5/10/2014 Resources every Android developer must know

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Resources every Android developer must knowBy SERGEY POVZNER | Published: MARCH 20, 2013

As Android platform continues its incredible growth, more and more developers start

working on Android apps. If you are beginning Android development in 2013, you are a

lucky person, as the platform has greatly matured in the last few years. While the number

of available developer resources may seem overwhelming, this post points to the most

important ones.

This post may be useful for both beginners and moderately experienced Android

developers, as a single place where most useful resources are listed.

BOOKS

You may think that starting to learn a new development platform in 2013 by reading a book is old-

fashioned and you may be right. But you should still do it: see Programmers Don’t Read Books – But

You Should by Jeff Atwood.

I recommend these 2 books:

The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development by Mark Murphy. What makes this book

special is not only its depth of coverage (2000+ pages), but its frequent updates (~every 2

months). This is by far the best model for books on such rapidly evolving topic as Android SDK.

Mark Murphy also regularly holds office hours, where subscribers can ask questions. Book

samples are hosted on github. Highly recommended.

Smashing UI by Juhani Lehtimaki. An excellent book for any Android developer who cares about

great UI design.

DEVELOPER.ANDROID.COM

Before starting to write your first Android application, read and learn Android Design site by heart.

Specifically, these articles:

Devices and Displays

Touch Feedback

Metrics and Grids

Iconography

Also check out the Downloads section, which contains stencils, source files for icons and controls,

styled and unstyled Action Bar icons.

Ready to start coding? Sorry, keep reading:

Best Practices for User Experience & UI (a must read)

Best Practices for Performance

Displaying Bitmaps Efficiently

Adding Animations (also see NineOldAndroids library)

Tools help

SDK Samples

STACKOVERFLOW

A number of Android core framework engineers, developer advocates and expert Android developers

regularly answer questions on stackoverflow.com. Here’s a list of top stackoverflow Android users. I’m

subscribed to RSS answers’ feeds of many SO users; some of them are: CommonsWare (Mark

Murphy), Dianne Hackborn, Romain Guy, Reto Meier, Trevor Johns, Roman Nurik, Adam

Powell (thanks, @remdroid!).

BLOGS

Follow

- Twitter

- Google+

- RSS

Search

To search, type and hit enter

Recent Posts

Useful Android 4.4 (KitKat) links

[Tip] How to save offline map in Google Maps v7

[Follow up] List of phones that work with “How to

move almost all apps to SD card” procedure

Resources every Android developer must know

Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 are back in

stock at Google Play store

Google announces Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus

10, and Android 4.2

Android 4.1.2 update adds landscape mode,

rolling out to Nexus 7

The rollout of Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, begins

Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ is back on sale at

Google Play store

CM9 RC1 is released

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HOME ABOUT

5/10/2014 Resources every Android developer must know

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Many blogs provide great up to date information about Android development:

Android Dev Weekly by Gyuri Grell. An excellent weekly newsletter with the latest Android

development news. Highly recommended.

Official Android developers blog. It’s worth browsing through this blog’s archives, as some of the

posts are meaty, e.g.: Avoiding memory leaks, Memory Analysis for Android Applications.

Romain Guy. An excellent blog by key Android framework engineer. Once you are comfortable

with Android development, make sure to read Android Performance Case Study post. Off-topic:

Romain is also a great photographer.

Codependent by Chet Haase, creator of Android animation framework.

The CommonsBlog by Mark Murphy.

Cyril Mottier’s Android dev blog. A fantastic resource with posts of great depth. Some of the

latest posts: ListView Tips & Tricks #5: Enlarged Touchable Areas, Tweeted Android

Development Tips, The Google Maps Android API V2 Utopia, Android App Launching Made

Gorgeous, “Pull-to-refresh”: An Anti UI Pattern on Android.

Styling Android by Mark Allison.

Coding Thoughts by Daniel Lew - great tips from one of the developers behind excellent

Expedia’s Hotels and Flights app (formely: Mobiata).

