This week, I decided to take a look at the Android SDK, to see how straightforward it is to develop applications for Android. Now, my programming skills are pretty basic; I’ve not had to do much in the way of programming, other than simple scripts, since my university days, so I don’t expect to be knocking up anything particularly spectacular, or publishing anything to the market, but I would like to get a feel for how the development process works.
I’ve found a few excellent resources for new Android developers (which I’ll detail a little later) and I plan on working my way through them with a view to creating a few very simple “Hello World” style programs. I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to share my journey on the blog.

First steps
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Ok, the first thing I needed to do to create Android apps, is get my hands on a compatible Development Environment. The Android SDK system requirements list Eclipse IDE, JDK5 or JDK 6 and Apache Ant as being compatible, with Eclipse IDE being recommended by the google development team. So, I went for Eclipse, downloading the Eclipse Classic version from the list of available downloads.

Having downloaded and installed Eclipse, the next requirement is to get the Android SDK itself. The Android 1.6 SDK can be downloaded here. The guide to installing the SDK at the Android Developer site has all the details, but in essence all I needed to do was extract the SDK files somewhere appropriate (like C:\Android SDK for example) and add a PATH reference to the Tools subfolder in the environment variables.  Next, I  used Eclipse to download and install the Android Development Tools, using the following method-

1. Start Eclipse, then select Help > Install New Softare.
2. In the Available Software dialog, click Add….
3. In the Add Site dialog that appears, enter a name for the remote site (e.g., “Android Plugin”) in the “Name” field. In the “Location” field, enter this URL:

   https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

   Note: If you have trouble aqcuiring the plugin, you can try using “http” in the URL, instead of “https” (https is preferred for security reasons).
   Click OK.

4. Back in the Available Software view, you should now see “Developer Tools” added to the list. Select the checkbox next to Developer Tools, which will automatically select the nested tools Android DDMS and Android Development Tools. Click Next.
5. In the resulting Install Details dialog, the Android DDMS and Android Development Tools features are listed. Click Next to read and accept the license agreement and install any dependencies, then click Finish.
6. Restart Eclipse.

Through following all of the steps above, I now have myself all of the tools necessary to start developing Android apps.  I’ve started working my way through a couple of example apps, and I’ll report back my findings as I go.

I mentioned above that I’d found some useful resources for learning to create apps in Android.  The main resources I’ve been using are the Android Developers site, which contains everything you need to get you up and running, as well as tutorials for learning the basics.  It’s an excellent introduction to Android development.
In addition, I’ve also been looking over some of the tutorials at the Hello Android site.  They’ve got some slightly more advanced tutorials there, such as creating a basic audio player and using progress bars.  Both look like they will be very useful whilst learning the ropes.