Pieter Greyling

The "Introducing SL4A: The Scripting Layer for Android" chapter from Practical Android Projects (Lucas Jordan, Pieter Greyling) is available for free download on the SL4A Google Code project site.

It is downloadable from the SL4A main project page:
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/
(see the "Want to learn more?" section)

And from the downloads section:
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/downloads/list
(Practical Android Projects - Chapter 5 - Introducing SL4A: The Scripting Layer for Android)

Regards,
Pieter

Carlo Lopez wrote:
Do you think Android can increase the use of linux in desktop? (in the long run at least)
Do you think releasing a desktop edition of the Android OS would be a good strategy to increase market share?

Hello Carlo,

In general I would say that any software technology-based consumer product that is successful in terms of market penetration carries benefit for the platform that it is built with. So, should Android devices gain a big chunk of the market as well as a positive customer perception and awareness over an extended period of time, this would be good for Linux on the desktop.

Another perspective is that tablets are stretching the definition and reach of the term "desktop". They are also eating into the market that has traditionally been the home of the desktop computer. Consider, for instance, that Android (Linux core)-based tablets are set to encroach on areas of user space typically occupied by Windows XP-based netbooks today. This is another avenue through which Android, and thus Linux indirectly, could see increased use and gain market share in general as well as on the desktop.

Regards,
Pieter

Renz Alexander wrote:
will your book include any topics about android NDK?

Hello Renz,

No, Practical Android Projects does not cover the Android NDK. Our baseline for the book projects is Android development with Java and the Android SDK. We do cover some other languages and tools also but these are generally within the context of the former.

Regards,
Pieter

Hello Rogerio,

Along with Lucas' answer, the following post elsewhere on this forum might also be of interest:

Pieter Greyling wrote:
Our book shows you both how to get started and advance to proficiency with Android SDK development following these steps:
1. Chapter 1 - Android Fundamentals: We introduce you to Android theory, the SDK and IDEs in a hands-on, practical fashion.
2. Chapter 2 - Development Tools in Practice: You learn to master the development tools of the trade with a practical application project that also serves as a how-to collection of Android programming techniques (logging, menus, toasts, notification, alerts, UI controls, files etc.) progressing all the way to creating a signed, Android Market ready, application package (APK).
3. Chapters 3 to 11: We present in-depth coverage of diverse code projects that serve to widen and deepen your understanding of the both the Android Platform and it's possible applications.

The full forum topic for the previous explanation is here:
https://coderanch.com/t/530674/Android/Mobile/started

Best regards,
Pieter

Rupert Brown wrote:Lucas, Pieter,

I've a number of years experience using Java, especially Java2D. A couple of questions:
What is the best way to "come at" Android's Java SDK?
Are you able to do Java2D type drawing with Android, or is it a different model?

Regards, Rupert

Hello Rupert,

Our book shows you both how to get started and advance to proficiency with Android SDK development following these steps:
1. Chapter 1 - Android Fundamentals: We introduce you to Android theory, the SDK and IDEs in a hands-on, practical fashion.
2. Chapter 2 - Development Tools in Practice: You learn to master the development tools of the trade with a practical application project that also serves as a how-to collection of Android programming techniques (logging, menus, toasts, notification, alerts, UI controls, files etc.) progressing all the way to creating a signed, Android Market ready, application package (APK).
3. Chapters 3 to 11: We present in-depth coverage of diverse code projects that serve to widen and deepen your understanding of the both the Android Platform and it's possible applications. This also covers drawing and animation techniques.

Best regards,
Pieter

Hi Ashwini,

The book presents practical code projects covering user interface creation in almost all of the chapters.

In addition to covering the Android platform UI controls and widgets (in both declarative XML and programmatic Java styles) it also treats user interfaces built using HTML, JavaScript, AIR, and game UI's with Android graphics and animation.

We even go as far as showing how to control your Android application's user interface from Lua scripts run by your Java code.

Regards,
Pieter

Ben Hills wrote:Hi all,

I am fairly new to Android development and I have recently finished the excellent Hello Android book. I now feel I have a good grounding in basic Android development but I would like to increase that knowledge further. Can anyone recommend a good follow on book to Hello Android that goes deeper into Android app development?

