Summary

Learn the basics of Android and Java programming, and take the first step on your journey to becoming an Android developer!

This course is designed for students who are new to programming, and want to learn how to build Android apps. You don’t need any programming experience to take this course. If you’ve been using a smartphone to surf the web and chat with friends, then you’re our perfect target student!

Learning anything new can be tough. We will walk you through the process of making Android apps, but to get the most out of this course, you must bring your enthusiasm for learning, and budget time on your calendar to learn with us.

By the end of this course, you will have learned how to build an app’s layout and then practiced those skills by making a birthday card app.

If you’re curious about the road even farther ahead, these are the free courses that make up the Android Basics Nanodegree, in order:

• Android Basics: User Interface (This Course)
• Android Basics: User Input
• Android Basics: Multiple App Screens
• Android Basics: Networking
• Android Basics: Data Storage

Expected Learning

If you're a consumer of technology, this course will help you to become a creator of technology. You are only limited by your imagination!

Android powers over 80 percent of the world’s smartphones, and represents an incredible opportunity for developers everywhere. The next billion people coming online will interact with the internet for the very first time on a mobile device.

Building for Android gives you the best opportunity to reach these users and make an impact -- both in your community, and on the world.

Syllabus

Take your hand drawn app designs and lay them out on the phone screen. In this lesson you’ll learn the XML markup language used to lay out Android applications. You’ll create views, the basic building block of Android layouts, that display text and images. Then you’ll position your text and images on these screens. This highly interactive lesson encourages experimentation through coding challenges in Udacity’s XML Visualizer.

Create a birthday card application for your phone. You’ll start by installing Android Studio, a program used by professional developers to make Android applications. You’ll then transfer a simple application you create from your computer to your phone. Following that, you’ll take all the concepts you learned in Lesson 1 to build your birthday card app, and install it on your phone for your friends and family to see.

Required Knowledge

If you are new to programming and don’t know where to start, then this is the course for you!

We will use Android Studio to build our apps, so you should have access to a computer that can run Android Studio in order to follow along (see Android Studio's System Requirements for details). Don’t worry, you do not need to install Android Studio in advance -- we will provide detailed installation instructions as part of the course.

Access to an Android device is helpful, but not at all required.

Now, in case you have some programming experience, parts of this course may be too slow for you — you should feel free to skip those sections.

Finally, the most important prerequisite is a willingness to learn new things, and belief that you can do this!