Android™ Application Development All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3: Creating an Android App

In This Chapter

Creating an elementary Android app

Troubleshooting troublesome apps

Testing an app on an emulator or a phone

Dissecting an app

In a quiet neighborhood in south Philadelphia, there’s a maternity shop named Hello World. I stumbled on the store on my way to Pat’s (to get a delicious Philly cheesesteak, of course), and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the store’s sign.

Computer geek that I am, I’d never thought of Hello World as anything but an app. A Hello World app is the simplest program that can run in a particular programming language or on a particular platform.* Authors create Hello World apps to show people how to get started writing code for a particular system.

* For an interesting discussion of the phrase Hello World, visit www.mzlabs.com/JMPubs/HelloWorld.pdf.

So I devote this chapter to an Android Hello World app. The app doesn’t do much. (In fact, you might argue that the app doesn’t do anything!) But the example shows you how to create and run new Android projects.

Creating Your First App

A typical gadget comes ...