08
May
icon

Holy cow! If you write Android apps, you need to look over here right now. You've probably heard of AIDE, a complete development environment that runs on and builds for Android. While it was pretty impressive before, you won't believe what the appfour GmbH team has in store now. Just today, version 2.0 of the Android IDE was pushed to the Play Store with support for building native apps with C/C++, quick previews of XML layouts, and a cleaner and even more Holo-themed interface, along with major enhancements to Git.

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These days, it seems like everybody can create basic Java-based applications on any old Android device thanks to tools like Tasker App Factory or any number of IDEs and compilers; but nobody even mentions building high performance native apps and games.

06
Feb
logo
Last Updated: February 10th, 2013

The majority of Android developers use Java to create their apps. While Java isn't the hardest programming language to learn, it's always best to get as many people developing as possible.... not that Android is hurting in that respect. Even so, a new way to create apps using Microsoft's familiar C# language is now available, by way of TallApplications BV's Dot42 - a tool that aims to accomplish this task without requiring something like mono.

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The gist is simple: it's a compiler that will allow you to code apps in Visual Studio. You can use existing Android API libraries. There's even limited support for editing String and Menu resources in WYSIWIG.

31
Jan
image

This week, we saw a new kid among Android decompilers hit the street - JEB. JEB is a full featured, commercial dalvik decompiler aimed at security researchers and reverse engineers. Although many other decompilers exist, such as DED, Androguard, baksmalidex2jar, undx, etc and most of them are free and work quite well, JEB comes with features not seen in most free tools:

  • Easy to use UI
  • Direct dalvik to java decompilation
  • Easy on the eyes bytecode
  • Easy cross referencing of items
  • Easy renaming of items
  • Inspection

The downside is mainly the price, weighing in at a hefty $1000.

20
Dec
aidetiny

We've talked about AIDE, the mobile developer toolkit that allows you to write Android apps (almost) entirely on your phone or tablet. In those past discussions, we've mentioned that you can probably get by with just the free version. The premium key offers a few nice extra features, though, like APK publishing, Git push/commit, and saving large project files.

aide1

Most of the features of the premium version are handy if you want to code entirely on your mobile devices which, admittedly, most of you probably won't want to do. Ideally, this app works as a companion to your typical IDE (like Eclipse), but while this sale is going on, it's a small price to pay for a little extra convenience.

05
Dec
Zechner 4677-0 POD.indd
Last Updated: December 14th, 2012

Here are the winners:
  • Russ Brown
  • Srinath
  • Maxwell Kozlov
  • PogoWolf
  • barser
  • GIBsonCubed
  • RichY
  • Jays2Kings
  • Minh Tam Dinh Thai
  • superstepa

Congrats, everyone - we'll be in touch shortly.

The number of quality games in the Play Store may be increasing at a healthy pace, but let's be honest, there's still some room for improvement. Unfortunately, even if you know Java, creating games can be a little different than creating an app. You need some help - a professionally-written book to break down and explain each part of the process, then help you bring it together.

Beginning Android Games, Second Edition

Zechner 4677-0 POD.indd

Enter Beginning Android Games, Second Edition, published by Apress.

07
Aug
aidetiny

When we last left our heroes, AIDE was just released on the world, to the excited cries of developers who liked the idea of writing and testing their apps on the same device, but still probably couldn't replace their desktop development rig with a tablet. However, the app has been steadily making improvements and, as of the newest version (1.0.1), it's out of beta and will be moving to a freemium model.

The IDE will be available for free from the Play Store. However, if you'd like the option to publish commits to Git, publish an APK, or save files in larger projects (25+ Java files), the developers will ask for a one-time fee of $9.99.

31
May
google-android-oracle

We're hearing via The Verge that Judge William Alsup has just handed down his decision on the copyrightability of Oracle's 37 Java API's, asserted by Oracle as having been infringed by Google in the Android operating system. This is probably the most important issue of the entire case. While a jury decided that Google did infringe Oracle's APIs as asserted by Oracle, that decision hinged on the assumption that the APIs were in fact copyrightable in the way Oracle had insisted they were.

Alsup determined that Oracle's API's are not, in fact, copyrightable in their "sequence, structure, and organization," and the related infringement claims against Google have been dismissed.

07
May
jurybox
Last Updated: June 2nd, 2012

You've probably already read headlines in the last hour or two proclaiming that Google has "lost" its copyright case against Oracle, and in the strictest sense of the word, it has. Google lost on a number of counts, including the most important one, question one in the jury instructions. It also lost on a count involving nine lines of code that have long-since been removed from Android.

The first question, though, asked the jurors whether Google's use of 37 Java API packages, taken as a group, constituted an infringement of Oracle's copyrighted works. The jury, responding unanimously, answered that question with a "yes." But question 1 contained a part two, and therefore a dependent unanimity requirement (answers on all parts of the question must be unanimous):

Q1

Jury instructions via FOSSPatents

If you know anything about copyrights (and if you're on the internet a lot, you probably do know more than most people), you know that part two of question one asks the jurors something very important: was Google's use of Oracle's Java APIs fair?

23
Mar
2012-03-23 08h41_03
Last Updated: March 31st, 2012

It's no secret that we work with a number of publishers to give away a steady stream of books to aid aspiring developers - after all, if we help developers, the entire Android ecosystem as a whole is enriched. But for some people, simply reading a book isn't the ideal way to learn. It's for these people that informIT has released Android App Development Fundamentals LiveLessons - a series of downloadable videos that are designed to teach Java developers how to build apps for Android.

This contest is now over. Here are our winners, selected at random:
  • wolex
  • Sam Monty
  • Adam Fursdon
  • ahunor
  • marshall
  • schnie
  • Shishir
  • Andy (atpiggy)
  • scott braunworth
  • Adrian

Congratulations, guys - all of you will be contacted for your information in the near future!

06
Mar
aidetiny

Developers, have I got a treat for you today: AIDE - Android Java IDE. AIDE is a self-contained integrated development environment that allows devs to write, compile, and run Android apps on their Android devices. Normally, if you want to write Android apps, you do it on a separate machine running Eclipse (or an alternative IDE). Now... well, you probably still do for major projects (especially ones involving complex library dependencies), but you can edit or create smaller ones without ever leaving the Android ecosystem.

AIDE really is more than just an editor - it supports code completion, real-time error checking and highlighting, code refactoring, formatting, and smart navigation, as well as compilation and execution of APKs.

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