GOOGLE+

While Google+ has not become the social network, it is an invaluable source of information about

Android development. Some of the Google+ profiles you may consider to follow are: Tor

Norbye (ADT), Dianne Hackborn, Romain Guy, Chris Banes, Roman Nurik, Nick Butcher, Adam

Powell, Rich Hyndman, Cyril Mottier, Paul Burke, Jeff Gilfelt.

Make sure to follow Jake Wharton, the author of ActionBarSherlock, ViewPageIndicator,

NineOldAndroid, and many other open source Android libraries.

Also consider joining few of the Google+ communities:

Official Android dev community

Android designer community

OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS

Reading source code of well designed apps is always a good idea:

Google I/O Android app. If you like to copy/paste code, this is the place to copy from.

Photup by Chris Banes.

Android Protips: A Deep Dive Into Location by Reto Meier. Demonstrates use of location

detection, fragments, and BackupManager. Use with care, as this code has not been updated

for some time.

And, of course, the ultimate source: Android source code.

OPEN SOURCE LIBRARIES

Some of the most useful open source libraries:

ActionBarSherlock by Jake Wharton. Library for implementing the action bar design pattern

using the native action bar on Android 4.0+ and a custom implementation on pre-4.0 through a

single API and theme.

ViewPagerIndicator by Jake Wharton. Paging indicator widgets compatible with the ViewPager

from the Android Support Library and ActionBarSherlock. Originally based on Patrik Åkerfeldt’s

ViewFlow.

NineOldAndroids by Jake Wharton. Android library for using the Honeycomb animation API on all

versions of the platform back to 1.0.

Universal-Image-Loader by Sergey Tarasevich. Powerful and flexible instrument for

asynchronous image loading, caching and displaying.

UrlImageViewHelper by Koushik Dutta. UrlImageViewHelper fills an ImageView with an image that

is found at a URL and automatically downloads, saves, and caches all the bitmaps.

Android-BitmapCache by Chris Banes. A specialised cache, for use with Android Bitmap objects.

DiskLruCache by Jake Wharton. Java implementation of a Disk-based LRU cache which

specifically targets Android compatibility.

Search github for [android] projects to find more. Also, DevAppsDirect app is a great collection of

available open source custom views, widgets and libraries.

GOOGLE I/O TALKS

Gingerbread

Honeycomb

Ice Cream Sandwich

Jelly Bean

Nexus

iPhone

News

Reviews

Tips

Meta

Log in

5/10/2014 Resources every Android developer must know

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While it has become virtually impossible to get a Google I/O ticket, all Google I/O talks are available

online, usually with slides. Links to Google I/O Android sessions over the years: 2012, 2011,

2010, 2009.

Some of my favorite talks:

Advanced Design for Engineers by Alex Faaborg and Christian Robertson (2012)

For Butter or Worse: Smoothing Out Performance in Android UIs by Chet Haase, Romain Guy

(2012)

Navigation in Android by Adam Powell, Richard Fulcher (2012). If you happen to think that fixing

Android back/up buttons issues is easy, watch this humbling talk.

So You’ve Read the Design Guide; Now What? by Daniel Lehmann, Tor Norbye, Richard Ngo

(2012)

What’s New in Android? by Chet Haase, Romain Guy, Daniel Sandler (2012)

What’s New in Android Developers’ Tools by Xavier Ducrohet, Tor Norbye (2012)

Memory management for Android Apps by Patrick Dubroy (2011)

Writing zippy Android apps by Brad Fitzpatrick (2010)

Developing Android REST client applications by Virgil Dobjanschi (2010)

PLEASE STOP, YOU’RE SCARING ME

If this post looks a bit overwhelming, don’t despair. Some of the links above are useful only for

beginners, while others are useful for more advanced developers.

Few tips on how to efficiently consume this content:

First, read the books. Did I mention you should read the books? This will lay the proper

foundation of your Android knowledge.

Subscribe to blogs and stackoverflow answer feeds via RSS.

Set up an android-dev circle in Google+.

ANDROID SUPERSTARS

As Android developer ecosystem continues to flourish with contributions from many exceptionally

talented developers, special mentions should be reserved for two people who have been instrumental

in making lives of Android developers easier. They are: Mark Murphy and Jake Wharton.

