Acknowledgments

It takes an entire cast of people to write a book. Without the tireless efforts of the crew at Manning, our friends who helped with several sections, and all of our technical reviewers and early access subscribers who provided feedback along the way, this book would never have happened.

Michael Stephens at Manning got the entire project off the ground and got us into the capable hands of Troy Mott, who directed us through the remainder of the project. Along the way Cynthia Kane was our development editor and main advisor on many topics. She helped us with just about everything, from grammar and usage to style and format and more. Mary Piergies kept everything organized and led the way into production. Once there, Benjamin Berg did a fantastic job of formatting and copyediting, while Gordan Salinovic did the typesetting. And publisher Marjan Bace made the whole thing possible.

Outside of Manning we managed to convince a few of our friends and colleagues to pitch in too. Tamas Jano and Robert Cooper provided code examples and text to help us create the 2D and 3D drawing chapter. And, Logan Johnson worked on several of the ContentProvider examples that became part of chapter 8, “Sharing data between apps.” Without their excellent contributions we would’ve lacked coverage of those important aspects of Android programming.

Our other outside help came from our technical reviewers. Jerome Baton took the time to download and build and review all of our example projects, and he found several issues that we’d missed. As well, we got many suggestions and corrections from the other reviewers of our book, including Steve Prior, Nenad Nikolic, Kevin McDonagh, Mark Ryall, Peter Johnson, Al Scherer, Norman Klein, Tijs Rademakers, Michele Galli, Sivakumar Thyagarajan, Justin Tyler Wiley, Cheryl Jerozal, Brian Ehmann, Robby O’Connor, Gabor Paller, Dave Nicolette, Ian Stirk, Daniel Alford, and David Strong. The Early Access subscribers also provided valuable feedback.

All of these people made this book much better than it would’ve been without them, and we’re truly grateful for their contributions.

CHARLIE

Writing a technical book is a long and difficult process, but it’s ultimately very rewarding when you can hold the finished product in your hands and be proud of it. I’d like to start by thanking my coauthors Michael and Matthias for that pride. These guys both not only really know their stuff, but they also kept going even when things took longer than planned, and they took on more than they had signed on for. In all it was a great experience working with them.

I’d also like to thank the Android team and the Android and open source community. All of the people who work to make Android better either directly, or with bug reports and patches, help on forums and question and answer sites, participation in user groups and conferences, and creating libraries and tools are a big reason the platform works and thrives. In addition to thanking everyone who contributes to Android, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the open source community at large. Those who’ve worked on Linux, or a library like WebKit, or SQLite, or Apache HttpClient, or many more, and those who’ve worked on tools like Eclipse and Maven, are also key to the success of Android and to the everyday work that I get to do using the platform.

Finally I’d like to thank my family and friends. My wife Erin, and my daughters Skylar and Delaney were always supportive and encouraging, even when “the book” took time away from my participation in one family event or another. And my parents, Earl and Peg Farmer, have always been there for me and have always encouraged me to do the best that I can in whatever I attempt.

MICHAEL

I’d like to first and foremost thank my beautiful wife Crystal. It takes a lot of time to write a book and time is one thing in short supply for a developer working at a startup and for a father with two young sons. Without an amazing wife, there’s no way this book could’ve happened. I’d also like to thank my high school English teacher, Dr. Ed Deluzain. He’s the person who taught me how to write, and that skill has opened up many opportunities for me. Writing a book has been a dream that’s finally coming true, but it’s a dream that started in Dr. Deluzain’s class. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge Troy Mott, who has worked with me for many years on various technical writing endeavors. It has pleased me greatly to work with him once again on this book.

MATTHIAS

First, I’d like to wholeheartedly thank the Android developer community, of which I am in highest appreciation. I’m an open-source enthusiast, and I fully believe in the idea of contributing back whenever you take. I have taken lots from the open source community: answers, ideas, code, and this book is my way of contributing back to you all. Thanks especially to everyone who has contributed ideas and code back to Signpost, Droid-Fu, and Calculon, my pet projects.

Personally, I’d also like to send a big kudos to Kevin McDonagh and Carl-Gustaf Harroch of Novoda, for all the effort they put into making Android not just a platform, but a community. Special thanks also go to Manfred Moser, Hugo Josefson, and Renas Reda, authors of the Android plugin for Maven and the Robotium library respectively, for reviewing those chapters in this book. Big thanks also go to Julian Harty, Carlos Sessa, Nenad Nikolic, Jan Berkel, Thibaut Rouffineau, and all the other great people who either reviewed this book, or with whom I had insightful discussions about Android and building amazing open source software. You guys are all rockstars!

It should not go unnoted that this book was a team effort; that’s why I want to thank Charlie and Michael for continually driving this project forward and for the uniquely enjoyable ride!

Last, and definitely not least, I thank my dear parents for supporting me all the way through this book and for keeping me going whenever I was about to get stuck.