Augmented Reality for Android Application Development

Learn how to develop advanced Augmented Reality applications for Android

Augmented Reality for Android Application Development

Overview

• Understand the main concepts and architectural components of an AR application
• Step-by-step learning through hands-on programming combined with a background of important mathematical concepts
• Efficiently and robustly implement some of the main functional AR aspects

In Detail

Augmented Reality offers the magical effect of blending the physical world with the virtual world, which brings applications from your screen into your hands. AR redefines advertising and gaming, as well as education. It will soon become a technology that will have to be mastered as a necessity by mobile application developers.

Augmented Reality for Android Application Development enables you to implement sensor-based and computer vision-based AR applications on Android devices. You will learn about the theoretical foundations and practical details of implemented AR applications, and you will be provided with hands-on examples that will enable you to quickly develop and deploy novel AR applications on your own.

Augmented Reality for Android Application Development will help you learn the basics of developing mobile AR browsers, how to integrate and animate 3D objects easily with the JMonkeyEngine, how to unleash the power of computer vision-based AR using the Vuforia AR SDK, and will teach you about popular interaction metaphors. You will get comprehensive knowledge of how to implement a wide variety of AR apps using hands-on examples.

This book will make you aware of how to use the AR engine, Android layout, and overlays, and how to use ARToolkit. Finally, you will be able to apply this knowledge to make a stunning AR application.

What you will learn from this book

• Decide which AR approach is right for you: sensor-based or computer vision-based
• Get camera-access for Android
• Overlay 3D objects on physical images with the JMonkeyEngine
• Learn how to use the GPS sensor to locate yourself in the world
• Master orientation sensors
• Learn the building blocks of implementing Augmented Reality Browsers
• Understand the power of the Vuforia SDK for computer vision-based AR
• Enable user interaction with Augmented Objects

Approach

A step-by-step tutorial-based guide aimed at giving you hands-on practical experience to develop AR applications for Android.

Who this book is written for

Augmented Reality for Android Application Development is for Android mobile application developers who are familiar with Android Development Tools and deployment, JMonkeyEngine, and the Vuforia SDK.

Learning Android Canvas

Develop and deploy graphics-rich Android applications using Android Canvas

Learning Android Canvas

Overview

• Understand user interactions and respond to those actions
• Discover how to work with graphics in Android from scratch
• Using a step by step approach, create a graphics-rich, fully functional application
• Use Nine-Patch image

In Detail

When you're writing an application in which you would like to perform specialized drawing and/or control the animation of graphics, you should do so by drawing through a canvas. A canvas works for you as an interface to the actual surface upon which your graphics will be drawn-it holds all of your "draw" calls. Via the Android Canvas, your drawing is actually performed on an underlying Bitmap, which is placed into the window.

Learning Android Canvas is a practical guide, which will help you develop applications that contain rich 2D graphics like backgrounds, buttons, and even some small games with static 2D graphics. The book is full of step-by-step lessons and practical examples. This book helps you develop rich graphical applications and some simple games.

Learning Android Canvas will help you understand everything that is required to develop an Android application that involves creating 2D graphics from scratch to a fully functional complete application. You will start with zero knowledge of using graphics within Android applications and will then go step by step to learn about different objects and techniques. In the end you will be able to develop a complete application fully loaded with graphics and functions.

The book will give you a detailed practical explanation of Nine-Patch images and its importance in designing layouts and backgrounds. We will also take a detailed look at user interactions such as touch, capturing the action, and responding to them accordingly. Finally we will have a working, fully functional graphic application that uses all the knowledge that we have acquired previously.

What you will learn from this book

• Create a drawable thread to take away the load from the main thread
• Develop important drawables and shapes
• Understand the actions performed by users, capturing them, and responding to them
• Unfold the basics of nested layouts
• Design your own View classes and use them in the main class
• Discover the graphics used as backgrounds of the whole screen or controls like buttons
• Draw on the Android Canvas and Views
• Set up the listener for touch events

Approach

This book is a fast-paced, practical, step-by-step tutorial guide full of examples that are easy to follow and implement.

Who this book is written for

This book is a great resource for developers who have basic Android development knowledge and want to work on graphics-rich applications and games but are totally new to working with graphics and Android Canvas.

Voice Application Development for Android

A practical guide to develop advanced and exciting voice applications for Android using open source software

Voice Application Development for Android

Overview

• A comprehensive guide containing all the best practices for voice application development for Android
• Progress quickly from basic apps to more advanced topics
• Written in an easy-to-follow style with detailed descriptions of the included code examples to help you learn quickly and efficiently
• You can download the updated code here

In Detail

Speech technology has been around for some time now. However, it has only more recently captured the imagination of the general public with the advent of personal assistants on mobile devices that you can talk to in your own language. The potential of voice apps is huge as a novel and natural way to use mobile devices.

