Hi all ! This my challenge for today : to develop a “Hello World” application for Android, put it up and running on my HTC Desire, and blog about the experience the whole time! To keep the time record accurate, I’ll use a very good and free task manager called “Grindstone2” . I’ve created 2 different task types to account for both time installing and on breaks.
As I haven’t implemented a self-refresh mecanism for this post only, you’ll have to press F5 to check for news ! Ready ? Here we gooooo….. 🙂
[19:25 GMT ] The quest begins !
[19:30 GMT] Found the link to prepare my developing environment here !
[19:37 GMT] Downloading Eclipse and Android start kit…
[19:47 GMT] Started the Android start kit and chosed the following options to begin with
[20:00] The android kit seemed to install the required packages just fine. I’m now going to install now de ADT plugin tools for eclipse. After adding the site https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ to the resources tool, i ticked the following options :
I’ll make now a 1 hour break , and return to this shortly after ! Stay tuned !
[21:08 GMT] Back to work ! After installing the ADT plugin and restarting Eclipse i must now point ADT to the directory where i previously extracted the Android SDK. I can now manage all my Android dependencies from Eclipse ! Great !!
[21:15 GMT] Just begin reading the page Hello World Android and following the tutorial
[21:33 GMT] After creating the android project I got an error : Unable to open class file R.java . This apparently was solved by cleaning up the project. Now i’ve just added some code to build the U.I. .
Ufff time is ticking!!
[21:44 GMT] I’ve sucessfully run the application and I’m wondering how i will put this to work on my HTC.
[22:00 GMT] Now this is a bit puzzling…After building this “Hello Reader App” , the next steps aren’t that obvious! I’ve googled a bit and found out here that there are 2 ways to put applications on your mobile phone :
- Through the Android Market
- Using the Android SDK
I believe the first option will take more time so I’ll try the second option and post the results!
[22:11 GMT] Still wondering how to do it…
[22:30 GMT] Now this was really a nooooooo brainer ! 🙁 Here are the steps i took to put it to work on my HTC Desire!
- Make sure you have some file browser already installed on your mobile phone. I recommend Astro File Manager and you can download it from the Android Market
- Connect your mobile phone to your PC via usb connection
- On your mobile go to Settings > Applications a tick the option “Install from unknown sources”
- Go to /Hello Android/bin/ and copy the file HelloAndroid.apk from here to any directory of your choice on your mobile phone.
- Disconnect your phone from the USB connection to your PC.
- Open your file manager, or Astro File Manager, and look for your application
- Click on the application and choose “Open App Manager” and then install !
- That’s it !!!
According to the Grindstone software I only took , 1h 48min 52 seconds to achieve it and took 1h 24 min 25 seconds in break time ! Not bad, considering I was expecting to take 5 hours to do this. I promise i’ll try to post when possible a snapshot picture of the “Hello Android App” running on my HTC.
[Update !!]
As promised , here are the final pictures !!
Android app icon:
Android App, Hello World , displaying : “Hello , dear Reader!”