It is possible to develop Android OS apps without signing up for anything. We'll try to be optimistic and assume that within the next 12 months, you will find time to make an awesome app that will make you rich! To that end, we'll go over everything that is involved in the process of signing up to publish your apps in both Google Play (formally known as Android Market) and Amazon Appstore.
The starting location to open Google Play is http://developer.android.com/:
We will come back to this page again, shortly to download the Android SDK, but for now, click on the Distribute link in the menu bar and then on the Developer Console button on the following screen. Since Google changes these pages occasionally, you can use the URL https://play.google.com/apps/publish/ or search for "Google Play Developer Console". The screens you will progress through are not shown here since they tend to change with time.
There will be a sign-in page; sign in using your usual Google details.
Tip
Which e-mail address to use?
Some Google services are easier to sign up for if you have a Gmail account. Creating a Google+ account, or signing up for some of their cloud services, requires a Gmail address (or so it seemed to me at the time!). If you have previously set up Google Wallet as part of your account, some of the steps in signing up become simpler. So, use your Gmail address and if you don't have one, create one!
Google charges you a $25 fee to sign up for Google Play. At least now, you know about this! Enter the developer name, e-mail address, website URL (if you have one), and your phone number. The payment of $25 will be done through Google Wallet, which will save you from entering the billing details yet again.
Although the rules and costs for Google Play are fairly relaxed, Amazon has a more Apple-like approach, both in the amount they charge you to register and in the review process to accept app submissions. The URL to open Amazon Appstore is http://developer.amazon.com/public:
Follow these steps to start with Amazon Appstore:
- When you select Get Started, you need to sign in to your Amazon account.
Tip
Which email address to use?
This feels like déjà vu! There is no real advantage of using your Google e-mail address when signing up for the Amazon Appstore Developer Program, but if you happen to have an account with Amazon, sign in with that one. It will simplify the payment stage, and your developer account and the general Amazon account will be associated with each other.
- You are then asked to agree to the Appstore Distribution Agreement terms before learning about the costs.
- These costs are $99 per year, but the first year is free. So that's good!
- Unlike the Google Android Market, Amazon asks for your bank details up front, ready to send you lots of money later, we hope!
- That's it, you're ready to make another fortune to go along with the one that Google sent you!
You're at the end of developing your mega app, it's 49.5 MB in size, and you just need to add title screen music. Why would you not add the two-minute epic tune you have lined up?
- It would take too long to load.
- People tend to skip the title screen soon anyway.
- The file size is going to be over 50 MB.
- Heavy metal might not be appropriate for a children's storybook app!
Answer: 3
The other answers are valid too, though you could play the music as an external sound to reduce loading time, but if your file size goes over 50 MB, you would then cut out potential sales from people who are connected by cellular and not wireless networks. At the time of writing this book, all the stores require that you be connected to the site via a wireless network if you intend to download apps that are over 50 MB.
Head back to http://developer.android.com/ and click on the Get the SDK link or go straight to http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html. This link defaults to the OS that you are running on. Click on the Other Download Options link to see the full set of options for other systems, as shown here:
Note
In this book, we're only going to cover Windows and Mac OS X (Intel) and only as much as is needed to make LiveCode work with the Android and iOS SDKs. If you intend to make native Java-based applications, you may be interested in reading through all the steps that are described in the web page http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html.
Click on the SDK download link for your platform. Note that you don't need the ADT Bundle unless you plan to develop outside the LiveCode IDE. The steps you'll have to go through are different for Mac and Windows. Let's start with Mac.
LiveCode itself doesn't require Intel Mac; you can develop stacks using a PowerPC-based Mac, but both the Android SDK and some of the iOS tools require an Intel-based Mac, which sadly means that if you're reading this as you sit next to your Mac G4 or G5, you're not going to get too far!
The Android SDK requires the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Since Apple stopped including the JRE in more recent OS X systems, you should check whether you have it in your system by typing java –version in a Terminal window. The terminal will display the version of Java installed. If not, you may get a message like the following:
Click on the More Info button and follow the instructions to install the JRE and verify its installation. At the time of writing this book, JRE 8 doesn't work with OS X 10.10 and I had to use the JRE 6 obtained from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572.
