Day 3: Successfully running test app

Posted by Rashmi Tambe on Aug 18, 2014 in Android | 0 comments

Today was another short day wherein I was able to get past all the issues of the previous day. The one thing I had set incorrectly in my configuration was to run Apps at API level 20. Since all the Deitel apps were built with APIs at level 18, they were crashing when I tried to run them. I fixed this and all was well! I successfully ran the Doodlz app on my machine and interacted with it just fine. I was able to run it on both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 emulators.

This is what an emulator looks like. (A lot like an Android device’s UI.) I was pleased to find that it responded to the touchscreen monitor of my X1 Carbon laptop. It’s much easier and more natural to interact with it that way rather than using a mouse! I’m not sure what the buttons on the right side of the emulator do because I’ve never gotten them to work.

Here is an image of the doodle I made via the Doodlz app. It is reproduced exactly as shown in the book because apparently I have zero motivation to experiment and am just keen on moving to the real thing.

One thing to note: The emulator needs to be started up and left running. The startup time is very expensive compared to say starting up a real physical device. If you need to shut down your machine or re-start it to install updates, I recommend starting up all the emulators you need well before you need them.