Ok so I've never coded in java before its all new to me and i am trying to make an app that would do the same as this (check it out here) old Motorola razr mod, the led's and screens would flash in a pattern when music was played or any vibration into the microphone. I thought this idea could make a cool app for android, so i have begun coding it, and i have pretty much got the interface setup, but when it comes to making the slider i added actually do anything i have no idea and i have no idea how to make buttons actually preform an action, also i have no idea how to go about controlling hardware on the phone like the microphone and various lights to flash. Is there any way anyone can help or give some tips i appreciate any input. Thus far my layout consist of a spinner to chose the different patterns for the lights to flash, then the start button, then a slider to choose how sensitive the microphone is to incoming vibrations. They do nothing yet cause i am not quite sure where to go from here. If you feel you can contribute any knowledge my way i will be grateful, the only coding i have done is minor html stuff although not much different than the xml code involved i have no idea what to do for the java part. Please Help.
Thank you much!
There really isn't anything one could contribute to your knowledge if you don't have experience with an object oriented language like Java. You will need to hop on Google and look at Java tutorials and possibly some object oriented design books. Once you have a good grasp on Java you can then begin learning the API's for Android that Google provides.
So if you're looking for a suggestion there is mine.
Steps you should take
Learn object oriented programming (OOP)
Learn Java
Learn the Android API
thank you, will do.
Yeah man if all you know is minor html you have a lot to learn since theres almost no relation there. I started to learn some java a couple years ago but lost any time for it but when I was learning the best way I found to learn apart from actually taking a class was AppDev. I had the J2SE and J2ME learning programs. Its as close to being in a class room as you can get. There is an instructor, exercises, tests ect. Basically the Rosetta stone for programing.
Do the Hello, World! demos on the official Android site, and take a look at the APIDemos included in the SDK- there's lots of short code samples demonstrating things like buttons and sliders.
And I disagree with the prior poster- learn Java, then OOP. The explanations of object oriented programming will just confuse you until you have some coding practice.
thank you all for the advice, its nice to see that people care enough to help out a noob around here lol
I was a noob to android awhile ago too, though now I'm finalizing a falling sand game for the market =D.
I had experience in c++, c, and html when I first started looking at android. What helped the most was going throught he examples and copying and pasting code into my code until I could figure out how stuff works. The android developers section on www.android.com helped alot, espcially the guide and refrence tabs. I also did a google code search to find the source of another android project that I could reference off of.
It also helps a lot if you have another person that you can work with, it's a lot harder to get discouraged that way.
One last suggestion, use the android-developers forums from google, there's a lot of really good help there. The stack overflow website is also really helpful if you have a general question about java, but not android in specific.
Good luck!
Will be glad to help you along your way once you start coding it. I can write an example app that does all the flashing bits for you. Would have to make it play off the internal media player though and not external audio. Not sure I could code it to do exactly what they did in the video.
Whatever you do, don't ready the notepad toturial that is way advanced and confusing. I highly recommend the hello views tutorials as well as reading the application fundamentals and all the stuff in that category of the dev guide, I forget what its called. But just reading will only get you so far, just try things one at a time. Also #android-dev on freenode ca be a ton of help if your there at the right time, but sometimes its tottaly dead....
There are a ton of awesume tutorials on android-dev's website reading the code there allways helps me understand how new ideas work. But as mentioned earlyer you really need to know oop programing and java...
Related
hi there,
firstly let me say i am a complete noob and after browsing the gweni and faq and wiki i cant see advice on making apps
i want to make a video app with similar interfeace to the iphone or maybe and bit tweaked does anyone kno how i go about this im eager to learn
a few qs
what do i need vb or something
can i use another players codecs
also
do i also need to download an sdk. and i want to use .net not flash
try having a look here (hasnt got all the answers you requested...and im not ever near enough qualified to help...yet)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=400144
started that a while ago as i also want to contribute
I'm interested in developing for Windows Mobile myself, and I don't even have a mobile device yet. I've looked into it a little bit, and it sounds like it'll be a little bit of work to get everything setup, but once it's setup it shouldn't be too hard.
I found a lot of info directly from Microsoft. Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmobile/default.aspx and check out the links in the development section on the left.
