61Chapter 3
An Introduction to the Android
Application Development Platform
In this chapter, we will take a look at how the Android development environment and platform works,
and how it is stratified within your Eclipse ADT Integrated Development Environment (IDE). To do this
properly, we will create the foundation for your Android application development for this book during
this chapter, and in doing so show you how to create a brand new Android application from scratch.
You create the foundation for your Android 4.4 application using Eclipse, and its New Android
Application series of dialogs. As you will see later on in the chapter, Eclipse can help an Android
developer to create an empty application, which I refer to as being an Android application
“bootstrap.” I call it this because it gives you the foundation of an Android application that you
can build upon, including a Java Activity class, your Android Manifest file, your application icon, a
menuing system, and a user interface (UI) layout container.
We will take a closer look at all of the basic Android app components during this chapter, by looking
at the Android application resource folder structure, which the New Android Application series of
dialogs will also automatically create for you, inside of the Eclipse Package Explorer pane.
We will do a detailed examination of this folder structure, which will tell you how the Android OS
wants to see things structured and organized. We will also take a detailed look at other resource
folders that are not auto-created in the default Android application project folder structure, but that
you can optionally create yourself (and will, during the course of this book) to hold things such as
animation, video, audio, and much more.
As you progress in your knowledge of Android, you will enhance the application foundation that you
will put into place in this chapter into something that is truly impressive, and learn every corner of the
Android OS as well as the Eclipse Android Development Tools (ADT) IDE in the process.