Recent Posts by Ed Burnette

Topic: Hello, Android / has this already been addressed???

Thanks, after the last beta I did rewrite parts of the sudoku example but I’m not sure if I addressed your concern. Can you point out some particular sentences that were unclear?

Topic: Hello, Android / Do I need to know Java?

You can learn it as you go. Your ruby experience and C++ exposure should be enough for you to be able to get the gist of the examples. After all, once you’ve learned two or three languages they all start to look alike.

Topic: Hello, Android / More detailed explanation of Game.java

I found these resources for you:

http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/msg/ef6014f46c35a824
http://markmail.org/message/zo5yii4whxq2rhl4
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/00cc76b82e14504c
http://www.anddev.org/listview_and_list_selectorurgent-t1594.html

For something more complex try these:

http://kahdev.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/making-a-custom-android-button-using-a-custom-view/
http://blog.pocketjourney.com/2008/04/30/android-tutorial-image-text-only-buttons/
http://code.google.com/android/toolbox/custom-components.html

Topic: Hello, Android / Tell us what you think

Thanks to everybody who responded, we have enough now.

Topic: Hello, Android / More detailed explanation of Game.java

Beta 8 has the new descriptions, enjoy.

Topic: Hello, Android / Tell us what you think

We need some quotes from readers to print in the book and on the back cover. Imagine somebody picks up the book at the store and starts thumbing through it. You’re standing next to them and they ask for your advice. What would you say? Was it helpful? Will it save them time? Does it cover the most important points without rehashing the online doc? Give us a nice quote and you could see your name in print.

Topic: Hello, Android / More detailed explanation of Game.java

That’s a good idea; I was trying to save space by leaving out some parts of the Game code but it just confused people. My current drafts include all of that including all the strings and imports.

Topic: Hello, Android / does this book cover Android 1.0?

Yes. The current beta still has some pre-1.0-isms in it (for example the screen shot of the home screen is old) but those problems will be cleared up in the final version.

Topic: Hello, Android / main.xml p. 40 wavy orange line

I’ve seen that before and it’s harmless. Whether you see it or not will depend on which editor you use to view the file. Right click on the file and select “Open With” to see all the editors.

The regular text editor and the Android layout editor should not complain but the XML editor from WTP will sometimes complain because it doesn’t have a DTD or schema to validate and offer code completion against.

You can get rid of the warning by going into Window > Preferences > XML > XML Files and setting the “Indicate when no grammar is specified” option to “Ignore”. Then do an XML validation (right-click > Validate) and it should take the warning away.

Topic: Hello, Android / SDK 0.9

Although you can inflate menus with XML now I didn’t really see a use for it in the Sudoku example. The only menu change was how the menu and its listener were created. Instead of a Runnable you use an OnMenuItemClickListener :

   public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
      super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
      menu.add(R.string.options_label)
            .setOnMenuItemClickListener(
                  new OnMenuItemClickListener() {
                     public boolean onMenuItemClick(MenuItem item) {
                        openOptionsDialog();
                        return true;
                     }
                  });
      return true;
   }

Topic: Hello, Android / When will be ready the chapters 8 and 9 ?

Now that the new SDK is out I’m updating the book for it before working on the new chapters. So it’s going to be a few more weeks but we’ll keep you posted.

Topic: Hello, Android / SDK 0.9

I’m working on it… the lightning thing put me a bit behind. We should have a new beta for you in a week or two.

Topic: Hello, Android / When will be ready the chapters 8 and 9 ?

I don’t know. Right now we’re waiting on a new SDK from Google and they haven’t given us a date yet.

Topic: Hello, Android / Discription of game and puzzleview to less

Could you elaborate a bit more on what you’d like to see?

Topic: Hello, Android / Appendicies I'd like to see

Thanks for the suggestion. Right now I’m trying to focus the book on being an introduction, not an exhaustive reference, so it doesn’t duplicate the thousands of pages of online reference material.

Topic: Hello, Android / Hello, Android

Thanks for the suggestion. I put in a couple of Intent examples for sub activities and will think about the others.

Topic: Hello, Android / Content Providers (p29)

What, you don’t have my other books?! For shame. :)

You’re right, I’ll take a look and see if I can reword those without the Eclipse references.

Topic: Hello, Android / OpenGL Example

I just noticed that the source code zip wasn’t updated with the last beta, so the OpenGL example doesn’t appear there yet. I’ll check with the publisher to get that fixed.

Topic: Hello, Android / OpenGL Example

Thanks for reading. There are a couple of things you can try to figure this out. First, see if you got any error messages in the LogCat view of Eclipse (or run “adb logcat” if you’re not using Eclipse). Run the program while viewing the log messages and look for any warnings, errors, or crashes that scroll by.

If that doesn’t help, try downloading the finished version from http://www.pragprog.com/titles/eband/source_code and verify that works, then compare it against your version. If I left out something in the instructions in the book that tripped you up, let me know. If the downloaded version does not work for you on the Mac then that’s a different problem I’ll need to investigate.

Let me know how it goes,
—Ed

Topic: Hello, Android / Hello, Android

Thanks for buying Hello, Android: Introducing Google’s Mobile Development Platform. As you know, it’s currently a beta book, which means the chapters in the PDF may be incomplete and, despite our best efforts, may contain mistakes and omissions. Please report any problems on our bug tracker page .

In addition, you can discuss anything related to the book in this forum. For example, if you have an important topic you think should be covered, or you would like to share some of your Android wisdom with other readers, the forum is the perfect place. Don’t be shy—any changes will be harder for me to put in the book as the final publish date approaches, so comment early and often.

Be sure to check out my blog at ZDNet where I often write about Android related topics. In fact several sections in the book were first tested out as blog entries.

Another good resources is Planet Android , an aggregator for all the Android blogs I know about. Do you have one that’s not listed? Let me know and I’ll add it.

Finally, you can always reach me directly by sending email. My gmail.com account is “ed.burnette”. (Let’s see a spam harvester figure out that one!)

Cheers,
—Ed