i've purchased both the books - "Hello Android" and "Busy Coders Guide" and after two months (and 4 android applications developed) here are my thoughts -
the "Busy Coders Guide" has been the single most useful resource during my brief stint with android. for a newcomer, it does a great job of explaining the concepts in a concise step-by-step manner. even though i have a J2ME background, the concept of using XML to define elements, layouts etc was new to me. it was only after reading this book that i became comfortable with this aspect and understood the huge benefits of the XML approach. positives of this book - 1) crisp, clear and systematic explanation of all concepts 2) covers almost all aspects of android ... i.e. pretty much a one- stop solution and reference. its second only to the actual Android Documentation 3) written in a style that even newbies can follow - very very important aspect INMO negatives (if at all u consider them as negatives): does not deal much with the topic of improving the "look and graphics" of ur application. theres hardly any discussion on using elements such as Custom Views, Gradients, AnimationDrawables etc ... though i guess these things matter only to budding game programmers like me. overall still a great book to have. "Hello Android" seemed an excellent buy when i first read the reviews. as i said, i'm focussed more on game development and it seemed a great book considering that the author builds a Sudoku game from scratch. positives of this book - 1) covers all designing concepts and techniques for game design on android 2) starts off the project (i.e. Sudoku) from scratch and takes the reader through the entire game development cycle negatives - the author tries to cover too much in too short a time. so even though at the end of 4 chapters u have a pretty decent model of a game running, u dont really feel as though u have quite grasped the foundations of the core concepts. game design can broadly be classified into three parts - a) the basic skeleton - i.e. a main menu with buttons for New Game, Help, High Scores, Exit etc. each of these buttons link to a new screen as required b) the core game logic - i.e. the "coding" part ... variables, arrays, methods etc c) the visual appeal and experience - i.e. how to improve this aspect of ur game in my opinion, the book should ideally be divided into two parts - the first to deal with the basic steps of setting up a skeleton, linking the buttons to new screens, displaying game content on those screens and navigation between screens. once the reader is familiar with this process, the second part could dwell deeper into the finer aspects like preferences, different menu structures, saving game states, 3D Graphics etc. all in all, there still arent too many decent books available for android given its infancy ... but both the above books have been a real help in their own ways. hopefully this "review" will help new developers searching for learning resources. ~cheers On Jun 5, 9:07 pm, Musashi Baka <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Android is indeed excellent. My personal favorite is "The busy > coders guide to Android development". > I purchased the e-book (pdf) which came with two other books (The > advanced guide, and the tutorial) for free. > > I primarily purchased it because of the 1 year update guarantee, and > with the sdk constantly evolving I would hate to > buy a book that didn't update its examples. > > Just my 2cents. > > On Jun 5, 11:51 am, Steve <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I'll second that! And it packs a lot of very good material in only > > 200 pages, so a great way to get an intro to Android dev in a short > > time. > > > On Jun 4, 4:43 pm, grakhul <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > So I went into Borders and bought the book in the subject line. Just > > > my way of keeping open source alive by supporting others. The book is > > > great for a novice with none to limited experience in Java and > > > Android. I would recommend it to any novice or new user interested in > > > Android. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Beginners" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-beginners?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