It looks like you'll need the SDK, the .NET framework, an emulator to simulate different devices running Windows Mobile, and Visual Studio .NET. Visual Studio may not be absolutely necessary, but I'd guess it'll make things easier.
I was thinking for all the people who are trying to make themes a compiled list of everything you could change and what it is would be priceless and make the process a lot easier.
I can not do this alone; however, would be willing to do it if some people helped out.
let me know!
w/ screen shots would be incredible....
That would be a monumental task, and one that would have to be done again, or added to, once cupcake comes out....
It's just not worth it....
(in my opinion)
Stericson
Oooh. I didn't think of cupcake....hmmm.
Maybe we could scrape up an image file which consisted of a grid of various screenshots, showing all the basic visual elements in android. Then we could draw arrows from each element going to a list of the .png+.xml filenames which are used to construct the element, making them easier to find and alter. Sort of like when you are looking at a datasheet for a washing machine, with the exploded view of all the parts, and the corresponding part numbers. Only instead of a washing machine it would be a picture(s) of the android desktop, and instead of part numbers there would be a list of the corresponding .pngs (and .xml's) that make up that element. Then we could post the .psd of the "android theme datasheet" on the forum so that people could expand on it, sort of like a wiki. This way the project would be a collaborative effort, and less daunting of a task for one individual. I think it would be easy enough to update the image after cupcake comes out, or to make a new one even. I could get started in the next few days after I finish my first attempt at a theme (and get a little better aquainted with the android structure). I hope I described my idea thoroughly enough, I think it would work well. Tell me what you guys think.
Hi everyone!
Since I have been developing software for more than six years now I installed Eclipse and the SDK yesterday out of curiosity.
Now to motivate myself to really learn developing for the platform I have to have a little pet project ;-)
I thought of something like a manual GPS logger, a program that you start, it gets a GPS fix and asks you for a comment. Then this data is saved and you can later export to KML, CVS and perhaps others.
My idea behind this is to save battery life when compared to loggers which save in intervals of i.ee 5 seconds. Furthermore I think it would be a more easy way to later identify or search for a spot if you have just one point with the comment "Here be dragons" instead of a trace around the Lonely Mountain ;-)
So, as stated above, I just installed the SDK and Eclipse yesterday and did the first Hello World, so do not except to see anything within the next few days. I just wanted to hear some general remarks or if there already is an app like this out there which I just missed.
So any comments are welcome and I will keep you up to date if I start developing this.
Kind Regards,
Thanatos81
I wrote something like this so I could more easily add POIs to OpenStreetMap.org
droidcollector on android market.
Oh, okay. Well then I will have a look at it. After that I will decide whether I pursue the idea Thanks for your reply!
So, I have absolutely no knowledge of any type of Android coding, but I'm hoping to learn through trial and error. I've always hated the native Music app -- especially its appearance, but also certain features here and there. My question is, how can I go about editing this?
I'm in the process of re-skinning the APK, basically replacing the old images with better ones. But how would I go about more substantive edits? Suppose I wanted to change the background color to white and the text to black, or the time-jumper at the bottom of the screen from orange, how would I go about that? There's some XML files in the APK, but whenever I open them, I get a bunch of odd characters that I can't really make sense of.
Am I correct in assuming that the source code is not available for Music.apk? If it is, how do I get it and where do I go from there?
Like I said, I'm an absolutely beginner at app creation/modding, but I'm usually a pretty quick learner. I went from zero web design experience to replacing my University's housing website with a brand new one in less than a week, so if I get a push in the right direction, I should be good to go. I did a site search for tutorials on modding a system app, but couldn't find anything.
Any help?
PS: Once I get some edits started (if I ever get that far), I'll definitely be sharing it with XDA. So, any advice you could provide could be mutually beneficial!
jay652 said:
So, I have absolutely no knowledge of any type of Android coding, but I'm hoping to learn through trial and error. I've always hated the native Music app -- especially its appearance, but also certain features here and there. My question is, how can I go about editing this?
