Amanda Roos

I was so excited when I found the Asset Studio in Android Studio (right click in the file menu -> New -> Vector Asset). I was dreading the process of making an app icon for my first app, Scorekeeper. I thought I would have to deal with the pain of creating an icon for each of the Android pixel density buckets (mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi, xxhdpi, and xxxhdpi) and since I haven't done a lot of work with images, I probably would have been trying to do it all in Microsoft Paint. I'd like to think maybe there is a chance I would've found a better solution, but I also know myself well enough to know I like things that are familiar, and Microsoft Paint and I are old friends. Luckily, I was exploring Android Studio one day while working on Scorekeeper and stumbled into the Asset Studio, clicked the Clip Art button, and found myself facing a treasure chest of icons.  It was like a whole new world had opened up to me! Well, that's hyperbole, but the vector assets have ...

See the app code on GitHub.

1. The first part is setting up your Android phone to get developer options. You can use the Android Studio emulator, but it's much faster to use a physical device. Go to Settings > About phone > tap Build number 7 times. Once you have developer options make sure that USB Debugging is turned on: 2. Next, download Android Studio:  https://developer.android.com/studio/ 3. Start a new project. There are template projects available or you can start with an empty project: 4. Switch to Project view: 5. Java files go in "java" folder, XML files (layout, styles, strings, etc.) go in the "res" file, and sometimes you edit the manifest and the Gradle files: After this, be prepared for downloading time as you might need to update Android Studio. If you want more help with a starter app, check out my counter app tutorial video:

Thanks to Google and Udacity for the scholarship, and thanks to everyone else I got help from along the way. I've been lucky to have so many people willing to take time to answer my programming/Android questions.