Thanks.

Hello Ben,

One of the books from the FAQ is Practical Android Projects by Lucas Jordan and Pieter Greyling (myself). As you might be aware, this book is featured on JavaRanch during this week.

If you feel that your basic Android development grounding is now solid and you prefer the approach of learning your next steps from real-world development projects and applications code, then I heartily recommend our book as a second Android development book.

The main theme of the book is to provide a hands-on approach to creating a complete, well-rounded Android development environment and SDK tools understanding that then underpins a range of real code project chapters. These code projects serve to illuminate the capabilities and flexibility of Android as a unique development platform and should get you well on your way to coding and building your own application ideas.

Hi Jeff,

Jeff Swope wrote:whats lua sl4a? thnks

Lua is a powerful scripting language that is very well suited for embedding into applications thus making them script-able or controllable from external scripts. In the book we present a chapter (Chapter 4: Embedding Lua in Android Applications) that shows via practical projects how to extend an Android application using the Kahlua2 Java-based Lua implementation.
More information on the Lua programming language can be found here: http://www.lua.org/
Kahlua2 is hosted here: https://github.com/krka/kahlua2

SL4A stands for "Scripting Layer for Android". It strives to be a generic software layer/architecture for bringing scripting languages to the Android Platform. Chapter 5 of our book provides an introduction to SL4A.
The SL4A home is here: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

Hello Raghavan,

Thanks for your questions.

1. Regarding what distinguishes our book from the other Android books out there, please see this post where the same question is answered by Lucas:
https://coderanch.com/t/530779/Android/Mobile/Practical-Android-Projects-Book-Different
2. Like with most architectures that embed one language environment within another, the main challenges are the sharing of data structures, calling code across environment boundaries, exception reporting, security concerns related to trusting code that that calls internal code from external script code etc.
3. The book covers authentication in scenarios such as when the Android application calls a device external service such as Google App Engine, Facebook, or Twitter.

Raghavan Muthu wrote:Hello Lucas Jordan & Pieter Greyling,

Congratulations on your book. I had seen the description of the book in Amazon.

I have a few questions.

1. How different is your book from other Android books?
2. What are the challenges while interacting/binding the Android apps with LUA, SL4A etc.,?
3. How about covering any security/authentication aspects in android? Does it have any inbuilt features?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Raghavan alias Saravanan M

Hi Carlo,

I assume you are referring to the Practical Android Projects book by Lucas Jordan and Pieter Greyling (myself) that is featured this week on JavaRanch.

In answer to your question, I quote from another post.

Lucas Jordan wrote:I think this book is different because it reaches outside of the normal Android development process. Pieter did an excellent job of showing that Android is more than just a Java development environment. And I think I showed that HTML and Flex/AIR apps are valid technologies on Android. We tried not to waste pages on things that are easily googled, we wanted to show how flexible Android is, and how well it can fit into a bigger development ecosystem, interacting with services and reusing code.
-Lucas Jordan

A lot of questions are raised about which versions of the Android SDK / OS to support. A tool that can shed light is the "Android Platform Versions/Device Distribution Dashboard" on the Android Developers site:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

To quote from there "...This page provides data about the relative number of active devices running a given version of the Android platform. This can help you understand the landscape of device distribution and decide how to prioritize the development of your application features for the devices currently in the hands of users...".

Hi Mayu,
No, we do not cover the Android 3.0 SDK (Honeycomb) since it was only released a few weeks ago. The book covers ADK 2.3 (Gingerbread) which is the latest version before Honeycomb and the one most devices, especially Android smartphones, are aiming for at this point.

Thank you for the warm welcome everyone!

Practical Android Projects by Lucas Jordan and Pieter Greyling is also a good place to start assuming you are already proficient in Java.
I am one of the authors, Pieter Greyling. The book is featured on the JavaRanch book promotion this week.
JavaRanch book promotions schedule:
https://coderanch.com/how-to/java/BookPromotionsSchedule
Practical Android Projects by Lucas Jordan and Pieter Greyling:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430232439?tag=jranch-20