Learning Android

Chapter 5. Yamba Project Overview

The best way to learn is by an example, and that example has to meet certain criteria. After working with thousands of new Android developers and using various example applications to explain some of the unique concepts that this platform has to offer, I concluded that the best example has to be:

Comprehensive

A good example app should demonstrate most of the aspects of the application framework that are unique to Android. Additionally, there should be a good reason to use a specific feature in order to get the job done. This is important in order to create the right motivation for those new to Android.

Familiar

The example application should be simple to understand. We want to focus on design and implementation, and not on features and benefits.

The Yamba Application

The application I picked for this book is a Twitter-like application. We call it Yamba, which stands for Yet Another Micro Blogging App. Yamba lets a user connect to a service such as Twitter, pull down friends’ statuses, and update that user’s own status.

Yamba covers most of the main Android building blocks in a natural way. As such, it’s a great sample application to illustrate both how various components work individually and how they fit together. Services such as Twitter are more or less familiar to most people, so the features of the application do not require much explanation.

Figures 5-1 through 5-3 show what a finished product could look like.

Figure 5-1. List of status messages from ...