Voice Application Development for Android is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a series of clear, step-by-step examples which will help you to build on the basic technologies and create more advanced and more engaging applications. With this book, you will learn how to create useful voice apps that you can deploy on your own Android device in no time at all.

This book introduces you to the technologies behind voice application development in a clear and intuitive way. You will learn how to use open source software to develop apps that talk and that recognize your speech. Building on this, you will progress to developing more complex apps that can perform useful tasks, and you will learn how to develop a simple voice-based personal assistant that you can customize to suit your own needs.

For more interesting information about the book, visit http://lsi.ugr.es/zoraida/androidspeechbook.

What you will learn from this book

• Use text-to-speech synthesis so that your device can talk to you
• Enable your device to recognize your speech
• Create simple voice interactions to get information and carry out commands
• Develop a voice app that engages in a dialogue with you to collect the information required to perform a transaction
• Use grammars to enable your app to understand the meaning behind your words
• Make use of different languages in your apps
• Add multimodal interaction to your apps as an alternative to speech
• Build a voice-based personal assistant using an open source development platform for chatbots

Approach

This book will give beginners an introduction to building voice-based applications on Android. It will begin by covering the basic concepts and will build up to creating a voice-based personal assistant. By the end of this book, you should be in a position to create your own voice-based applications on Android from scratch in next to no time.

Who this book is written for

Voice Application Development for Android is for all those who are interested in speech technology and for those who, as owners of Android devices, are keen to experiment with developing voice apps for their devices. It will also be useful as a starting point for professionals who are experienced in Android application development but who are not familiar with speech technologies and the development of voice user interfaces. Some background in programming in general, particularly in Java, is assumed.

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

Android NDK Game Development Cookbook

Over 70 exciting recipes to help you develop mobile games for Android in C++

Overview

• Tips and tricks for developing and debugging mobile games on your desktop
• Enhance your applications by writing multithreaded code for audio playback, network access, and asynchronous resource loading
• Enhance your game development skills by using modern OpenGL ES and develop applications without using an IDE
• Features two ready-to-run Android games

In Detail

Android NDK is used for multimedia applications which require direct access to a system's resources. Android NDK is also the key for portability, which in turn provides a reasonably comfortable development and debugging process using familiar tools such as GCC and Clang toolchains. If your wish to build Android games using this amazing framework, then this book is a must-have.

This book provides you with a number of clear step-by-step recipes which will help you to start developing mobile games with Android NDK and boost your productivity debugging them on your computer. This book will also provide you with new ways of working as well as some useful tips and tricks that will demonstrably increase your development speed and efficiency.

This book will take you through a number of easy-to-follow recipes that will help you to take advantage of the Android NDK as well as some popular C++ libraries. It presents Android application development in C++ and shows you how to create a complete gaming application.

You will learn how to write portable multithreaded C++ code, use HTTP networking, play audio files, use OpenGL ES, to render high-quality text, and how to recognize user gestures on multi-touch devices. If you want to leverage your C++ skills in mobile development and add performance to your Android applications, then this is the book for you.

What you will learn from this book

• Port popular C++ libraries to Android
• Write portable multithreaded code
• Play audio with OpenAL
• Implement gesture recognition
• Render text with FreeType
• Use OpenGL ES to port and abstract APIs from the game code to develop games on a desktop PC
• Debug mobile applications on your desktop
• Access Flickr and Picasa web services from C++
• Extract resources from APK archives
• Develop Android applications without an IDE

Approach

A systematic guide consisting of over 70 recipes which focus on helping you build portable mobile games and aims to enhance your game development skills with clear instructions.

Who this book is written for

If you are a C++ developer who wants to jump into the world of Android game development and who wants to use the power of existing C++ libraries in your existing Android Java applications, then this book is for you. You need to have basic knowledge of C or C++ including pointer manipulation, multithreading, and object-oriented programming concepts as well as some experience developing applications without using an IDE.

Robotium Automated Testing for Android

Robotium Automated Testing for Android

Efficiently automate test cases for Android applications using Robotium

Overview

• Integrate Robotium with Maven to perform test case execution during build
• Learn different steps to connect to a remote client from an android using Robotium
• Understand the benefits of Robotium over other test frameworks

In Detail

Automation testing on mobile devices has been around for a number of years, although it has really taken off with the advent of the Robotium Framework. With the help of automating test cases, business components are extensively reused and complex test cases are executed. Due to a number of different key features added to the Robotium Framework, it has become the world's leading Android test automation framework and most of the industry experts and professionals are using this framework for testing their Android business applications.

This practical guide will help you to create and execute automated test cases. You will also learn how to take advantage of the real power behind the Robotium Framework and all of its features, while being provided with a good grounding in how to use it in your Android test project.

Starting with learning how to set up an Android environment for using Robotium, this book will then look at the various features of the Robotium framework, and take you through numerous examples that will help you to take advantage of the new features in Robotium, quickly and painlessly.

This book will guide you through setting up the Android environment that is necessary to create a test project. You will also learn the benefits of using Robotium over other test frameworks, as well as solutions to the most common issues faced by users in this domain.

What you will learn from this book

• Get to grips with the Robotium Framework
• Create a test project using Robotium
• Get acquainted with Robotium API calls and their usage
• Access web views in Android via Web Support in Robotium
• Compare Robotium with other testing frameworks
• Utilize the remote control feature in Robotium
• Implement different Robotium utilities
• Use Robotium with Maven

Approach

This is a step-by-step, example-oriented tutorial aimed at illustrating the various test scenarios and automation capabilities of Robotium.

Who this book is written for

If you are an Android developer who is learning how to create test cases to test their application, and are looking to get a good grounding in different features in Robotium, this book is ideal for you. It's assumed that you have some experience in Android development, as well be familiar with the Android test framework, as Robotium is a wrapper to Android test framework.

Android Hacker's Handbook

Android Hacker's Handbook

The first comprehensive guide to discovering and preventing attacks on the Android OS

As the Android operating system continues to increase its share of the smartphone market, smartphone hacking remains a growing threat. Written by experts who rank among the world's foremost Android security researchers, this book presents vulnerability discovery, analysis, and exploitation tools for the good guys. Following a detailed explanation of how the Android OS works and its overall security architecture, the authors examine how vulnerabilities can be discovered and exploits developed for various system components, preparing you to defend against them.

If you are a mobile device administrator, security researcher, Android app developer, or consultant responsible for evaluating Android security, you will find this guide is essential to your toolbox.

• A crack team of leading Android security researchers explain Android security risks, security design and architecture, rooting, fuzz testing, and vulnerability analysis
• Covers Android application building blocks and security as well as debugging and auditing Android apps
• Prepares mobile device administrators, security researchers, Android app developers, and security consultants to defend Android systems against attack

Android Hacker's Handbook is the first comprehensive resource for IT professionals charged with smartphone security.

Java Programming for Android Developers For Dummies

Get started creating Android apps with Java in no time!

Java Programming for Android Developers For Dummies

The demand for Android apps is not slowing down but many mobile developers who want to create Android apps lack the necessary Java background. This beginner guide gets you up and running with using Java to create Android apps with no prior knowledge or experienced necessary!

• Shows you the basic Java development concepts and techniques that are necessary to develop Android apps
• Explores what goes into creating an Android app to give you a better understanding of the various elements
• Addresses how to deal with standard programming challenges and debugging

Beginning Android Programming with Java For Dummies puts you well on your way toward creating Android apps quickly with Java.

Android Hacker's Handbook

The first comprehensive guide to discovering and preventing attacks on the Android OS

Android Hacker's Handbook

As the Android operating system continues to increase its share of the smartphone market, smartphone hacking remains a growing threat. Written by experts who rank among the world's foremost Android security researchers, this book presents vulnerability discovery, analysis, and exploitation tools for the good guys. Following a detailed explanation of how the Android OS works and its overall security architecture, the authors examine how vulnerabilities can be discovered and exploits developed for various system components, preparing you to defend against them.

If you are a mobile device administrator, security researcher, Android app developer, or consultant responsible for evaluating Android security, you will find this guide is essential to your toolbox.

• A crack team of leading Android security researchers explain Android security risks, security design and architecture, rooting, fuzz testing, and vulnerability analysis
• Covers Android application building blocks and security as well as debugging and auditing Android apps
• Prepares mobile device administrators, security researchers, Android app developers, and security consultants to defend Android systems against attack

Android Hacker's Handbook is the first comprehensive resource for IT professionals charged with smartphone security.

Pro Android UI

Pro Android UI

If you’re an Android application developer, chances are you’re using fixed, scrolling, swipe-able, and other cutting-edge custom UI Designs in your Android development projects. These UI Design approaches as well as other Android ViewGroup UI layout containers are the bread and butter of Pro Android User Interface (UI) design and Android User Experience (UX) design and development.

Using a top down approach, Pro Android UI shows you how to design and develop the best user interface for your app, while taking into account the varying device form factors in the increasingly fragmented Android environment. Pro Android UI aims to be the ultimate reference and customization cookbook for your Android UI Design, and as such will be useful to experienced developers as well as beginners.

With Android’s powerful UI layout classes, you can easily create everything from the simplest of lists to fully tricked-out user interfaces. While using these UI classes for boring, standard user interfaces can be quite simple, customizing a unique UI design can often become extremely challenging.


What you’ll learn

How to design and develop a sleek looking and highly functional user interface (UI) design and experience (UX) design using Android APIs

What Android layout containers are, and how to best leverage them

How to design user-friendly UI layouts that conform to Android UI guidelines

What, when, why and how to use fundamental Android UI layout containers (ViewGroup subclasses) and Android UI widgets (View subclasses)

How to use new media assets such as images, video, and animation in a UI

How to create UI Fragments for UI design for specific ActionBar or Activity classes that you wish to create for UI designs within your applications

Scaling UI Design for the various Android smartphone and tablet form factors

Who this book is for
This book is for experienced Android app developers.  It can also be for app developers and UI designers working on other platforms like iOS and BlackBerry who might also be interested in Android.

Table of Contents

Part I. Introduction to the Core Classes for Android UI Design: Development Tools, Layout Containers and Widgets
1. Android UI Design Tools: Setting Up Your Android Development System
2. Android UI Layouts: Layout Containers and the ViewGroup Class
3. Android UI Widgets: User Interface Widgets and the View Class

Part II. Introduction to Android Menu Class for UI Design: OptionsMenu, ContextMenu, PopupMenu and ActionBar
4. Android UI Options Menus: OptionsMenu Class and an Introduction to the Android ActionBar
5. Android UI Local Menus: The ContextMenu Class and PopupMenu Class
6. Android UI Action Bar: Advanced ActionBar Design & ActionBar Class

Part III. Android UI: Layout Considerations, Concepts & UI Containers: LinearLayout, RelativeLayout, FrameLayout
7. Android UI Design Considerations: Styles, Screen Density Targets and New Media Formats
8. Android UI Design Concepts: Wire-framing & UI Layout Design Patterns
9. Android UI Layout Conventions, Differences and Approaches
10. Android UI Theme Design & Digital Media Concepts

Part IV. Basic Android UI Design: Basic Layout Containers: FrameLayout, LinearLayout,
RelativeLayout, GridLayout
11. Android’s FrameLayout Class: Using Digital Video in your UI Design
12. Android’s LinearLayout Class: Horizontal and Vertical UI Design
13. Android’s RelativeLayout Class: Complex UI Design Via a Single Layout Container
14. Android’s GridLayout Class: Optimized UI Design using a Grid-based Layout

Part V. Advanced Android UI Design: Advanced Layout Containers: DrawerLayout, SlidingPane, ViewPager, Strips
15. Android DrawerLayout Class: Using Left and Right Side UI Drawer Design
16. Android SlidingPaneLayout Class: Optimized UI Design using a Grid-based Layout Container
17. Android ViewPager Class: Using View Paging to Navigate Complex View Hierarchies
18. Android PagerTabStrip and PagerTitleStrip Classes: Design Navigation UI Elements for the ViewPager Layout

Learn Java for Android Development

Learn Java for Android Development

Learn Java for Android Development, Third Edition, is an update of a strong selling book that now includes a primer on Android app development (in Chapter 1 and Appendix C, which is distributed in the book’s code archive).  This book teaches programmers the essential Java language skills necessary for effectively picking up and using the new Android SDK platform to build mobile, embedded, and even PC apps, especially game apps.

Android development is hot, and many programmers are interested in joining the fun. However, because this technology is based on Java, you should first obtain a solid grasp of the Java language and its APIs in order to improve your chances of succeeding as an effective Android app developer. This book helps you do that.

Each of the book’s 16 chapters provides an exercise section that gives you the opportunity to reinforce your understanding of the chapter’s material. Answers to the book’s more than 700 exercises are provided in an appendix. A second appendix provides a significant game-oriented Java application, which you can convert into an Android app.

Once you complete this one-of-a-kind book written by Jeff Friesen, an expert Java developer and JavaWorld.com columnist, you should be ready to begin your indie or professional Android app development journey.

What you’ll learn

• The Java skills necessary for Android development
• The core Java language fundamentals
• Classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, and interfaces
• Advanced Java language features (such as generics)
• The basic Java APIs necessary for Android (such as the String class and threading)
• The Collections Framework for organizing objects
• The Concurrency Utilities for simplifying multithreading
• Classic and New I/O
• Networking and database access
• Parsing, creating, and transforming XML documents
• Additional APIs for creating and accessing ZIP and JAR files, and more

Who this book is for

This book is for any programmer—including existing Java programmers and Objective-C based iPhone and iPad programmers— of any skill level who needs to obtain a solid understanding of the Java language and foundational Java APIs before jumping into Android app development.

