Introduction
Android Studio is an IDE for developing Android applications, based on IntelliJ IDEA (the most advanced and intelligent Java IDE). With all of the capabilities, IntelliJ has, now Android Studio also contains all these capabilities for Android development.
On Dec 08, 2014, Google released the Android Studio stable version with some advanced features that will help programmers to write optimized code and will also help programmers and developers to develop a more reliable application.
Some of the brilliant features are as follows
- Flexible Gradle-based build system
- Build variants and multiple APK file generation
- Code templates to help you build common app features
- Rich layout editor with support for drag and drop theme editing
- Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility, and other problems as well
- ProGuard and app-signing capabilities
- Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine
Of all the preceding features, the most important is the generation of multiple .apk files. That helps in Android wear development.
Gradle based build support
Gradle is a project automation tool that builds upon the concepts of Apache Ant and Apache Maven and introduces a Groovy-based domain-specific language (DSL) instead of the more traditional XML form of declaring the project configuration. Which is really exciting.
Google Cloud Platform
The Google Cloud Platform is a set of modular cloud-based services that allow you to create anything from simple websites to complex applications.
Installation procedure
Step 1
Use this reference:
Android Studio to download the setup for Windows and follow the procedure given below.
Step 2
Double-click on the setup android-setup-bundle.exe then the following image will appear and don't click it.
Step 3
It will ask to Choose the component Android SDK and virtual device but you have nothing to do as shown in the image and instead click Next.
Step 4
It will ask you to agree to the terms and conditions and click Next in other words press Next.
Step 5
Now, it will again ask you to create a configuration for the drive and directory you want to install to so browse to that if you don't want the default setting then press Next.
Step 6
Extracting files for Android Studio as shown in the figure.
Step 7
Complete it by clicking on the Finish button.
Step 8
Now the installation will complete. Now Android Studio has launched automatically but if not then launch it manually as shown in the preceding figure. It will ask for choosing devices as shown in the figure.
Step 9
Downloading components means it updates on its own.
Next is the completion step, so click on Finish after downloading the updates.
Summary
This article shows the newer features released by Google and the recently launched IDE Android Studio based on IntelliJ IDEA (most advanced and intelligent Java IDE). The installation procedure was explained thoroughly and theoretically as well.