Google's New Android Training Site Offers App Design Advice and Tutorials
As data this week hinted that Apple is paradoxically gaining on Android among developers starting new apps, Google launched a new Android Training site for to help newbies this week.
The site provides classes to help developers figure out basic issues like designing for multiple screen sizes. Each is made up of a few lessons.
They try to push best practices like: if a user’s battery runs low, an Android app can should be able to change its state to preserve its charge. The classes also show different tricks that developers can use to alter the layout of their apps for devices with different screen sizes — which is important because of Android’s overwhelming issues with fragmentation.
There are a couple specialty classes as well. Developing for Enterprise has a single lesson about Enhancing Security with Device Management Policies. While RIM’s Blackberry platform has long had a core audience in the enterprise segment, Apple and now Google are eyeing corporate customers. The sections covers topics like declaring a policy, adding a device administrator and policy controller (who would control access to the phone’s sensitive data), and dealing with policy differences in various Android OS releases. An example is the Password Minimum Upper Case policy which is only available starting with Android OS 3.0 Honeycomb (API level 11). The Monetizing Your App‘s single lesson is about Advertising without Compromising User Experience. It provides examples of how to use banner ads without frustrating consumers.
The Google Training site offers other technical resources like sample code and articles on problems such as avoiding memory leaks and tutorials — including the ubiquitous “Hello, World.”
