Industry News

Developing an Application for Android

Posted on February 25, 2011

The Android platform from Google is the new darling of the mobile application world. In fact, a survey from Appcelerator and IDC indicates that 87 percent of developers are "very interested" in creating an application for Android.

If your interest is piqued, it's not as hard as you think to make an Android app. You'll need to start by downloading the Android SDK starter package and the ADT Plugin for Eclipse. Once Eclipse is installed, the steps are as follows.

  • Open Eclipse and select File/New/Project. Under the New Project dialog, you'll see Android Project. Click Next.

  • From here, you can start setting up the project. Give your project a name in the name box, then select the Android version you'd like to use. You'll also need to figure out the API version needed for your Android and enter that in the Min SDK Version box. Give your app a name (deleting all the white spaces in the name) and a package name (i.e. com.test.myprojectapp).

  • Next, you'll want to create a configuration that will specify under what circumstances you can start the app. You can control the network speed your app/emulator will use, and choose different emulators to test the app for various versions of Android. Go to Run/Run Configurations. Next, click on the Android Application tab at the side, and then the New button above the tabs. Move to the target tab, and you can select the network speed and which emulator you'll be using.

  • Create an emulator by clicking the automatic control to enable buttons at the side, and then click on Manager. From here, find the new button on the right to create an emulator. You can specify a name for the emulator and the details such as Android version, SD card size and other hardware specifics.

  • Next, click Create AVD, and close the Manager window. From here, you can click Apply and close all the configurations and start running your first Android project.

Have you developed any applications for Android? What kind of effect do you think Android will have on the mobile market?