Android is huge: 480 million people currently use Android devices, and 1 million new devices are activated daily. This means that every three weeks, the number of people who activate new Android devices is equal to the entire population of Australia.
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There are 3,997 different Android devices. Your navigation should work with all of them. C-Swipe can help: It is an alternative navigation pattern for tablets and mobile devices that is novel, ergonomic and localized.
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One of the best patterns for browsing a small collection of featured products is the carousel. Unfortunately, many mobile app implementations do not offer an engaging or satisfying carousel experience and are not effective at driving conversions.
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Most apps fail. This cruel reality has led many disillusioned developers to conclude, often subconsciously, that succeeding on the App Store is like striking it rich in the gold rush: you just need to get lucky. The idea of luck is a dangerous sedative to ease the pain of failure. Pain is a good thing. It shows something is wrong. If my app fails, I want to know why.
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Android is an attractive platform for developers, but not all designers share our enthusiasm. Making an app look and feel great across hundreds of devices with different combinations of screen size, pixel density and aspect ratio is no mean feat. Android’s diversity provides plenty of challenges, but creating apps that run on an entire ecosystem of devices is rewarding too.
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When iOS started to gain momentum, soon after the first iPhone launched, many businesses started to pay attention to apps. The number of apps for iOS grew exponentially, and every company, big and small, rushed to create their own app to support their business.
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Getting into Android development can be quite a challenge, particularly if you’re new to Java or Eclipse or both. Whatever your past experience, you might feel tempted to start working away without checking that you’re making the best use of the IDE. In this article, we’ll go over a few tips, tools and resources that can maximize Eclipse’s usefulness and hopefully save you a few headaches. You might of course already be familiar with some (or all) of them and even be aware of others that we haven’t covered. If so, please do feel free to mention them.
I’ve used Eclipse for Java development on and off for a few years, having recently started learning Android casually. I’m surprised at the lack of easily digestible material online about basic aspects of Android development, such as the topic of this article. I’ve found some useful information out there in disparate locations that are not particularly easy to come across. Most of the online content is still in the official Android Developer Guide, but it has to be said that it is pretty limited in practical material.
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More than ever, designers are being asked to create experiences for a variety of mobile devices. As tablet adoption increases and we move into the post-PC world, companies will compete for users’ attention with the quality of their experience. Designing successful apps for Android tablets requires not only a great concept that will encourage downloads, usage and retention, but also an experience that Android users will find intuitive and native to the environment.
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For designers, Android is the elephant in the room when it comes to app design. As much as designers would like to think it’s an iOS world in which all anyones cares about are iPhones, iPads and the App Store, nobody can ignore that Android currently has the majority of smartphone market share and that it is being used on everything from tablets to e-readers. In short, the Google Android platform is quickly becoming ubiquitous, and brands are starting to notice. “Designing for Android”)](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/30/designing-for-android/)
But let’s face it. Android’s multiple devices and form factors make it feel like designing for it is an uphill battle. And its cryptic documentation is hardly a starting point for designing and producing great apps. Surf the Web for resources on Android design and you’ll find little there to guide you.
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To follow this tutorial, you’ll need the code from the previous article. If you want to get started right away, grab the code from GitHub and check out the _tutorial_part1 tag.
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