The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Version 8.11 Released

Subscribers now have access to the latest release of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, known as Version 8.11, in all formats. Just log into your Warescription page and download away, or set up an account and subscribe!

Principally, this update adds ~30 pages on Android P, based on Developer Preview 1. This is a lot less than I was hoping for, because many things in Android P do not work (e.g., HTTPS requirement, WebView tracing, directory access settings, FOREGROUND_SERVICE permission) or are still very nascent (e.g., slices). Future book updates will cover more of this, as these features stabilize.

Beyond Android P, this update:

  • Updates the chapter on Android Things for the DP7 release

  • Updates the chapter on ACRA to cover version 5.1.1

  • Updates many samples to use the Support Library edition of fragments, in lieu of the native fragment implementation

  • Updates the chapter on the fused location api to cover the newer API for getting location updates

  • Updates the Maps V2 samples to their newer API

  • Replaced all references to “Android Wear” with “Wear OS”, to reflect the branding change

  • Removes three elaborate examples, with an eye towards moving them to Android’s Architecture Components (after a substantial rewrite):

    • the dynamic tab sample from the chapter on advanced RecyclerView techniques

    • the TinyTextEditor sample from the chapter on consuming documents

    • the document mode sample from the chapter on tasks

  • Removes the chapter on the percent library, which has been deprecated and supplanted by ConstraintLayout

  • Removes the chapter on implementing a nav drawer, pending some future rewrite

  • Fixes a variety of errata

If you’re wondering about the naming convention, this book will hit 9.0 sometime later this year, once Exploring Android covers enough of Android. At that time, I will retire the EmPubLite series of tutorials and start the 9.x numbering series.

The next update to this book depends a lot on what Google does. If I had to guess, I will not update this book until shortly after Google I|O 2018. However, if Google ships a substantial Developer Preview 2 in April, I may push out an update to this book sooner.

 

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