Practical Android Projects - Book Review

Practical Android Projects book by Pieter Greyling and Lucas Jordan is a good place to start with Android development assuming that developer reading the book is already proficient in Java and perhaps JavaScript. The book is for developers who want to develop mobile applications for Google Nexus One, Motorola Droid, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC phones or Android-based tablet computers using the Android SDK, Java, Python, Ruby, Javascript/HTML, Flex, and Lua.

The first two chapters cover the installation and configuration of the Android development environment in detail. These chapters provide detailed instructions for creating and working with the Android SDK Tools and other development software such as IDEs and plugins. The remaining nine chapters cover a stand alone topic like Android platform architecture concepts and application principles, how to build build, debug, and sign Java Android apps, how to code cross-platform Android Gingerbread applications with Python, Ruby, Javascript/HTML, and Flex/AIR, how to develop Android applications that interact with Facebook and Twitter. Two chapters cover Android animation and game development and not only explain the built in support for animation, but and how to use it properly. The animation examples in these chapters should help developers who are familiar with computer animation in general, but may have never done it on Android platform. The source code of Practical Android Projects book is available for download from the publisher site. More reviews at Amazon: Practical Android Projects

In overall this book is a good buy, because it reaches outside of the normal Android development process. It shows that Android is more than just a Java development environment, and JavaScript/HTML or Flex/AIR apps are valid software technologies on Android. In my opinion the book won't be much useful for developer who just started to learn Java, it assumes the understanding of Java. In the same time even experienced developers will get something out of this book. Keep in mind that Practical Android Projects book covers Android 2.3 Gingerbread which is the latest version before Honeycomb, but does not cover the Android 3.0 SDK Honeycomb, which was released a few weeks ago.