Happy Holidays!

Holiday Cheer or Fear?

Here's a little something to entertain and amuse:

Reader Feedback: Manifest Permissions Editor

[UPDATE: 13 Feb, 2011: This problem now longer exists in ADT 9.0.0 (the version right after 0.9.9).]

The Android Manifest file editor within Eclipse provides a number of useful editing tabs to wrangle the complexities of this file. One such tab is the Permissions tab. Use the Permissions tab to manage the permissions that your application uses and grants to others.

If you've been working with Android for a while, then you may be familiar with the permissions listed in the drop-down when you register a new permission using the uses-permission tag. We refer to this feature in both our books; specifically in Sam's Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours, Hour 5, "Configuring the Android Manifest File."

Unfortunately, a recent update to the Android Development Tools plugin removed this drop-down. We're not sure if it's a bug or not yet, but the drop-down disappeared in the software update between ADT 0.9.8 or ADT 0.9.9.

What used to look like:

Permissions tab from ADT 0.9.7 showing the drop-down list of values

Now looks like:

Permissions tab from ADT 0.9.9, with the corresponding Browse... dialog

When you press the Browse... button, the dialog comes up.

The field provided still works for typing in permissions values by hand, instead of selecting them from a list. The alternate method, editing the XML file directly from the last tab, hasn't changed at all.

So where is one to get these values to type in yourself? On page 90 and 91 of the SAMS book, we've listed a number of the most common permission values. However, the best place to get the appropriate values for your applications is from the Android SDK documentation. Permissions are defined in the documentation for the android.Manifest.permission class. Also conveniently listed with these values is a short description of what they enable the application to do. Before including a permission within your application, always check the documentation to determine if that is the most appropriate one to use.

Building an Android Application: Book Excerpt

Sometimes publishers allow sites to publish entire chapters of books. ComputerWorld recently published a complete chapter from Sam's Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours. We think this is a particularly good excerpt, too, as it has broad topic coverage.

This excerpt, from Hour 3, covers topics from application design to resources to Android Activities. And then it goes on, and covering Activity lifecycle and even Intents and various things you can do with them as a developer. You even get information about debug logging. It's not just a preview of Hour 3, it's nearly the whole chapter.

Check it out at ComputerWorld!

¡Hola! Writing Android Apps for Different Languages and Locales

Find out how this
screen is localized!

It's easy to write Android applications in multiple languages and locales. By clever storage of localized resources in specially named project directories, most of the work in application internationalization is done for the developer. Whether you want to write an application that supports English and French, or Austrian German vs. Swiss German, you can learn how in our tutorial on Mobiletuts+.

Resources need not just be strings, either. Learn how to localize and internationalize your strings, colors, images, and more in Android SDK: Building a Localized Phrasebook.

Reader Feedback: Missing Code! Creating Android Widgets

Not all of the feedback we get is from our books. We write articles for numerous sites around the net and in print form. On most of these systems, we don't have a good way of updating or changing the article once it's posted. Recently, we came across an issue where a series of articles lost their download links for the source code. This series was written back in October of 2009 and discussed creating widgets for Android on the then-new Android 1.5.

We have moved all of the widget tutorial code to Google Code hosting so it should stick around for longer.  The tutorials are still available from developer.com:

• Creating a Home Screen App Widget on Android
• Handling User Interaction with Android App Widgets
• Handling Lengthy Operations with Android App Widgets

Android 2.2 Spreading Wide

We visited the sculptures
after Google IO 2010

Android 2.2 has been getting a lot of news lately. Instead of just being available on the Nexus One, it's now available on many devices, and even shipping on news ones like the Droid 2. A while back we wrote a few articles about Android 2.2 (aka FroYo!). These are relatively high level overviews, but for some they can serve as a reminder of some of the features that we were excited about yet forgot all about because it's been so long since the announcement.

Recall ten of the most anticipated items us developers were looking for in Top 10 Android 2.2 Features Developers Can't Wait to Use. Anticipated, but have they lived up to the hype? You tell us. Interestingly, Cloud to Device Messaging is still not widely available. And, although it's a user feature, we're definitely seeing that not all carriers are taking the Tethering option as it was developed. The Nexus One could very well be alone in it's implementation.

We took a look at past desserts of Android and compared them to the latest, FroYo (mmm, Frozen Yogurt!), in Android 2.2 and Its Previous Versions: A Sweet Developer Review. Although most of the full API level updates have been fairly minor (especially, for instance, API Level 6 to 7), when you look all the way back to API Level 1, the changes have been substantial. Not only have the APIs changed, but the tools have vastly improved. They started out being surprisingly good for a very young platform. Now they're better than even more mature platforms.

Lastly, we wrote an overview of Android 2.2 for users and developers alike, printed in Linux User & Developer magazine, a UK publication. Hey, Android is available worldwide, mates!  This one covers many of the same topics, naturally. (What, did you expect Android 2.2 to change?)

With Android FroYo old news now, what are you most looking forward to in Gingerbread, the next expected release of the SDK (presumably API Level 9)?