Friday, June 18, 2010

Sam's Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours NOW AVAILABLE!

Sams Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself -- Hours)Our new book, Sam's Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours, is now IN STOCK at Amazon! You might even have it already if you pre-ordered it. ;)


Remember, this is a full color book. Figures are color, code is syntax-highlighted. Color and a lower price? How do they do that? Anyway, it's more beginner oriented than our first book, Android Wireless Application Development, but it also covers some new topics. We're underway on an update to our first book, too.

7 comments:

Sidney Yin said...

Dear Shane,

I am excited to see that your book is out. I am very eager to buy it and learn Android development.

I bought Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 in 21 Days by Rogers Cadenhead and Laura Lemay PURPOSELY for learning java in order to develop Android applications.

Before your Android book came out, I bought Reto Meier’s Professional Android 2 Application Development, hoping that it would transition me well from Rogers Cadenhead’s Java 6 book. However, it didn’t. I was mislead by Reto Meier’s introductory paragraph saying “This book is for anyone interested in creating applications for the Android mobile phone platform using the SDK, …. While knowledge of Java is helpful, it’s not a necessity.”

However, I found that to be completely untrue. Even with my persistence with learning Java through Cadenhead’s excellent book (“Java 6 in 21 Days”), I am still having a lot of trouble understanding many concepts Reto Meier seem to assume the reader would understand prior to reading his Android Development book.



My question is whether Java 6 in 21 Days by Rogers Cadenhead/Laura Lemay is sufficient as a prerequisite, provided that I understand every concept explained in the book, to transition nicely into Lauren Darcey’s new Android Development book? I realize these are different authors but I was hoping you, or someone at Sams Publishing could tell me where and which book to read and study before your Android Application Development in 24 Hours. I do not mind studying Java more (although I already finished Day 13 and have understood basic concepts of Classes, Objects, Inheritance, even some Swing and Color/Paint Objects). I even studied basics of XML (a point Reto Meier, again, failed to mention as a prerequisite).

The “Look Inside!” feature on Amazon.com showed that the book has quite a good table of contents, and I like the order in which concepts are introduced. But I was hoping if you could point me the right direction, explaining a list of Prerequisites (ex. how much java is enough? how much knowledge of XML is enough?) before I can understand your book.


I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this post, and hopefully reply to it. I am looking forward to reading your book.

Sidney Yin

ironcates said...

I picked up the book from amazon. What a great value? I'm an engineer with an idea totally new to development so I'm getting my feet wet with this book.

Unknown said...

Excellent! We hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for the support.

mike st said...

Dear Shane,

Your book was amazing, I really love it and it has been really helpful. I only wish there could be more info on the networking services part where we deploy the app to the app engine. Do you know where I can find more information about it ?

Unknown said...

Hi mike st,

You can find documentation on how to deploy a Google App Engine project at Google's code site where you will also find other information about App Engine development, if you're not familiar with it.

As it was simply one way to do a server for an Android application, and has nothing to do with Android itself, we opted not to discuss the specifics of creating or deploying the server side.

Best,

-Shane

OneAdayJ said...

Hey I got this book and it is great so far and I am in hour 6, but I am really lost with the getSharedPreferences() Method and creating a editor. Is there anywhere I can get help on that at all?

Thanks

Unknown said...

Hi OneADayJ,

Right here, if you'd like, or email. Just let us know what you're having trouble with.

Others resources we've written to check out:

App prefs tutorial : http://goo.gl/ufVP2

Also, Prefs screens: http://goo.gl/ZTn4m

Thanks!