Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1

This on-line class offered by "Coursera" (https://www.coursera.org/course/androidpart1 | May – June 2015) and introduced the design as well as implementation of Android applications for mobile devices, discussing the Android Platform and the Android Development Environment and understanding the components comprising the Android Platform, i.e the basic components from which all Android applications are created.
 
The four fundamental components of Android applications were described:

  • the "Activity" class and its life-cycle was presented; one of the main class responsible for displaying an application's user interface.
  • the "Intent" class and "Permissions" were discussed.
  • the "Fragment" class was also presented; another key class responsible for displaying an application's user interface.

The course accompanied by hands-on labs and exercises, including the development of an app inspired by the "Museum of Modern Art" in New York. Below you can find the description of the "Modern Art" project and the source code along with (extended) line by line comments.
 


Mini-project description
 
Modern Art User Interfaces: build a complete app from scratch. Specifically, develop a simple application that creates and displays a user interface, presents a menu and a dialogue, and that opens a link to an external website. A screen-cast video of the app in action can be found at the following "url": https://youtu.be/bWY8zdC_AvM
 

Mini-project hierarchy view
 
Below you can find the Android (Studio) project view, showing the most important source directories at the top level of the module hierarchy, grouping build files for all modules in a common folder as well as all manifest files for each module in a common folder and resource files for different locales, orientations, and screen types in a single group per resource type. Each project module appears as a folder at the top level of the project hierarchy and contains these elements at the top level:
  • java/ - source file(s) for the module.
  • manifests/ - manifest file(s) for the module.
  • res/ - resource file(s) for the module.

"GitHub" repository of this application can be found at : https://github.com/aristotelis-metsinis/ModernArtUI (source code along with line by line comments).

Click on any of the following tree nodes to scroll down towards the source code of the corresponding "xml" or "java" file.
 



  • ModernArtUIActivity.java
  • -- click to show/hide source code


  • ModernInformationDialog.java
  • -- click to show/hide source code











  • colors.xml
  • -- click to show/hide source code


  • strings.xml
  • -- click to show/hide source code


  • styles.xml
  • -- click to show/hide source code