you have questions or concerns with your update, contact me.