about this book Android is an open source mobile device platform created by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. Android powers smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes, TVs, and more. Android in Practice is a book dedicated to helping developers build applications for the Android platform. This book is intended to provide some background information and coverage of the basics of developing applications for Android for beginners and also goes into depth on many topics for intermediate to advanced developers. The overall goal of Android in Practice is to collect and organize helpful Android programming techniques over a variety of topics and explain those techniques in the context of the overall plat- form. We're going for the why as much as the how. You will find 91 techniques in the book, each consisting of a problem, solution, and discussion section. Who should read this book? This is a book about developing applications for the Android platform, from key com- ponents and application basics to advanced techniques, testing, building, project management, and more. We hope this book will appeal to Android developers of vary- ing skill levels, from beginner to advanced; Android testers; and managers and team leaders looking to better understand Android development. This book is intended for people who already have some programming experience and are at least familiar with Java. Therefore, we assume that most readers are some- what familiar with Java and related technologies (working with IDE s, compiling and writing Java code, XML , basic networking, and so forth). xviii