-6

Unfortunately I must say that I am new to android development...not a bad thing, but after my search I can only say it is used often. I am looking for an effective approach to the developing process. What I mean is that in all the tutorials, web pages (like this) that I have searched, they either dive into layout/java or discuss ux and ui planning. Is there a basic order of creation for effective/efficient development? I am not looking for opinions, more like an order of operations(similar to math). I hope this is clear and not taken as an effort to begin a never-ending discussion.

For me the process, as well as the detail of each part of the app, are equally important...both for me to understand and learn as well as create an app correctly that people will find useful and fluid.

Thank you for all the answers I've read through in order to realize that no one has asked this (at least not in this way). Some have been helpful already.

Lee Harvey
  • 1
  • 1
  • 1
    Alas,questions like this are not what Stack Overflow is all about. You can read the help center for more information: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic and http://stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask. There are many ways people learn, and there are blogs and tutorials and books out there for each way. My recommendations probably won't help you. keep searching until you find one that speaks to you, and keep trying different search terms (tutorial usually works for me). Good luck, and when you start writing code and get stuck, come on back and ask. – Guy Schalnat Jul 16 '15 at 01:48
  • Thank you Guy. I was looking for a way to prioritize and order. I understand though. I appreciate your comment. – Lee Harvey Jul 16 '15 at 05:22

1 Answers1

0

This is the list that helped me when I started:

  1. Download and install Android Studio (that covers setting up JDK and other environment set up)
  2. Create a project, defining minimum SDK for your app. Give some time to consider and prove Company Domain because the value you give here will determine folder structure and your classes' namespace. (e.g - test.leeharvey.me)
  3. Select your app icon.
  4. Choose a pre-defined Activity to include in your project. As you get more and more experienced, you will find that you like to create and customize activities on your own and selecting a BlankActivity or NoActivity will give you maximum flexibility.
  5. If you plan to test your app on multiple emulator types in addition to on your device (which is recommended), take some time to configure the emulators.
  6. Define your theme in res/values/styles.xml and link your created theme in AndroidManifest.xml (Custom UI for Android)
  7. Add required permissions in AndroidManifest.xml (e.g - uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET")
  8. Plan how many Activities, Menus, layouts you will use on a scratch paper and create them inside your project. You may want to add another project (as ClassLibrary) to separate your logic/services.
  9. Include external libraries that you want to use. A compiled list of useful libraries (But, please be very frugal when deciding to use a library. They might make your code more complex unnecessarily and make it hard to debug.)
  10. Add graphics/icons that you plan to use.
  11. Centralize your UI labels and other string values inside res/values/strings.xml.
  12. You can refer to my answer here on a rough idea of when and what exceptions to handle.

While reading the list, if you don't know how to accomplish a task in the list, you can refer to: Android Tutorial from raywenderlich. The list above is the summary of what's described in the article.

If you find some important steps missing or later find out better ways to accomplish some steps, please help edit my answer.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
alexan
  • 361
  • 2
  • 13
  • 1
    Thank you alexan...I was so overwhelmed with the magnitude of a project, I didn't step back to see the steps that almost every tutorial I've watched provided. I needed to be pulled from the details. Very helpful, and I hope to return the favor some day. – Lee Harvey Jul 16 '15 at 05:26