Google's Android Studio and American Express

Google's Android Studio is a new Android development environment based on IntelliJ IDEA. The platform is compared to Eclipse with the ADT Plugin. The Android Studio provides integrated Android developer tools for development and debugging. Google’s Android Studio offers a rich layout editor that allows drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations, and much more.

Michael Bailey, Engineering Director of Android, American Express recently spoke at AppsWorld and reviewed interesting features of Android Studio for developers. At the presentation Michael explained there are different ways to think about using these tools. The tools can be dynamic and used in various ways. Android Studio was developed with built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine as server-side components. Android Studio is a new IDE from Google currently in "early access preview” based on IntelliJ IDEA.

Full Java IDE

• Android-specific refactoring, quick fixes, integrated navigation between Java and XML resources.

• Enhanced XML editors for Android XML resources.

• Static analysis tools to catch performance, usability, and correctness problems.

• Build support for complex projects, command-line support for CI through Ant.

• Includes ProGuard and app-signing.

• Template-based wizard to create standard Android projects and components.

On-device Developer Options

• Enable debugging over USB.

• Quickly capture bug reports onto the device.

• Show CPU usage on screen.

• Draw debugging information on screen such as layout bounds

• Updates on GPU views and hardware layers, and other information.

• Plus many more options to simulate app stresses or enable debugging options.

*Android Developers

For developers, Android Studio offers a Gradle-based build support. There is Android-specific refactoring and access to quick-line fixes. The Android Studio also offers UI, performance and version compatibility features. The tools are aimed for solving problems. ProGuard and app-signing capabilities are also enabled. There are Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.