Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6

Improving Your App

IN THIS CHAPTER

Improving the look of an app

Helping people in other countries use your app

Getting your app to communicate with the outside world

Face it — the app in Chapter 5 of this minibook is boring! Really boring! Who wants to click a button to see the words Pepperoni and Extra Cheese on a device's screen?

In this chapter, you improve on the app that you created in Chapter 5. We can't promise instant excitement, but with modest effort, you can add features to make the app more interesting. (We confess: In this chapter, the real reason for making the app interesting is to show you some additional Android developer tricks. Anyway, read on …)

Improving the Layout

In addition to being boring, the app in Chapter 5 is ugly. You can improve an app's look in two ways: the way it looks to a user and the way it looks to another developer. In this section, you do both. When you're done, you have a layout like the one in Figure 6-1.

Before creating the layout's code, you should make some observations about the layout in Figure 6-1:

• The button is below the pair of check boxes.
• The check boxes are side by side.

  FIGURE 6-1: Your mission, should you ...