Getting Started

Okay, lets get started already, First

An Introduction to the Android Development Environment

The android development environment is made up of several different parts that work together to enable you builds an android application.

1.       The Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The IDE is where you write your code that you run in order to produce an android application. This IDE is not specific to android application development, it can used for developing other things too (it is generic). Eclipse Foundation manages it.

2.        

The Android Developer Tools (ADT).

This is an eclipse plug-in that adds android specific functionality to eclipse. Good news is, lately they’ve been integrated.  So you just have to download something called the eclipse ADT with Android SDK for Windows.What you will get will be a tool that has both adt and eclipse plus the SDK combined. No need for further configuration. You can get it here.

Installation

After downloading the adt bundle for your operating system onto your computer, extract it from the Zipped file into a folder in a location of your preferred choice. After that you just have to open the folder and run the Eclipse from the purple/blue (or whatever that color is). And that’s it. Eclipse will startup and you’ll be good to go.

Creating the Emulators.

You have create an emulator/ a virtual mobile device that you will you to test your applications. You can do this by clicking the clicking the AVD(android virtual device) manager button on the Menu bar in eclipse and it will present you with a new Window that looks like this.

Select new on your right and specify the specifications of the emulator that you would like to use. At this point, feel free to experiment with any specifications you would like, provided your computer’s specifications are well equipped to handle whichever device you choose.

Once you have all this setup, then we are ready to start coding our first applications.