Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4

  Examining a Basic Android App

In This Chapter

Finding your app’s activities, layouts, menus, and other stuff

Assigning names to things

Choosing API levels

In Chapter 3 of this minibook, you run Android Studio to create a skeletal Android app. The skeletal app doesn’t do much, but the app has all the elements you need for getting started with Android. You get a basic activity (a screen full of stuff for the user to look at). You get an elementary layout for your activity. You get an icon or two, and a little text thingy that says Hello world! You can even run the new app on an emulator or on a real Android device.

Unfortunately, this skeletal app contains many, many parts. The last time I checked, the skeletal app had 66 files and 119 different directories. All this just to display Hello world! on a mobile device’s small screen!

So before you plunge headlong into Android development, you can pause to take a look at this skeletal app. Open Android Studio, make sure that the app from Chapter 3 is showing in the main window, and take this chapter’s ten-cent tour of the app.

A Project’s Files

Figure 4-1 shows a run of the skeletal app that Android Studio creates for you, ...