Preface

Welcome to Mastering Android Studio 3, a comprehensive guide to the latest and most sophisticated Android development environment. Whether you are new to IDEs or want to migrate from another, such as Eclipse, this book uses practical examples to demonstrate how Android Studio facilitates each stage of development.

Beginning with an introduction to the workspace itself, the book then explores the wide variety of UI design tools the IDE provides, including the powerful visual layout editor, automatic constraint layout tools and animated material icons.

Once the IDE's design tools have been mastered, the book continues by exploring code development with Android Studio and its many helpful and innovative programming tools, such as code completion, template customization, and most importantly, the fantastic testing and profiling tools that are provided with Android Studio 3.

Android Studio is not just a great tool for vanilla coding; it provides all manner of additions and extensions in the form of plugins and native language support for languages such as C++ and Kotlin. It is this extensibility of the native SDK that makes Mastering Android Studio 3 such an essential skill-set for any mobile developer, and the most useful and popular of these are covered in detail to give the reader mastery of what is without doubt one of today's most exciting development tools.