Getting Started With Android Studio

Introduction

Android Studio is a new development environment based on the IntelliJ IDEA. This new IDE will make developers "faster and more productive" and is a replacement for Eclipse. As I said the new IDE in Android Studio is based on the community edition of IntelliJ, that should make many developers happy. So, what is IntelliJ Idea? It is a Java IDE by JetBrains, available as an Apache 2 Licensed community edition and commercial edition.



Now here if you think that as of right now Android development cool on Eclipse then why choose Android Studio; what are the benefit? Android Studio provides the follow advantages:

• 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.
• You can create common Android designs and components using Template-based wizards.
• A Rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components.
• Preview layouts on multiple screen configurations.

Many other things are in Android Studio that is handy when we actually work on the Studio.

First let's install the Android Studio

Step 1: Start the Android Studio setup file.





Oops what's that, don't worry just a platform requirement you need to install the Java JDK first to install Android Studio and if you think that you have already installed the JDK then you need to set the environment variable for Java. Use the following procedure to do that.

Set the Environment Variable

Step 1: Go to My Computer then right-click on it and choose "Properties".



Step 2: Go to the Advanced system settings, a System Properties windows will open then click on the "Environment Variables" button.




Step 3: Click on the New button and enter the path for Java home in the pop-up window as below:





Step 4: Now again run the Android Studio setup file. If you have already set your Java home path then the Java JDK requirement message will not be shown as I described above, the step will continue normally as in the following.




Step 5: Follow the instructions and continue with the setup; the completion wizard will finally be shown, then click on "Finish".





Step 6: Then the setup will ask you to import previous settings if you have some then import then, otherwise go with a new installation.





That's it; cheers guys, you are done now and you can start development on Android Studio.

Thanks