- Install Android Studio
- The first step to working with Android is to install Android Studio.
- Install Android SDK
- This is optional, since the Android SDK comes prepackaged with Android Studio.
Welcome to Webmaker for Android! Here's some things to know before getting started.
The app is almost entirely built using web technologies. Things you interact with, the user experience is almost entirely written with these technologies. Think of this almost as the "core" of the app. It's where most of the functionality is added and where most of the work is focused. This repository, webmaker-android is focused on wrapping around that "core" to allow Android users to use the app on their smartphones and tablets.
This repository, provides a API that tells webmaker-core how to handle certain things on Android devices. For instance, your Apple device might have a different way of getting pictures from your photo album than Android does. The idea is that by having a wrapper for each system, you can adapt to these changes therefore creating a smooth experience for everyone regardless of the device they are using.
However, there is another reason why things are done this way. Operating systems, whether mobile or desktop are written in many different languages these days. Creating a wrapper for each of these operating systems that wraps around the webmaker-core functionality, allows you the future developer and anyone else working on the project to have much more stable environment and remove the need to rewrite things to be compatible for other operating systems.
With that in mind happy coding and if you have any questions come hang out with us on IRC!
Manual IRC Information: [ Server: irc.mozilla.org, Channel: #webmaker]
In order to use Android Studio, you will need to install a JDK (Java Development Kit). Much like your typical Java client, except it provides helpful utilities and things you will need to start developing with Java (The language that is used to build Android apps). To verify that you have installed a JDK (Which includes the JRE unless specified otherwise) you can run the following commands in your operating system prompt.
| Operating System | Terminal |
|---|---|
| Windows (ANY) | Command Prompt |
| Mac OS X | Terminal |
| Linux (Varies) | Terminal |
For Windows users, click the windows button and in the search box type "cmd" then hit enter. For Mac OS X users, click launch pad, utilities then click on terminal For Linux users, you can typically find the terminal with a quick search (it varies between distro)
Once you have found the terminal for your OS, go ahead and type in java -version and javac -version. This makes sure that you have both a JRE and JDK installed on your computer. When you run the java -version command, you should get a output similar to the one below.
Output of "java -version":
java version "1.7.0_80"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_80-b15)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.80-b11, mixed mode)
Output of "javac -version":
javac 1.7.0_80
If you see something similar to the output above, double check the java version line to verify that the first two digits (1.7 in this case) is equal to or higher than the minimum Java version required (1.7). If it isn't, you will have to upgrade your Java version so go ahead and download the latest version of the Java JDK [].
If you run "java -version" successfully and are using a version that is compatible with the requirements of this project, but have issues running the "javac -version" command, that means more than likely you don't have a Java SDK installed and you should download it at the link above.