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started with Java
2. Learning Language Fundamentals
3. Discovering Classes and Objects
4. Discovering Inheritance, Polymorphism, and Interfaces
5. Mastering Advanced Language Features Part 1
6. Mastering Advanced Language Features Part 2
7. Exploring the Basic APIs Part 1
8. Exploring the Basic APIs Part 2
9. Exploring the Collections Framework
10. Exploring the Concurrency Utilities
11. Performing Classic I/O
12. Accessing Networks
13. Migrating to New I/O

14. Accessing Databases

15. Parsing, Creating, and Transforming XML Documents

16. Focusing on Odds and Ends
17. Appendix A: Solutions to Exercises
18. Appendix B: Four of a Kind
19. Appendix C: Getting Started with Android***

***NOTE:  Appendix C is not included in the physical book. Instead, it's distributed as a PDF file that's bundled with the book's code.

Publication Date: February 23, 2014 | ISBN-10: 1430264543 | ISBN-13: 978-1430264545 | Edition: 3

Beginning Android 3D Game Development

Beginning Android 3D Game Development

Beginning Android 3D Game Development is a unique book for today's Android and game app developers who want to learn how to build 3D game apps that run on the latest Android KitKat platform using Java and OpenGL ES.  A Drone Grid game case study is included.

Release date: March 11, 2014 | ISBN-10: 1430265477 | ISBN-13: 978-1430265474 | Edition: 1

Android Best Practices

Android Best Practices

Android Best Practices by Godfrey Nolan shows you how to make your Android apps stand out from the crowd with great reviews. Why settle for just making any Android app? Build a brilliant Android app instead that lets your users praise it for ease of use, better performance, and more.

Using a series of example apps which gradually evolve throughout this book, Android Best Practices brings together current Android best practices from user interface (UI)/user experience (UX) design, test-driven development (TDD), and design patterns (e.g., MVC) to help you take your app to the next level.

In this book you’ll learn how to:

•    Use Android design patterns for consistent UI experience on many devices
•    Use agile techniques such as test-driven development, behavior-driven development, and continuous integration
•    Improve the speed and overall performance of your app
•    Organize an Android app using design patterns such as MVC/MVP
•    Create and consume REST and SOAP web services

Designing and developing an app that runs well on many if not all the leading Android smartphones and tablets today can be one of the most daunting challenges for Android developers. Well, this book takes much of the mystery out of that for you.

After reading and using Android Best Practices, you'll become a much better Android app designer and developer, which in turn can make your apps better placed and more successful in the market place.

What you’ll learn

• How to use Android design patterns for consistent UI experience on many devicesHow to use Agile techniques such as Test Driven Development, Behavior Driven Development and Continuous Integration
• How to test Android APKs on many devices and master device fragmentation
• Secure coding practices on Android
• How to organize an Android app using design patterns such as MVC/MVP etc.
• How to create and consume REST and SOAP web services

Who this book is for

This book is for Android developers looking to solidify their coding and overall app design and development skills.

Table of Contents

1. Before You Start 
2. UI/UX Design Patterns
3. Performance
4. Agile Android
5. NDK and Embedded Android
6. Security
7. Device Testing
8. Webservices

Release date: December 26, 2013 | ISBN-10: 1430258578 | ISBN-13: 978-1430258575 | Edition: 1

Android Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach, Third Edition

Android Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

Android continues to be one of the leading mobile OS and development platforms driving today's mobile innovations and the apps ecosystem. Android appears complex, but offers a variety of organized development kits to those coming into Android with differing programming language skill sets.

Android Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach, Third Edition offers more than 100 down-to-earth code recipes, and guides you step-by-step through a wide range of useful topics using complete and real-world working code examples.  It's updated to include the KitKat Android 4.4 SDK as well as earlier releases.

Instead of abstract descriptions of complex concepts, in Android Recipes, you'll find live code examples. When you start a new project you can consider copying and pasting the code and configuration files from this book and then modifying them for your own customization needs.

Crammed with insightful instruction and helpful examples, this third edition of Android Recipes is your guide to writing apps for one of today’s hottest mobile platforms. It offers pragmatic advice that will help you get the job done quickly and well.  This can save you a great deal of work over creating a project from scratch!

What you’ll learn

• Use external libraries to save time and effort
• Boost app performance by using the Android NDK and Renderscript
• Design apps for performance, responsiveness, and seamlessness
• Send data between devices and other external hardware
• Persist application data and share it between applications
• Capture and play back various device media items
• Communicate with web services
• Get the most out of your user interface
• Develop a unit conversion app in the context of the command-line/Android SDK and Eclipse/Android SDK environments

Who this book is for

This book is a handy reference for all Android app developers.

