So you’ve got the Android SDK installed and Eclipse doesn’t seem as bad as you remember, but what else is worth setting up before you get stuck into a project? Below are extensions, tools and tips to improve your workflow.
Local documentation
If you have browsed your local Android sdk folder you may have noticed that there is a docs folder. This folder contains everything you can browse online at developer.android.com and can be accessed locally to avoid network latency and server/network downtime.
Open ‘file:///path/to/android-sdk/docs/reference/packages.html’ in your browser, replacing /path/to/android-sdk with your actual SDK path.
Note: I found that the API level filter doesn’t work in Google Chrome, probably due to local script execution. Firefox doesn’t have this problem, but if you will use Google Chrome, creating an Apache vhost for your docs is one workaround. If you know how to fix this, please leave a comment below.
Android SDK Reference search (Omnibox)
Android developer Roman Nurik has created a Google Chrome extension which allows fast Android SDK Reference search including both classes and XML elements. By simple typing ‘ad’ followed by your query, e.g. ‘ad ViewG’ you’ll see all classes beginning with ‘ViewG’.
This extension also adds links on class reference pages linking to the source on android.git.kernel.org.
Source code for this extension is available at code.google.com and this extension could easily be customised to link to your local documentation (see above).
Android sources
Eclipse displays API documentation and autocompletes code but you can’t view the source of Android platform code within the IDE. Fortunately there is a plugin which will download and install the sources for you. You can then ctrl/cmd click on any line of code to see how it is actually implemented. I often find this useful when documentation isn’t clear, and it’s a great way to improve your own code.
Coloured logcat output
Jeff Sharkey has written a great python script for colouring logcat output – colouredlogcat.py. This script simply colours lines from different programs in different colours, making logs more readable. I recommend putting this one on your PATH.
Android Asset Studio
Don’t have an awesome in-house designer? Again Roman Nurik has your back with his Android Asset Studio, a set of web-based tools for generating image assets for your project. These are useful for prototyping but can generate production quality assets without launching Photoshop.
Themes
Roman Nurik’s Android themes won’t increase your productivity but they will make your browser more awesome! There’s a honeycomb theme and a traditional Android version.