The file that you just downloaded will automatically expand to show a folder named android-sdk-macosx. It may be in your downloads folder right now, but a more natural place for it would be in your Documents folder, so move it there before performing the next steps.
There is an SDK readme text file that lists the steps you need to follow during the installation. If these steps are different to what we have here, then follow the steps in the readme file in case they have been updated since the procedure here was written.
Open the Terminal application, which is in Applications/Utilities. You need to change the default directories present in the android-sdk-macosx folder. One handy trick, using Terminal, is that you can drag items into the Terminal window to get the file path to that item. Using this trick, you can type cd and a space in the Terminal window and then drag the android-sdk-macosx folder after the space character. You'll end up with this line if your username is Fred:
new-host-3:~ fred$ cd /Users/fred/Documents/android-sdk-macosx
Of course, the first part of the line and the user folder will match yours, not Fred's!
Whatever your name is, press the Return or Enter key after entering the preceding line. The location line now changes to look like this:
new-host-3:android-sdk-macosx colin$
Either carefully type or copy and paste the following line from the readme file:
tools/android update sdk --no-ui
Press Return or Enter again. How long the file takes to get downloaded depends on your Internet connection. Even with a very fast Internet connection, it could still take over an hour.
If you care to follow the update progress, you can just run the android file in the tools directory. This will open the Android SDK Manager, which is similar to the Windows version shown a couple of pages further on in this book.
The downloads page recommends that you use the .exe download link, as it gives extra services to you, such as checking whether you have the Java Development Kit (JDK) installed. When you click on the link, either use the Run or Save options, as you would with any download of a Windows installer. Here, we've opted to use Run; if you use Save, then you need to open the file after it has been saved to your hard drive. In the following case, as the JDK wasn't installed, a dialog box appears saying go to Oracle's site to get the JDK:
If you see this screen too, you can leave the dialog box open and click on the Visit java.oracle.com button. On the Oracle page, click on a checkbox to agree to their terms and then on the download link that corresponds with your platform. Choose the 64-bit option if you are running a 64-bit version of Windows or the x86 option if you are running a 32-bit version of Windows.
Either way, you're greeted with another installer that you can Run or Save as you prefer. Naturally, it takes a while for the installer to do its thing too! When the installation is complete, you will see a JDK registration page and it's up to you, to register or not.
Back at the Android SDK installer dialog box, you can click on the Back button and then the Next button to get back to the JDK checking stage; only now, it sees that you have the JDK installed. Complete the remaining steps of the SDK installer as you would with any Windows installer.
One important thing to note is that the last screen of the installer offers to open the SDK Manager. You should do that, so resist the temptation to uncheck that box!
Click on Finish and you'll be greeted with a command-line window for a few moments, as shown in the following screenshot, and then, the Android SDK Manager will appear and do its thing:
As with the Mac version, it takes a very long time for all these add-ons to download.
After all the installation and command-line work, it's a refreshing change to get back to LiveCode!
Open the LiveCode Preferences and choose Mobile Support:
We will set the two iOS entries after we get iOS going (but these options will be grayed out in Windows). For now, click on the … button next to the Android development SDK root field and navigate to where the SDK is installed. If you've followed the earlier steps correctly, then the SDK will be in the Documents folder on Mac or you can navigate to C:Program Files (x86)Android to find it on Windows (or somewhere else, if you choose to use a custom location).
Depending on the APIs that were loaded in the SDK Manager, you may get a message that the path does not include support for Android 2.2 (API 8). If so, use the Android SDK Manager to install it. LiveCode seems to want API 8 even though at this time Android 5.0 uses API 21.
Phew! Now, let's do the same for iOS…
An Android OS uses some curious code names for each version. At the time of writing this book, we were on Android OS 5, which had a code name of Lollipop. Version 4.1 was Jelly Bean and version 4.4 was KitKat. Which of these is most likely to be the code name for the next Android OS?
- Lemon Cheesecake
- Munchies
- Noodle
- Marshmallow
Answer: 4
The pattern, if it isn't obvious, is that the code name takes on the next letter of the alphabet, is a kind of food, but more specifically, it's a dessert. "Munchies" almost works for Android OS 6, but "Marshmallow" or "Meringue Pie" would be a better choices!