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started with Android
2. User Interaction
3. Graphics and Drawing
4. Communications and Networking
5. Interacting with Device Hardware and Media
6. Persisting Data
7. Interacting with the System
8. Working with Android NDK and Renderscript

Release date: February 4, 2014 | ISBN-10: 1430263229 | ISBN-13: 978-1430263227 | Edition: 3

Getting Started with Android Studio

Getting Started with Android Studio

An introduction to Android Studio, the new development environment for Android app development.

The book gives an overview of the new features and capabilities.
It starts with installing and configuring Android Studio.
You're getting to know the new IDE and his Editor.
You learn how to create new Android projects from scratch, import projects of different kind like an old Eclipse Android App or projects from GitHub.

The book covers also a quick start into the Gradle build system with several real world examples.
Furthermore, you're going to sign, build and run apps and prepare them for the Android Market:
- Screenshots
- Signing with the Signing Wizard
- Signing a Release apk using Gradle
Create and run Test projects in Android Studio.
There're several examples about dependencies and libraries (ActionBar Sherlock, Admob Ads, Google Play SDK, Google Maps v2 Api)
Set up a local Maven repositories and build .aar libraries.
Learn about Product Flavors - Build Types - Build Variants and build different APK's from the same project (includes an example with 2 Flavors).

Game Development with AndEngine and libGDX
Integration of JavaScript games in Android Studio Projects [LIME GameEngine]
Developing for Google TV

** NEW Android Code Templates:
- What are Android Code Templates
- Where are the ADT Templates located
- Making Custom Code Templates

For the book are several complete and runnable Android Project Examples available for download (Source Code).

There's a chance for typos. If you can't live with it, don't buy the book!

Android Studio Application Development

Android Studio Application Development

Create visually appealing applications using the new IntelliJ IDE Android Studio

Overview

• Familiarize yourself with Android Studio IDE
• Enhance the user interface for your app using the graphical editor feature
• Explore the various features involved in developing an android app and implement them

In Detail

Mobile apps have become extremely popular over the last few years and offer a great opportunity for developers. Android is now one of the most popular mobile systems in the world. The new Android Studio IDE has introduced a specialized development environment, welcomed by the emerging Android community, which is perfect for the development of apps.

"Android Studio Application Development" is a practical guide that will show you how to develop and build Android apps using this new, integrated development environment. Following a tutorial approach, this book will progress from the basics features up until the steps to build for release, using real world examples. This book is a must have for every Android app developer evangelist.

Our book explores the Android Studio development environment in-depth, taking you through the necessary steps to create an app, test it, and prepare it for release. First, you will learn how to use the code editor in order to increase your productivity, and to easily create the screens of your app. Then, this book will show you how to debug your app and examine its performance using the most important additional tools within Android Studio: Android SDK tools. We will also take a look at the existing Google Play Services and how they can be integrated into your app.

Finally, it is important for a developer to be able to search for any help they might need. This book provides a vast help section which covers online documentation, updates, and FAQs.

What you will learn from this book

• Install Android Studio and configure the Android Software Development Kit
• Create your first project and explore its structure
• Improve your productivity while programming, by getting the best from the code editor
• Design the user interface and learn how to handle user events
• Integrate the Google Play Services into your app
• Test your app using the emulator and learn how to manage the virtual devices
• Run and debug your app
• Monitor your app whilst it is running and improve its performance
• Build your app for release

Approach

A practical guide, which will show you how to create Android applications using the new Google official IDE, Android Studio.

Who this book is written for

If you are a developer who wants to learn the key features of Android Studio, and learn how to create their first app, this book is ideal for you! Developers interested in this book should be familiar with the object- oriented programming paradigm, and the Java programming language. It is also recommended that you understand the main characteristics of the Android mobile system.

Android Application Programming with OpenCV

Android Application Programming with OpenCV

Overview

• Set up OpenCV and an Android development environment on Windows, Mac, or Linux
• Capture and display real-time videos and still images
• Manipulate image data using OpenCV and Apache Commons Math
• Track objects and render 2D and 3D graphics on top of them
• Create a photo-capture and photo-sharing app that supports a variety of filters with a real-time preview feature

In Detail

Take a smartphone from your pocket, and within a few seconds, you can snap a photo, manipulate it, and share it with the world. You have just achieved mass production of image data. With a computer vision library such as OpenCV, you can analyze and transform copious amounts of image data in real time on a mobile device. The upshot to this is that you, as developers, can provide mobile users with many new kinds of images, constantly highlighting certain visual features that are of artistic or practical interest. Android is a convenient platform for such experiments because it uses a high-level language (Java), it provides standardized interfaces for sharing image data between applications, and it is mostly open source, so everyone can study its implementation.

