Getting Started with Android App Development : Get your Tools Ready

So you want to develop Android applications? Well, you can definitely develop some applications and it is pretty easy to develop Android Applications. But before you start developing these Applications, you need to get your tools ready so that you are able to develop these Android Applications flawlessly on your own!

There are various ways in which you can develop Android Applications. My personal favorite being the one using Eclipse IDE and using Java Programming language. If you are new to programming, you might want to try the App Inventor for Android, which will help you develop apps pretty easily. It is developed and supported by MIT and you can pretty easily use that with your Google Account to create Android Apps. But for this article, I will describe the steps for setting up my personal favorite way of developing Android Applications.

The process that I would be describing is the one that is the one mentioned on the Android Developer‘s Website. Follow these steps in order to get the tools ready!

1. Head over to the Android Developer’s Download Page by clicking here.
2. Select the appropriate download package based on your computer configuration and hit download.
   
3. Now, head over to the Oracle download Page and Download Java Development Kit(JDK) version 6 or above. You may need to scroll down in order to see JDK.
   
4. Install the JDK and then proceed further.
5. After you have downloaded the required package, head over to the folder where you downloaded the package.
6. Open the compressed file using Win Zip or Win RAR or any other compression application that you use and extract it to a place you want to install the Android Development Tools(ADT).
7. Now, head over to that folder on your computer where you extracted the contents of that file and Open the Eclipse folder in there. Double click on the eclipse.exe file in that folder.
   
8. It will now ask you to set up your Workspace folder. Let it be the default one unless you want to store your projects in a different place.
9. If Eclipse asks you to update anything, update it at once. It is for your own good.
10. Done! Well, that is all that was there to set up.

Now when you run the Eclipse IDE, you will be shown with the following screen, where you can develop your Android Applications using Java and XML layouts.

I prefer using this way of development since the ADT comes bundled with Eclipse or the other way round. It all comes up in a single package. I hope I was able to help you set up the development environment for Android Application development on your computer and also hope that you will come up with some fruitful applications using these ADT.

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