First day of Google I/O is officially over and a lot of great announcements were made, and some of those announcements were strictly focused towards Android developers.
One of the biggest announcements from Google out of the first day of the keynote has been the brand new development environment, called Android Studio. You can find more details about it right after the jump.
As Google demoed during one of its presentations, Android Studio offers real time previews of code changes so developers can always see what their edits are doing to the final app. Change the size of some text and watch the app change before your very eyes. Alter colors and the like and boom, you’re seeing the results, previewed in a variety of screen sizes. That’s right, want to know what the app you’re working on will look like in one of the many different resolutions that Android phones – and tablets – come in.
Google’s didn’t talk about all the changes today, but it is also improving the developer console. There are five new features finding their way to the developer console today, all aimed at making it easier for developers to make more money from their hard work. One area that is being improved is translation. Now, developers will be able to have their apps translated right from within the developer console. The key highlights of the new tool are as follows, as outlined by Google themselves:
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- Gradle-based build support.
- Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes.
- Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems.
- ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
- Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.
- A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations, and much more.
Devs can upload what they need translating and then choose from a range of various translation services without having to go out to the big wide world to find someone to do the work for them. Translation is one of the many headaches for developers pushing their apps worldwide, so this will be a welcome addition for many.
Google is also adding new revenue graphs that, obviously enough, display revenues. Staged roll outs and beta testing are other additions to the developer console, making it easier to get testing of new versions of apps done as and when it’s needed. Developers have been asking for something like this for a long, long time. That’s a win, then.
You can download Android Studio IDE from here, and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. Bear in mind that it’s an early access preview, hence there might be a little rough edges. They will be removed as time progresses, of course.
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