Get Started Developing for Android with Eclipse
There is a lot of buzz in the mobile app development today. With the increase in variety of platforms, hardware, tablet PC’s, there is full of opportunities for web developers which are quite complex as well. Before you start building any mobile applications- you must choose a platform. In this article you will learn how to develop apps for android platform, a popular platform in the market which was initially developed by Android Inc., a company later purchased by Google. It is now fully open sourced based on the Linux kernel, accounting for its growing popularity.
Android Development Tools (ADT) is a plugin for the Eclipse IDE that is designed to give you a powerful, integrated environment to build Android applications.
Installing Eclipse and the Android SDK Set up the Android App development environment
The set up allows you to create an application UI, add packages based on the Android Framework API, debug your applications using the Android SDK tools, and even export signed .apk files in order to distribute your application. Let start the installation and configuration process: Download the Android SDK for your platform (Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux). Extract the downloaded file on your hard drive (on Linux, I use /opt/local/). If you don’t already have Eclipse installed, download and install the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers package Run Eclipse and choose Help->Install New Software. Click Add in the Available Software window. Enter Android Development Tools in the Name field, and https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ in the Location field.
Click OK and check Developer Tools in the list of available software. This will install the Android Development Tools and DDMS, Android’s debugging tool. Click Next and Finish to install the plugin. You’ll need to restart Eclipse once everything is installed. When Eclipse restarts, choose Window->Preferences and you should seeAndroid listed in the categories.
Creating a New Android Project Choose File->New->Project… Choose Android Project In the New Project dialog, enter the following settings: Project Name: BrewClock Build Target: Google Inc. 1.6 (Api Level 4) Application Name: BrewClock Package Name: com.example.brewclock Create Activity: BrewClockActivity Min SDK Version: 4 CHOOSE PACKAGES SDK VERSIONS
 Running Your Application
Choose Run->Run or press Ctrl+F11. Choose Android Application and click OK. We hope these key concepts will help you developing your own Android applications. As Android is the best platform to start writing applications for a range of mobile devices.