In this part of the article, I will explain and demonstrate to you on how to prepare your app for the market.
Introduction
This is a part III of the series and the second last part of the Series on Android development using the Intel XDK IDE. In this part of the article I will show you step by step on how to create an APK file (Installation file) for Android and prepare your apk for the market.
Objective
In this part of the article, I will explain and demonstrate to you on how to prepare your app for the market. In the previous article i demonstrated to you on how to emulate your app and make changes to suit your needs. If you reading this part of the article it means you are now ready to prepare your app for the market.
Start
XDK can help you to prepare your app for market, it will help you with image dimensions. In this article we are going to use the image Editor a lot to make sure we comply with the market.
Build XDK
Open XDK and select the “Build” Tab as depicted below in figure 1.1
Figure 1.1
Looking at figure 1.1 , there are varies option available, but for the scope of this series we will not dissect them but we can hope for another article that will deal with them in detail as we are doing with the current android option. What we are looking for is Android as depicted in figure 1.1. If you are building the project for the first
time, the project will be uploaded to the server and you will come across the uploading bundles progress
status.
A new chapter in our article now folds out .This screen below is what we are going to work on before we
publish our app.
Figure 1.2
Click on the “App Details” on the “Edit” button and the following screen will appear.
Figure 1.3
All the labels are self-explanatory and the next section is
Figure 1.4
In figure 1.4 I tried to elaborate each point, and in figure 1.5, you must always select “GOLD” option.
Figure 1.5
Click on “Go to next Step” button to move to the next button.
Figure 1.6
Figure 1.6 requires that we must upload images of certain dimension. If you check the requirements you will notice we need to create a launch icon and two splash screens for different kinds of devices.
Generating an Icon for Launch
If you use this website to generate your icons, you just need to upload an image and it will generate mostly used dimensions as depicted below in figure 1.7
Figure 1.7
Preparing images for Upload
There is a small tool bar on the right hand side that can allow you to make your icon fit your needs. If you are happy with the look of the icon, click the “Export in cons” button it will give you an option to download this in an archive format.
- The first image that is required is the one that has 96 h X 96 w, in the exported folder of icons, there is a folder named “Sizes” in there will be an image named “icon-96.png”.
- Attach that image to the first image requirement.
- The second image that is required is “720w x 1280h”. The icon generator cannot generate this size, so what you need to do is to take the biggest icon and adjust it be this size and upload it. Please note that this is a Splash Screen and you can use any image.
- The next one is the Tablet Splash Screen image with dimension of “1600w x 2560h”. Do as you did previously by adjusting the image to fit the required size.
Figure 1.8 shows how will this step look when all have been uploaded.
Figure 1.8
PLUG-INS
Figure 1.9
This step is where you can tell XDK that you have PLUG-INS that you use in your app. You can choose to switch
it on, but for this exercise, keep it off and move to the next step.
Facebook integration
Figure 1.10
A Facebook integration is possible using XDK, here you are provided with the application signature. But for this exercise let us ignore this section and click next.
PUSH CONFIGURATION
Figure 1.11
You are able to configure the push notification, but for this exercise we can just click next.
Build the Project
Figure 1.12
1. This is the last part, this is the part where you create an apk file. Now click on the “Build App Now” button
and a progress bar stating it is building will appear.
2. When the build its completed, you will receive an email with the apk that you can download and upload to
the market .
Figure 1.13
If you look at the UI on XDK, it can also allow you to send the APK to other people via email within XDK or download it as depicted in figure 1.14.
Figure 1.14
I can take this app and download it and send it to friends and I can also install it on my tablet or any android phone.
Conclusion
I wanted to end this series here, but i came to my senses regarding the Market issues that one might encounter while publishing. So I will keep that subject separate. The next and last part of the Android Development with XDK will focus solemnly on publishing the app to GooglePlay.
Thank you for visiting Dotnetfunda.
Vuyiswa Maseko.