Android Application Programming with OpenCV is a practical, hands-on guide that covers the fundamental tasks of computer vision—capturing, filtering, and analyzing images-with step-by-step instructions for writing both an application and reusable library classes.

Android Application Programming with OpenCV looks at OpenCV's Java bindings for Android and dispels mysteries such as which version of these bindings to use, how to integrate with standard Android functionality for layout, event handling, and data sharing, and how to integrate with OpenGL for rendering. By following the clear, concise, and modular examples provided in this book, you will develop an application that previews, captures, and shares photos with special effects based on color manipulation, edge detection, image tracking, and 3D rendering.Beneath the application layer, you will develop a small but extensible library that you can reuse in your future projects. This library will include filters for selectively modifying an image based on edge detection, 2D and 3D image trackers, and adapters to convert the Android system's camera specifications into OpenCV and OpenGL projection matrices. If you want a quick start in computer vision for Android, then this is the book for you.

By the end of Android Application Programming with OpenCV, you will have developed a computer vision application that integrates OpenCV, Android SDK, and OpenGL.

What you will learn from this book

• Install OpenCV and an Android development environment on Windows, Mac, or Linux
• Capture, display, and save images
• Make images accessible to other apps via Android's MediaStore and Intent classes
• Integrate OpenCV events and views with Android's standard activity lifecycle and view hierarchy
• Learn how OpenCV uses matrices to store data about images, recognizable features in images, and camera characteristics
• Apply curves and other color transformations to simulate the look of old photos, movies, or video games
• Apply convolution filters that sharpen, blur, emboss, or darken edges and textures in an image
• Track real-world objects, especially printed images, in 2D and 3D space
• Extract camera data from Android SDK and use it to construct OpenCV and OpenGL projection matrices
• Render basic 3D graphics in OpenGL

Developing AR Games for iOS and Android

Develop and deploy augmented reality apps using Vuforia SDK and Unity 3D

Overview

• Deploy full augmented reality experiences on iOS and Android
• Build a fully-functional augmented reality game and deploy it on iOS and Android
• Achieve better trackable performance for a robust experience
• Understand the prefabs and components that make up Vuforia SDK
• Explore the Unity environment to maximize your game development experience

In Detail

While augmented reality has been around for years, it has never reached its full potential. Now, the vast majority of people are walking around with powerful smartphones that are perfectly suited to house the AR experience. This is the reason why the technology has become as popular as it is now. Augmented reality can deliver a level of immersion that is unrivalled by any other method of development, as it blends our reality with overlaid computer generated data.

Developing AR Games for iOS and Android is a well-structured guide that introduces you to the augmented reality world using a step-by-step approach. It will help you understand how to create powerful AR apps using Unity as well as how to create immersive experiences for users.

Developing AR Games for iOS and Android examines the structures of Vuforia and Unity and how they work together to create augmented reality. The book will introduce you to the structure of the Unity environment and how Vuforia facilitates creating AR apps.You will also see how easy it is to build a whole world in Unity's Editor. You will go through the process of using Vuforia prefabs like the AR camera and Image Target in Unity, where you can build the AR experience in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get fashion.

In Developing AR Games for iOS and Android, you will learn both basic and advanced techniques that can be applied to achieve truly immersive AR apps and then how to deploy them on iOS and Android devices.

What you will learn from this book

• Import your assets and packages in a Unity environment
• Create perfect Image Targets for AR tracking
• Understand how to deploy to iOS and Android from Unity
• Add colliders to a scene and learn how to respond to events on them
• Add forces to objects in a scene in a seamless physics-based environment
• Learn about transformation and positioning in Unity
• Listen to Vuforia events and respond to them

Approach

A practical and fast-paced guide that gives you all the information you need to start developing augmented reality games for iOS and Android.

Who this book is written for

This book is great for people who are either new to Vuforia and/or new to Unity. It is a great introductory guide for anyone with a very basic knowledge of xCode and iOS as well as a very basic knowledge of deploying to Android to start developing 3D-powered augmented reality apps.

OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick-Start Guide

Android is booming like never before, with millions of devices shipping every day. It's never been a better time to learn how to create your own 3D games and live wallpaper for Android. You'll find out all about shaders and the OpenGL pipeline, and discover the power of OpenGL ES 2.0, which is much more feature-rich than its predecessor. If you can program in Java and you have a creative vision that you'd like to share with the world, then this is the book for you.