I'm in the process of re-skinning the APK, basically replacing the old images with better ones. But how would I go about more substantive edits? Suppose I wanted to change the background color to white and the text to black, or the time-jumper at the bottom of the screen from orange, how would I go about that? There's some XML files in the APK, but whenever I open them, I get a bunch of odd characters that I can't really make sense of.
Am I correct in assuming that the source code is not available for Music.apk? If it is, how do I get it and where do I go from there?
Like I said, I'm an absolutely beginner at app creation/modding, but I'm usually a pretty quick learner. I went from zero web design experience to replacing my University's housing website with a brand new one in less than a week, so if I get a push in the right direction, I should be good to go. I did a site search for tutorials on modding a system app, but couldn't find anything.
Any help?
PS: Once I get some edits started (if I ever get that far), I'll definitely be sharing it with XDA. So, any advice you could provide could be mutually beneficial!
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Click to collapse
android_source_root/packages/apps/Music
Not exactly a secret.
Why wouldn't it be available?
Ipod touch music player
not even kidding and all apple hatred aside, i've always wanted a ipod touch style music player on android! the touch music player is nice looking and very easy to navigate through. if you could make something like that, it would be PERFECT!
pbonello said:
not even kidding and all apple hatred aside, i've always wanted a ipod touch style music player on android! the touch music player is nice looking and very easy to navigate through. if you could make something like that, it would be PERFECT!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something like that would be pretty simple cause its just list views that expand other list views.
As for starting to edit you can change most of the colors is the strings.xml and the layout xmls. For images make sure you dont replace .9.png with normal images. If you have the sdk setup use draw9patch in the tools folder.
lbcoder said:
android_source_root/packages/apps/Music
Not exactly a secret.
Why wouldn't it be available?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that helps. I'll get started by taking a look at that.
I'm not sure why I thought it was unavailable. I mean, some of Google's other apps are close-sourced, thought I suppose those are all part of the Google Experience.
I guess I thought that if the source code was available, someone would have improved the Music app substantially by now. In my opinion, it's terrible and could use a lot of work.
Hello All,
I have two small App Idea's that I want to implement on the Windows Phone 8 platform. The problem is I'm a little unsure where to start for resources.
The issue however is that for all the Dev resources MS has given us, they mostly start at weird points and has no or little impact on where I want to, or figured one should start. So stuff like, setting up a DB, or Using an Azure Server etc.
If not that, most other help I've found have been off point starting as well. XDA's own vids start off with OAuth etc, which are all great, but I'm not even near there yet for what I want to do.
Most other guides, like even MS's own recent JumpStart videos all hop and skip over certain things. So you're following along (Or I'm trying to) and they jump forward, skip tasks and pull out pre-done code so I assume I need different foundation before I can jump in at their stage.
So, I have my idea of what I want to do, buttons, calculator, lists. But I don't know how to start from some basic things. And I am a little reluctant to jump in to what they have for WP7 cuz I don't want to use anything that's been deprecated.
Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Check out LinkedIn. I started a group a long time ago for Windows Phone developers and enthusiasts. It's filled with programmers, Microsoft people, and there's lots of good references and people to ask.
McHale said:
Check out LinkedIn. I started a group a long time ago for Windows Phone developers and enthusiasts. It's filled with programmers, Microsoft people, and there's lots of good references and people to ask.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, any specific link to this LinkedIn... I gotta admit, I never thought of LinkedIn as a place for help in this kind of thing...
As an update though, I already have started on the app I had in mind and now have some specific "How-do-I" questions, but undure where to post these. Thanks again however.
Here's the group. There are some pretty active members who are programmers.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=124767
-Mc
As weird as it may sound: I would suggest you get a beginners book on programming C# on the Desktop. That way you should learn to program from the ground up and get a solid foundation on how the language works (classes, properties, attributes, events, etc.)
Everything else later on is different libraries you will use. That is what most of the introductory videos are about. They show you which classes you use for certain functionality, how you properly wire everything up so it works together.
When you have the basics of how C# works (and most current programming languages like Java but also Objective-C or C++ share the same concepts although there are differences) the best way would be to start with a small project and ask questions when you get stuck or first have a look at StackOverflow if the same question has already been asked and answered.
Teaching someone how to program from the ground up in a forum only rarely works in my experience. But the previous poster might have had different experiences.