Before you can develop android app, you should first setup android development environment. This article will show you how to do that step by step.
1. Download Android Studio
Android studio become more popular today, it is provided by google. First you should go to android studio download page to get the latest version. You can see prerequisite in that page also. So you had better download and install jdk 1.8 before install it.
Please Note: If you live in china main land, you can click here to get latest android studio version.
2. Install Android Studio
After download, double click the executable file to start the installation process.
The first dialog show you a welcome page, just click Next button to continue.
The next page is the components that will be installed, please check them all.
Android SDK is just like Java SDK, it provide a lot of library files that needed when develop app.
Android Virtual Device is a device simulator which can help you debug and test your app in numerous android devices, it provide a lot of devices with different screen resolution. You can add custom virtual device after installation. Click Next button to continue.
Next dialog will show you where the android studio and sdk files saved in the hard disk. You can choose the directory as you like. You had better select a directory without white space in directory name, this can avoid some unnecessary errors.
When you complete the installation steps, after restart, a component download wizard will continue to download the necessary components. This may take some times, please be patient. When you see information like below dialog and the Finish button is enabled, it means the installation is successful. Click Finish button to complete it.
3. Use AVD Manager To Manage Android Device Simulator
After installation, click “Android Studio” menu item in start up menu to start it up.
When you start it for the first time, it will popup a project wizard to let you choose exist project or create a new project. Because this is the first project, so please choose create a new, please be patient also, this may take a long time to initialize the new project for the first time.
After creating the new project, you can see the IDE graphical user interface as below, please note the button named as “AVD manager” in the top tool bar, we will use it to create the device simulator.
Now click the “AVD manager” button in above picture, if there has no virtual device added, there will popup a create virtual device wizard. You can create virtual device for mobile phone, tablet, watch, car device and TV.
Click “Create Virtual Device” button, it will popup the virtual device detail setting wizard. You can choose any type and screen resolution as you need.
After you choose the virtual device you need, click Next button, you can see the system image list wizard, if the selected android operating system image do not exist, you can download it by click the Download link beside it.
After download, click Finish button to complete it then click ” Next —> Finish ” to go back to the virtual device list dialog.
Click the green triangle button in right to start a android virtual device. This also may take some time, please be patient. When the device started, you can use it as a real device, in my example it is a mobile phone. You can open web browser in it and browse web page like below. I will write more articles later to tell you how to write android applications.
