Chapter 1, Android Overview, is an introduction to Android and its history. Chapter 2, The Stack, is an overview of the Android Operating System and all its parts from a very high level. Chapter 3, Quick Start, helps you set up your environment for Android application development. Chapter 4, Main Building Blocks, explains the components that Android provides to application developers to put together an app. Chapter 5, Yamba Overview, is the overview of the Yamba application that we’ll build together through the book and use as an example to learn various features of Android. Chapter 6, Android User Interface, explains how to build the user interface for your application. Chapter 7, Preferences, File System, Options Menu, and Intents, covers some of the operating system features that make an application developer’s life easier. Chapter 8, Services, covers building an Android service to process background tasks. Chapter 9, Databases, explains Android framework’s support for the built-in SQLite database and how to use it to persist the data in your own application. Chapter 10, Lists and Adapters, covers an important feature of Android that allows large data sets to be linked to relatively small screens in an efficient way. Chapter 11, Broadcast Receivers, explains how to use the publish-subscribe mechanism in Android to respond to various system and user defined messages. Chapter 12, Content Providers, shows how to design a content provider to share data between applications, using the content provider to enable our app widget to display data on the home screen. Chapter 13, System Services, goes into various system services that an app developer can tap into. Chapter 14, Android Interface Definition Language (AIDL), covers building an inter-process communication mechanism to allow for remote access to a service from another application. Chapter 15, Native Development Kit (NDK), introduces how to write native C code as part of your Android application.

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This book is truly a result of an outstanding team work. First, I’d like to thank my editors at O’Reilly: Andy Oram and Brian Jepson. Andy, your comments were spot-on and constructive. Brian, thank you for persuading me to take on writing this book in the first place.

I’d like to thank all my technical editors: Dan Bornstein, Hervé Guihot, Frank Maker III, and Bill Schrickel. Thank you for diligently reading my half-baked drafts and providing valuable comments.

This book wouldn’t be what it is without field testing it on our numerous clients - you were the true pioneers on the cutting edge of Android and your projects are all very inspiring. Thank you for your trust.

I’d like to thank my team at Marakana: Aleksandar (Saša) Gargenta, Ken Jones, and Laurent Tonon for bringing back first-hand feedback from running Android Bootcamp courses using the draft of this book. Saša, special thanks to you for sending me back to the drawing board more times than I’d like to admit. This book is probably months pass due because of your in-depth technical comments.

And finally, a huge thanks to my wife Lisa and daughter Kylie. I know what a sacrifice it was for you while I was criss-crossing the world working on this material. Thank you for supporting me along the way.

Marko Gargenta, San Francisco, CA