Lesson 0.1: What you need to become Android app developer (all for free)
To create your own simple Internet website all you need is a notepad (like standard Notepad preinstalled in Windows) and an Internet browser (like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera) that for sure you also have in a computer. In the Notepad you write a code and in the browser you see results.
Don’t worry we will come back to Android soon, but a short “How to create a website” example would help us understand how to start.
These are steps needed to create very simple webpage just displaying a text.
Step 1: Open Notepad.
Step 2: Write some text, for instance: This is my page.
Step 3: Save a file as mypage.html. This is important that you add “.html” after file name. But don’t close Notepad yet.
Step 4: Double click the icon of file you have just created (a file would have associated browser icon).
Step 5: It opens in a browser and you can see your website (OK, just a text, but in a browser so it’s a website…).
Step 6: Modify slightly your text in Notepad by adding simple instruction <b> for a browser. The file content should look now:
1 |
This is <b>my page</b> |
This <b></b> instruction means make a text bold. It has the beginning (<b>) and the end </b> (mind the “/”).
Step 7: Save the file and refresh or reopen it in the browser. Now part of our website (text) is bold.
We have just learnt that to create a computer program (or Internet website, or mobile app) we need a tool to write a code, have to know some instructions understandable by machine and have a tool to see/use a program. In the next lessons we will set an environment for creating Android apps and then we start to learn first instructions.