Android - Hello World!

So the last time we talked, I had tried using Netbeans on my Mac.  This time I decided to use my Windows XP VM on my PC to see how working with Eclipse would work out.  I wanted to see what functionality I might be able to use that I might like better. Well the short of it was: Try using the Eclipse IDE, if you haven't already.  It's pretty darn smooth - plus getting it setup is a LOT easier than trying to figure out why things don't work while using Netbeans - unless you're a person who "just does *not* use Eclipse" and "Are you insane?" type mentality.  By all means, bang your head against the wall.

Now here is where I do some redundancy on getting Eclipse setup.  Use the following link to get the Eclipse IDE.  I used the one for Java Developers.  Get the Oracle JDK for Windows (nothing terrifically special).  The link explains what you should do.

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Next: use the rest of that link above to learn how to get Android setup on Eclipse - pretty simple I thought. 

Once that is done, do the Hello World tutorial.  It talks first of all about how to write your first app.  Then it talks about how you handle UI such that you don't have to deal with UI changes programmatically.  Instead you learn to use XML - pretty cool.  Plus it talks about Internationalization and why XML will make your life easier if you want to translate your application.  Finally it walks you through debugging an application.

First thing I learned about this process: Yes the emulator takes forever to load - OMG.  It isn't kidding when it says that the emulator could take a few minutes to load before you're going to see your application.  So seriously - once you start running the app, walk away. Wait till you see a screen that looks like a Droid app screen with the pretty pics and then do that voodoo that you do so well... IE: start up your app.

This tutorial was well done in my opinion.  Exactly the amount I wanted to read while waiting for the appliance guy to come and replace our stove (see Facebook on this date for my feelings about what happened with that).  I am now going to go on to read Application Fundamentals.  Should be interesting.

Cheers for now!