Mark and Jake have earned an unlimited beer for life for making some of the most useful

contributions to Android open source. If you ever meet them, make sure to buy them a drink of their

choice. [correction: based on the comments below, Mark's beer should instead be directed to Chris

Bane. And if you read that far, you know that the best way to thank Mark would be a CommonsWare

subscription.]

Obviously, a lot of Android framework developers and designers at Google did a great job with

Android. A number of them is referenced in this post.

THE END, FINALLY

That’s it, folks. You now have all the information and tools to write some kick ass Android apps! Well,

not really: you still need a great Android UI designer, but that is a topic for another post. But you

should definitely be ready to write your first Android app.

If I’ve missed any great resources, please let me know in the comments, as I plan to occasionally

update this post.

Happy coding!

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29 Comments

Mark Murphy

Posted March 20, 2013 at 1:37 pm | Permalink

Thanks for the kind words! Though, I’ll pass on the beer.

Reply

Chris Banes

Posted March 20, 2013 at 1:59 pm | Permalink

I’ll take any beers given to Mark

Reply

Juhani

Posted March 20, 2013 at 2:33 pm | Permalink

A very good list.

Also, thanks for the book mention

Reply

Sergey Povzner

Posted March 20, 2013 at 2:56 pm | Permalink

5/10/2014 Resources every Android developer must know

http://www.bongizmo.com/blog/android-resources-each-developer-should-know/ 5/9

Wow, what an honor to have such commenters :-).

@Mark, if you have any other favorite drinks, let me know and I’ll update my instructions to closer

match your taste :-). Otherwise, as Chris suggested, we’ll have to somehow set up a beer redirection

technique. Not trivial, as it will involve transatlantic transportation :-).

@Juhani: it was my pleasure and congrats on writing a great book!

Reply

Nathan Schwermann

Posted March 20, 2013 at 7:21 pm | Permalink

Mark sure helped me get off my feet, back when I read his books there were only about 1500 pages

combined

Reply

shiv agrahari

Posted March 20, 2013 at 10:48 pm | Permalink

so good

Reply

Jayshil Dave

Posted March 21, 2013 at 1:43 am | Permalink

Great Post. No matter however big round of applause is held for Mark and Jake, it will always be less.

Those two are people because of which Android development has become so easy.

Apart from the great exhaustive list above, there could be a mention of HoloEverywhere

(https://github.com/ChristopheVersieux/HoloEverywhere) should have a mention right along with

ActionbarSherlock

And if you are mentioning libraries Mark’s MergeAdapter should also be placed right up there.

Link: https://github.com/commonsguy/cwac-merge

Please keep this post updated it could very well be the go to point for quite a few developers in the

future.

Reply

Udinic

Posted March 21, 2013 at 12:32 pm | Permalink

Great post!

I may suggest my post about performance optimization I published about a month ago:

http://udinic.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/android-app-to-the-challenge/

It provides a step-by-step explanations about how to find performance issues on your app, using tools

that comes with the SDK, which I still find developers who never heard of them!

I also gave some tips from my own experience while developing Any.DO.

Reply

Sergey Povzner

Posted March 22, 2013 at 10:18 am | Permalink

@Jaushil, Udinic: thanks guys for the suggestions. I’ll update this post with more links soon.

One area that definitely could be improved is the open source projects. If you know of any good

ones, please let me know in the comments.

5/10/2014 Resources every Android developer must know

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Reply

Marco Zehe

Posted March 25, 2013 at 6:01 am | Permalink

One great resource, although not a big one, is Henny Swan’s tutorial on how to make Android

applications accessible to TalkBack and other assistive technologies for the blind. One of the most

common problems with Android apps in general is the absence of contentDescription attributes on

ImageButton elements. This makes a huge difference to blind users of your applications! They’re easy

to add, and they can mean the difference between fully useable and not useable at all for this group of

people.

Henny Swan’s tutorial can be found here: http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/making-android-apps-

voice-output-accessible

Reply

Jeff McAffee

Posted March 25, 2013 at 3:02 pm | Permalink

Don’t forget the awesome tuts at vogella.com

Reply

somerandomguy

Posted March 25, 2013 at 3:42 pm | Permalink

Could also mention the IRC channel #android-dev on freenode.