This book will teach you everything you need to know to create compelling graphics on Android. You'll learn the basics of OpenGL by building a simple game of air hockey, and along the way, you'll see how to initialize OpenGL and program the graphics pipeline using shaders. Each lesson builds upon the one before it, as you add colors, shading, 3D projections, touch interaction, and more.

Then, you'll find out how to turn your idea into a live wallpaper that can run on the home screen. You'll learn about more advanced effects involving particles, lighting models, and the depth buffer. You'll understand what to look for when debugging your program, and what to watch out for when deploying to the market.

OpenGL can be somewhat of a dark art to the uninitiated. As you read this book, you'll learn each new concept from first principles. You won't just learn about a feature; you'll also understand how it works, and why it works the way it does. Everything you learn is forward-compatible with the just-released OpenGL ES 3, and you can even apply these techniques to other platforms, such as iOS or HTML5 WebGL.

Android for Programmers: An App-Driven Approach (2nd Edition)

The professional programmer’s Deitel® guide to smartphone and tablet app development using Android 4.3 and 4.4, the Eclipse-based Android Development Tools and the new Android Studio

Billions of apps have been downloaded from Google Play™! This book gives you everything you’ll need to start developing great Android apps quickly and getting them published on Google Play™. The book uses an app-driven approach–each new technology is discussed in the context of seven fully tested Android apps, complete with syntax coloring, code highlighting, code walkthroughs and sample outputs. Apps you’ll develop include:

• Welcome App
• Cannon Game
• Tip Calculator
• Doodlz
• Twitter® Searches
• Address Book
• Flag Quiz

The first-generation Android phones were released in October 2008. By October 2013, a Strategy Analytics report showed that Android had 81.3% of the global smartphone market share, compared to 13.4% for Apple, 4.1% for Microsoft and 1% for Blackberry (bit.ly/1aqIZXf). Billions of apps have been downloaded from Google Play. There are now more than one billion activated Android devices worldwide and more than 1.5 million Android devices are being activated daily (venturebeat.com/2013/09/03/android-hits-1bactivations-and-will-be-called-kitkat-in-nextversion). The opportunities for Android app developers are enormous.

This book presents leading-edge computing technologies for professional software developers. At the heart of the book is the Deitel “app-driven approach”–concepts are presented in the context of complete working Android apps, rather than using code snippets. The introduction and app test drives at the beginning of each chapter show one or more sample executions. The book’s source code is available at www.deitel.com/books/androidfp2.

The apps in this book were carefully designed to introduce you to key Android features and APIs. You’ll quickly learn everything you need to start building Android apps–beginning with a testdrive of the Doodlz app in Chapter 1, then building your first app in Chapter 2. By the time you reach Chapter 9, you’ll be ready to create your own apps for submission to Google Play and other app marketplaces. You’ll master the Google Play submission process, including uploading your apps, deciding whether to sell your apps or offer them for free, and marketing them using in-app advertising, social media, Internet public relations and more.

Practical, example-rich coverage of:

• Android 4.3 and 4.4
• Android Development Tools, Android Studio
• Supporting Various Screen Sizes/Resolutions
• Accessibility, Internationalization, Graphics
• Activities, Fragments, Intents, Preferences
• GUIs, Layouts, Menus, Resource Files, Lists, Adapters, Events, Touch/Gesture Processing
• Immersive Mode, Printing Framework, PrintHelper
• Assets (Images, Audio), View Animation
• Threading, Collections, SQLite Database
• Social sharing via implicit intents
• Google Play™, App Publishing, Pricing, Monetization, Marketing, In-App Advertising, In-App Billing and more.

Beginning NFC: Near Field Communication with Arduino, Android, and PhoneGap

Beginning NFC: Near Field Communication with Arduino, Android, and PhoneGap

Jump into the world of Near Field Communications (NFC), the fast-growing technology that lets devices in close proximity exchange data, using radio signals. With lots of examples, sample code, exercises, and step-by-step projects, this hands-on guide shows you how to build NFC applications for Android, the Arduino microcontroller, and embedded Linux devices.

You’ll learn how to write apps using the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) in PhoneGap, Arduino, and node.js that help devices read messages from passive NFC tags and exchange data with other NFC-enabled devices. If you know HTML and JavaScript, you’re ready to start with NFC.

• Dig into NFC’s architecture, and learn how it’s related to RFID
• Write sample apps for Android with PhoneGap and its NFC plugin
• Dive into NDEF: examine existing tag-writer apps and build your own
• Listen for and filter NDEF messages, using PhoneGap event listeners
• Build a full Android app to control lights and music in your home
• Create a hotel registration app with Arduino, from check-in to door lock
• Write peer-to-peer NFC messages between two Android devices
• Explore embedded Linux applications, using examples on Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone