YouTip

 ## Step 1 - System Requirements You can start Android application development on the following operating systems: * Microsoft® Windows® 8/7/Vista/2003 (32 or 64-bit). * Mac® OS X® 10.8.5 or higher * GNOME or KDE desktop All the tools required for developing Android applications are open source and can be downloaded from the internet. Here is the list of software needed before starting Android application programming: * Java JDK5 and later versions * Java Runtime Environment 6 * Android Studio ## Step 2 - Installing Android Studio ### Overview Android Studio is the official IDE for developing Android applications, based on IntelliJ IDEA. You can download the latest version of Android Studio from the official website (https://developer.android.google.cn/studio). If you are a beginner installing Android Studio on Windows, find the file named android-studio-bundle-135.17407740-windows.exe to download and run it through the Android Studio setup wizard. If you want to install Android Studio on Mac or Linux, you can download the latest version from (https://dl.google.com/dl/android/studio/install/1.1.0/android-studio-ide-135.1740770-mac.dmg) or (https://dl.google.com/dl/android/studio/ide-zips/1.1.0/android-studio-ide-135.1740770-linux.zip) and refer to the instructions provided with the downloaded file. This tutorial assumes you are installing your environment on a Windows 8.1 operating system. ### Installation Ensure that Java JDK is installed before installing Android Studio. To install Java JDK, please refer to the (#) section.  Once the Android Studio installation starts, you need to set the path to JDK5 or later versions in the Android Studio installer.  The following image shows the Android SDK initializing JDK.  Check the components required to create applications. The image below shows "Android Studio", "Android SDK", "Android Virtual Device", and "Intel HAXM (Intel chip)" selected.  You need to specify the paths for Android Studio and Android SDK on your local machine. The image below shows the default installation location on a Windows 8.1 64-bit architecture.  Specify the default RAM space required for the Android emulator as 512M.  Finally, extract the SDK software package to your local machine. This will take some time and occupy 2626M of disk space. After completing the above steps, you will see the Finish button and can open an Android Studio project from the welcome screen, as shown below:  Start Android application development by calling to start a new Android Studio project. On the new installation page, you are required to fill in the application name, package name information, and project path.  After entering the application name, start selecting the environment parameters for running the application. Here, you need to specify the minimum SDK. In this tutorial, we select API 21: Android 5.0 (Lollipop).  The next step of the installation requires selecting an activity for the mobile device and specifying a default layout for the application.  The final stage opens the development tools to write the application code.  ### Step 3 - Creating an Android Virtual Device An Android Virtual Device is required to test Android applications. Therefore, before starting to write code, create an Android Virtual Device. Click the AVD Manager icon in the image below to launch the Android AVD Manager.  After clicking the virtual device icon, the default virtual devices available in the SDK will be displayed. Click the "Create new Virtual device" button to create a virtual device.  If the AVD is created successfully, it means you are ready for Android application development. Click the close button in the upper right corner to close the window. After completing the final step, restart your machine. Before starting the first Android example, you need to understand some concepts related to Android application development. * * * ## Hello World Example Before writing the Hello World code, we need to know about XML tags. Follow the path app > res > layout > activity_main.xml and open the file.  The specific code is as follows: Click Run > Run App to run the program. The result is as follows: