The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Version 6.1 Released

Subscribers now have access to the latest release of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, known as Version 6.1, in all formats. Just log into your Warescription page and download away, or set up an account and subscribe!

This update:

  • Adds material to the advanced notifications chapter on how notifications work with Android Wear devices, including how to lightly customize your notifications to add more Wear-friendly features

  • Adds two chapters covering the Storage Access Framework, for how apps can consume and publish documents on Android 4.4+

  • Adds a new advanced databases chapter, including a section on how to work with full-text indexing and searching (FTS) on SQLite

  • Adds some material on WebView security issues

  • Updates the “Fused Location Provider” chapter to replace the deprecated LocationClient with the current (yet stubbornly undocumented) new API

  • Various bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements

In addition, all the samples were upgraded to use Gradle for Android 0.13 and add the stub Gradle wrapper files, enough to allow for easy import into Android Studio. However, always check the gradle-wrapper.properties file before importing anything into Android Studio, as there is always the chance that somebody has published material linking you to a hacked Gradle installation.

The exact timing of the next update is a bit indeterminate, as is typical around likely Google announcement times. Most likely, the next update will not be until early December, though I may try to rush out an update before then if the next production version of Android ships soonish.

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