Reply

dd

Posted April 4, 2013 at 8:30 am | Permalink

Thank you for this. Some suggestions if I may:

The link to The Commons Blog is broken, it should point to http://commonsware.com/blog/

You link to http://androiddevweekly.com/ , another very good one is http://androidweekly.net/

Reply

Philip Brown

Posted April 5, 2013 at 8:12 am | Permalink

How about Basic4Android (http://www.basic4ppc.com/) as a great resource for developing apps easily?

Reply

Matthew Johnson

Posted April 17, 2013 at 3:59 am | Permalink

Developing for Android is the place to be. You have a plethora how-to materials available, community of

developers willing to teach and even share code, and it costs noting to get started! You can use all open

source tools to develop your apps. Many Thanks to Google, Android communities, and all the Android

Developers out there building and sharing!

Reply

apu314 Blog Android

Posted April 25, 2013 at 8:35 am | Permalink

i’m an android developer an that is one of the best recopilations i’ve ever seen.

Good Work!

Reply

5/10/2014 Resources every Android developer must know

http://www.bongizmo.com/blog/android-resources-each-developer-should-know/ 7/9

Vladimir Richmond

Posted April 26, 2013 at 4:08 am | Permalink

This post is looks like encyclopedia of Android Application Development ! You have included references

for all thing which should taken in notice before starting development! And I completely agree with your

suggestion of Reading Books.

Reply

Jens Helweg

Posted April 30, 2013 at 3:01 am | Permalink

Thanks for sharing. Excellent article!

Reply

Brad

Posted May 16, 2013 at 7:35 am | Permalink

Hi thanks for taking the time to post this. I think it’s the most comprehensive list of resources for folks

like us that I’ve ever seen. If we can ever help you with any Android programming or development issue,

send me an email at the address above.

Cheers

Brad

Reply

Nelsan Ellis

Posted June 11, 2013 at 11:45 pm | Permalink

When I saw the title of this article I had other expectations than what I read. I was expecting to see

some technical mistakes that developers do in development, like how properly to deal with threads,

background tasks, UI mistakes, and some code examples. Not really what I was looking for, but still a

good article to take in consideration, that makes you aware of some important points. Thanks,

Reply

Maurice Kindermann

Posted June 14, 2013 at 8:42 am | Permalink

Great article. Here’s a UX comparison between Android and iOS standard widgets, with links to the

documentation on the relevant Apple / Android websites. It’s a nice way to get started learning all the

technical terms.

http://kintek.com.au/blog/portkit-ux-metaphor-equivalents-for-ios-6-and-android-4/

Reply

laeeq

Posted August 2, 2013 at 12:29 am | Permalink

useful collection!

Reply

Mobile App Developer

Posted August 5, 2013 at 4:49 am | Permalink

Nice Article for those who really wants to make career as Android App Developer.

Cheers !

TanzaniteInfotech.Com

Reply

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Ndot Technologies

Posted August 28, 2013 at 5:22 am | Permalink

Really nice post. It really motivates a lot those who are interested in becoming as an Android app

developer.

Reply

Hani

Posted October 2, 2013 at 11:33 pm | Permalink

This is the most comperhensive list of resources every android developer should start his day with!

Thanks

Reply

Allison Tibbs

Posted October 6, 2013 at 3:12 pm | Permalink

This is a very comprehensive list for App Developers, I would like to add Lotaris in-appCommerce to the

list as a way for Android app developers to monetize their apps through in-app purchasing. For more

information, visit http://www.lotaris.com/android.

Reply

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Posted April 9, 2014 at 5:19 pm | Permalink

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venus factor weight

Posted May 3, 2014 at 10:06 pm | Permalink

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your

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You definitely know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos to

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Reply

Innomobileapps

Posted May 8, 2014 at 5:24 am | Permalink

Thanks for share great post, but Anyone who is familiar with the default Android Emulator will know that

starting the emulator and running an app can be an extremely slow and tedious process.

Reply

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