The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Version 8.7 Released

Subscribers now have access to the latest release of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, known as Version 8.7, in all formats. Just log into your Warescription page and download away, or set up an account and subscribe!

In this update, I:

• Added more coverage of Android 8.0, including:

  • Updating everything for ODP4

  • A new section in the autofill chapter, outlining a security flaw in autofill and what autofill service developers need to do to try to minimize the impacts of that flaw

  • Covered JobIntentService and the new JobScheduler work queue system

  • More references to “O” were replaced with “8.0” or “26”, as appropriate

• Overhauled the chapter on the NDK, updating it to using CMake for its build system

• Replaced the CWAC-Cam2 coverage in a chapter on working with the camera with material on Fotoapparat and CameraKit-Android

• Extended the coverage of ConstraintLayout, with more material on the drag-and-drop GUI builder, biases on constraints tied to guidelines, and chains

• Updated the Android Things coverage for Developer Preview 4.1

• Rewrote the sample apps for the chapters on location tracking to use OkHttp and a newer National Weather Service API

• Added a chapter on working with the Samsung DeX desktop dock

• Updated some really out of date code in the chapters on audio recording and working with contacts

• Removed some chapters:

  • the runtime permissions tutorial

  • the chapter on the percent library (which Google deprecated in favor of ConstraintLayout)

  • the chapter on the Kindle Fire

• Made other miscellaneous fixes and improvements

For those of you using the APK edition, there is a new appinar in the Community Theater, on WebView communication between Java and JavaScript.

The next book update should be in late September or early October, continuing the updates for Android 8.0, and possibly addressing Android Studio 3.0 if that ships in the release channel by then.