Subscriber Reviews

Average Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

"Good book on android" - by Ankush Chakraborty on 16-APR-2012
Reviewer Rating:
Excelent
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"Good Introduction" - by Dmitriy on 07-JUN-2011
Reviewer Rating:
This book is for:
This book provides a good introduction to android app development, just like it promises. This book is good if you have never developed any applications and are completely clueless bout XML and interface design.

Good parts:
I liked that the book goes over the app development process from start to finish.
A good introduction to android SDK and eclipse.

Some problems:
The solutions written in the book and the actual code provided are not always the same.
There are some bugs in the code but if you know a little bit of java you can find the solution.
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"After first 6 "hours", unimpressed" - by Tim on 10-JAN-2011
Reviewer Rating:
Incomplete is the first word that comes to mind.

The very beginning, installing and configuring the development environment, gets a 1-paragraph "aside" box, with a link to an appendix. The history of Android gets more in depth information.

Not a word on even introductory Java programming essentials. Apparently it's assumed you're already a Java programmer before you decided to write for Android. Probably why they suggested you install the Eclipse IDE for Java Enterprise Edition, when Android's SDK page suggests Java Standard Edition (really? If you're NEW to Java you should install the ENTERPRISE development edition?)

The portion on "Working with the Android Manifest" includes a good half-dozen screenshots, which would be legible if the book included a magnifying glass. One paragraph "descriptions" accompany.

The book doesn't even get into adding standard items like text input boxes until lesson/hour 8 - two lessons after "adding an animated splash screen".

Really? Animated splash screen is more important to learn than input/output forms?
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"Definately NOT for beginners" - by Anonymous on 05-JAN-2011
Reviewer Rating:
This books does a nice job of going thru all of the steps required to get and android environment running, and it discusses many of the most used widgets and programming techniques. However the authors routinely assume that the reader understands many of the java concepts and jargon. As soon as I reached the chapter on actually programming, I was lost and had to go on the net to get a good explanation of intents. Many of pages read like "put this in you activity, or put this in your resource file without any explanation on how to do it. There is a critical lack of java and xml code to go with the explanations. This may be a very good reference book for an experienced java programming wanting to get into android. It is not a good book for someone learning java like myself. Unfortunately the opening chapter lead me to believe it was for newbies, which it is not.    
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"But where's the code?" - by Engywook on 16-NOV-2010
Reviewer Rating:
As an example of what's wrong with this book, here's an exercise at the end of chapter 4:

"Add a raw text file resource to the Droid1 project. Use the openRawResource()
method to create an InputStream object and read the file. Output the contents of the file to the log by using the Log.v() method. Rerun the application
and view the result."

The only thing that's said in the chapter about the InputStream object is this:

"InputStream iFile=getResources().openRawResource(R.file.file1);"

iFile is not a string, and thus cannot be printed with the Log.v method. There is nothing to indicate what you do to get the contents of the file to a string.

The author says that learning to build Android apps is a good way to learn Java. But there is no Java taught in this book. At the very least, I hope subsequent editions contain solutions to the workshop activities somewhere... :(
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