Firing Your Programming Engines

Android App Development Series

First of all my name is Adnan Zahid and I'll be your tutor for this series. This series aims to get yourself familiar with basic mobile development concepts and later on delve into advanced java based app development. The pre-requisites for this series are:

    THERE ARE NO PRE-REQUISITES!

That's right, this series will teach you how to build an Android app from scratch.

Okay let's get started, the very first thing you need is Android SDK. You can get it from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.

Once downloaded, install it, open the installed folder and then double click on SDK Manager. It should look like this (image attached). Check "Tools" and "Android 2.3.3 (API 10) and hit install. It'll take sometime so do the next step in the meanwhile.

You need a Java IDE (an IDE helps you compile and debug your programs/apps). So far "Eclipse" is developer's favorite so I'd suggest you go with the majority and download the latest version of Eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ .

Now you should be able to install it quite easily and run it. Once the Welcome screen loads, click on Workbench in the top right corner. You'll be asked to create a workspace, name it whatever you want and hit OK. Now you're good to go!

 

Next step, go to Help tab and then to Install new software. Upon loading hit Add and copy-paste this into the second text box https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/, click OK and then once again paste the into the text box. Check "Developer Tools", click next and complete the installation. Now go to Window tab, you should see a couple of changes there, Android SDK manager and AVD manager in particular.

Now AVD (Android Virtual Device) allows you to test your apps on your computer (suitable for those who don't have an actual device). But remember, its NOT a substitute for an actual device. Why? You'll get to know later.

So, click on AVD manager and then click on New. Now you're creating an AVD here, enter a name, select a Target API, enter Size and hit OK. Once its done, click on Start, check Scale display to real size, enter whatever you find suitable and hit OK. Now again its gonna take sometime, so while it does either wait or do the next step.

Finally its time to create your very first Android app, go to File->New->Project. When the menu loads select Android application project and hit next. Enter a name, it will automatically fill in other details for you. Hit next, here you can select an image from the computer or simply go with the default one, next. Then enter your application name (any name you like) where it says Activity Title and hit Finish.

Voila! Your first Android app is created.

Hope that made sense, in the next tutorial I'll be beginning with some coding and other essentials to create and run your app successfully. Your suggestions are welcome. Stay tuned!

Crap like @[number:0] on Facebook

Ever seen a friend telling you to write the last two digits of your phone number as @[digits:0] and see the owner of the sim and other similar stuff? Well its not what you think it and become a handy way of people. What actually happening is Facebook has a way of referencing every user's profile or every page by its id. The "digits" you enter as @[digits:0] are actually the id which then gets converted to the name of that profile/page. So how does this happen? Wanna see your name over there? Okay here's what you gotta do.

Goto a Facebook profile by typing in the address bar. For example my profile address is https://www.facebook.com/adnan.zahid3 . Now copy adnan.zahid3 and put it after this https://graph.facebook.com/ like https://graph.facebook.com/adnan.zahid3 . You'll see some info including "id":"100001338611974" . Copy the id and paste it like @[100001338611974:0] and post it on your Facebook status or as a comment. Now you can easily fool people with this ridiculous thing!