Monday, April 23, 2012

Professional Android 4 Application Development: Because I only work in powers of 2

Professional Android 4 Application Development, started shipping today (Monday) from Amazon US - so those of you who pre-ordered should be seeing your copies in a couple of days. I'm really excited and can’t wait to find out what people think.

Professional Android 4 Application Development cover image
Where to buy

If you're interested in picking up a copy, you can get the paperback delivered to your door from these fine retailers:
If you prefer to travel light, there's an electronic version to suit your tastes:
I'm particularly pleased with the electronic editions of this release, which are significantly better than those of Professional Android 2. It's nice to see that this time they're  out at the same time as the paperbacks.

What's new?

This edition is a monster. Everything has been revised and expanded, with four new chapters and more than 300 extra pages (that's around 50% more) added since Professional Android 2.

Some of the highlights amongst the new content include:
  • Fragments and the Action Bar
  • CursorLoaders
  • The audio focus APIs
  • NFC, Wi-Fi Direct, and Android Beam
  • Using the Intent Service
  • A new chapter on publishing your app to Google Play
  • Introductions to LVL, IAB, and C2DM
  • Creating collection-based widgets and rich notifications
  • Using new sensors (including the barometer)
  • Property animations
  • Accessibility 
  • Implementing copy and paste
Some context

The whole thing took me a touch over a year to write. I started writing an update for Gingerbread and Honeycomb back in March of 2011 and before I'd finished, Ice Cream Sandwich dropped and I found myself doing some frantic rewrites and adding a few extra pages.

That means it's been two years between revisions, and as Professional Android 4 rolls off the presses there have been 8(!) platform releases.

Professional Android 2 was released within a few weeks of Android 2.1. As of now, 87% of devices are running a newer build of Android. The Android ecosystem has grown to include tablets, with more than 800 different Android devices created by 55 OEMs and available on over 300 carriers.

More than 850k new Android devices are activated daily, with the 450k+ apps in Google Play having been downloaded more than 10 billions time.

Support

You can download all the code snippets and sample projects used in the book from the Wrox Open Source site.

If you've got any questions related to the book, you can post them over at the Wrox P2P forums. For anything programming related, I'd recommend using Stack Overflow (and adding a PA4AD tag). I'll be monitoring both and endeavoring to answer promptly.

I've created a +Professional Android 4 Application Development Google+ Page, and you can always get in touch with me over at Twitter or on Google+.

7 comments:

  1. Sir, Is there a way to trace a phone using an android smartphone based on its IMEI number?

    ReplyDelete
  2. android application development
    I am Very thank full the owner of this blog. Because of this blog is very informative for me.And I ask u some thing You make more this type blog where we can get more knowledge

    ReplyDelete
  3. Reto- absolutely loving your book! I'm coming from a Python background and having a little fight with Eclipse on my way through the first exercises in Chapter 4. I thought the best thing to do was to look for help in stackoverflow.com, and you obviously think so too.

    Slight problem with using the PA4AD tag though - it doesn't exist yet, and you need a reputation > 1500 to add a new tag (mine is a stately 0, I see yours is 50). I suspect the moderators will allow you to add it if you ask nicely?

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is very inspiring, as getting from the start & Having no real background in programming (aside from making some adventures on ZX-81 and MSX), I want to get started on developing something for my own Android based eBook reader and android app development training even this online course seems to be interesting http://www.wiziq.com/course/13599-professional-android-app-development-training-1-on-1-sessions. Has anyone tried any online courses so far. Please do provide a light on this also.

    Thankyou for all the info also.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous8:49 am BST

    Still is this available? Got more valuable information here. Will forward the same to our Los Angeles android app developers to avail this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think this is one of the best book I have overcome through to know something on Android, I have learned a lot through this book without wasting my time. Good examples are covered to which it was easy to deal with.

    ReplyDelete