Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Your Cart (0 item)
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Save more on your purchases! discount-offer-chevron-icon
Savings automatically calculated. No voucher code required.
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Newsletter Hub
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
timer SALE ENDS IN
0 Days
:
00 Hours
:
00 Minutes
:
00 Seconds
LiveCode Mobile Development Beginner's Guide (2nd Edition)
LiveCode Mobile Development Beginner's Guide (2nd Edition)

LiveCode Mobile Development Beginner's Guide (2nd Edition): Create interactive mobile apps for Android and iOS with LiveCode

Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Colin Holgate Profile Icon Joel W Gerdeen
Arrow right icon
$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3 (1 Ratings)
Paperback May 2015 256 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$9.99 $43.99
Paperback
$54.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Colin Holgate Profile Icon Joel W Gerdeen
Arrow right icon
$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3 (1 Ratings)
Paperback May 2015 256 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$9.99 $43.99
Paperback
$54.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
eBook
$9.99 $43.99
Paperback
$54.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m

What do you get with a Packt Subscription?

Free for first 7 days. $19.99 p/m after that. Cancel any time!
Product feature icon Unlimited ad-free access to the largest independent learning library in tech. Access this title and thousands more!
Product feature icon 50+ new titles added per month, including many first-to-market concepts and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.
Product feature icon Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.
Product feature icon Thousands of reference materials covering every tech concept you need to stay up to date.
Subscribe now
View plans & pricing
Table of content icon View table of contents Preview book icon Preview Book

LiveCode Mobile Development Beginner's Guide (2nd Edition)

Chapter 2. Getting Started with LiveCode Mobile

Before we can do neat things…

Creating stacks that do something useful or eventually become a mobile app that you can sell is a very gratifying process. Minute by minute, you can make progress and instantly see the improvements you have made. Unfortunately, there is a lot of less gratifying work to be done before and after you make your masterpiece. This chapter will take you through the "before" part.

LiveCode makes mobile apps by taking the stack you have made along with any supporting files you have added, and compiles the application file using the developer kit that you download from the mobile OS provider, Google for Android and Apple for iOS.

In this chapter, we will:

  • Sign up for Google Play
  • Sign up for Amazon Appstore
  • Download and install the Android SDK
  • Configure LiveCode so that it knows where to look for the Android SDK
  • Become an iOS developer with Apple
  • Download and install Xcode
  • Configure LiveCode so that...

iOS, Android, or both?

It could be that you only have interest in iOS or Android. You should be able to easily skip to the sections you're interested in unless you're intrigued about how the other half works! If, like me, you're a capitalist, then you should be interested in both the operating systems.

Far fewer steps are needed to get the Android SDK than the iOS developer tools because for iOS, we have to sign up as a developer with Apple. However, the configuration for Android is more involved. We'll go through all the steps for Android and then the ones for iOS. If you're an iOS-only kind of person, skip the next few pages and start up again at the Becoming an iOS Developer section.

Becoming an Android developer

It is possible to develop Android OS apps without signing up for anything. We'll try to be optimistic and assume that within the next 12 months, you will find time to make an awesome app that will make you rich! To that end, we'll go over everything that is involved in the process of signing up to publish your apps in both Google Play (formally known as Android Market) and Amazon Appstore.

Google Play

The starting location to open Google Play is http://developer.android.com/:

Google Play

We will come back to this page again, shortly to download the Android SDK, but for now, click on the Distribute link in the menu bar and then on the Developer Console button on the following screen. Since Google changes these pages occasionally, you can use the URL https://play.google.com/apps/publish/ or search for "Google Play Developer Console". The screens you will progress through are not shown here since they tend to change with time.

There will be a sign-in page...

Becoming an iOS developer

Creating iOS LiveCode applications requires that LiveCode must have access to the iOS SDK. This is installed as part of the Xcode developer tools and is a Mac-only program. Also, when you upload an app to the iOS App Store, the application used is Mac only and is part of the Xcode installation. If you are a Windows-based developer and wish to develop and publish for iOS, you need either an actual Mac based system or a virtual machine that can run the Mac OS. We can even use VirtualBox for running a Mac based virtual machine, but performance will be an issue. Refer to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/63147/is-mac-os-x-in-a-virtualbox-vm-suitable-for-ios-development for more information.

The biggest difference between becoming an Android developer and becoming an iOS developer is that you have to sign up with Apple for their developer program even if you never produce an app for the iOS App Store, but no such signing up is required when becoming an Android...

Before we make our first mobile app…

Now that the required SDKs are installed and LiveCode knows where they are, we can make a stack and test it in a simulator or on a physical device. We do, however, have to get the simulators and physical devices warmed up…

Getting ready for test development on an Android device

Simulating on iOS is easier than it is on Android, and testing on a physical device is easier on Android than on iOS, but the setting up of physical Android devices can be horrendous!

Time for action – starting an Android Virtual Device

You will have to dig a little deep in the Android SDK folders to find the Android Virtual Device setup program. You might as well provide a shortcut or an alias to it for quicker access. The following steps will help you setup and start an Android virtual device:

  1. Navigate to the Android SDK tools folder located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\ on Windows and navigate to your Documents/android-sdk-macosx/tools folder on Mac.
  2. Open AVD Manager on Windows or android on Mac (these look like a Unix executable file; just double-click on it and the application will open via a command-line window).
  3. If you're on Mac, select Manage AVDs… from the Tools menu.
  4. Select Tablet from the list of devices if there is one. If not, you can add your own custom devices as described in the following section.
  5. Click on the Start button.
  6. Sit patiently while the virtual device starts up!
  7. Open LiveCode, create a new Mainstack, and click on...

Time for action – adding Kindle Fire to ADB

It only takes one line of text to add Kindle Fire to the list of devices that ADB knows about. The hard part is tracking down the text file to edit and getting ADB to restart after making the required changes. Things are more involved when using Windows than with Mac because you also have to configure the USB driver, so the two systems are shown here as separate steps.

The steps to be followed for adding a Kindle Fire to ADB for a Windows OS are as follows:

  1. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Users\yourusername\.android\ where the adv_usb.ini file is located.
  2. Open the adv_usb.ini text file in a text editor. The file has no visible line breaks, so it is better to use WordPad than NotePad.
  3. On the line after the three instruction lines, type 0x1949.
  4. Make sure that there are no blank lines; the last character in the text file would be 9 at the end of 0x1949.
  5. Now, save the file.
  6. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\extras\google\usb_driver...

Time for action – using the iOS simulator

The initial steps are much like what we did for Android apps, but the process becomes a lot quicker in later steps. Remember, this only applies to a Mac OS; you can only do these things on Windows if you are using a Mac OS in a virtual machine, which may have performance issues. This is most likely not covered by the Mac OS's user agreement! In other words, get a Mac OS if you intend to develop for iOS. The following steps will help you achieve that:

  1. Open LiveCode and create a new Mainstack and save the stack to your hard drive.
  2. Select File and then Standalone Application Settings….
  3. Click on the iOS icon to select the Build for iOS checkbox.
  4. Close the settings dialog box and take a look at the Test Target menu under Development.
  5. You will see a list of simulator options for iPhone and iPad and different versions of iOS.
  6. To start the iOS simulator, select an option and click on the Test button.

What just happened?

This was all it took...

iOS, Android, or both?


It could be that you only have interest in iOS or Android. You should be able to easily skip to the sections you're interested in unless you're intrigued about how the other half works! If, like me, you're a capitalist, then you should be interested in both the operating systems.

Far fewer steps are needed to get the Android SDK than the iOS developer tools because for iOS, we have to sign up as a developer with Apple. However, the configuration for Android is more involved. We'll go through all the steps for Android and then the ones for iOS. If you're an iOS-only kind of person, skip the next few pages and start up again at the Becoming an iOS Developer section.

Becoming an Android developer


It is possible to develop Android OS apps without signing up for anything. We'll try to be optimistic and assume that within the next 12 months, you will find time to make an awesome app that will make you rich! To that end, we'll go over everything that is involved in the process of signing up to publish your apps in both Google Play (formally known as Android Market) and Amazon Appstore.

Google Play

The starting location to open Google Play is http://developer.android.com/:

We will come back to this page again, shortly to download the Android SDK, but for now, click on the Distribute link in the menu bar and then on the Developer Console button on the following screen. Since Google changes these pages occasionally, you can use the URL https://play.google.com/apps/publish/ or search for "Google Play Developer Console". The screens you will progress through are not shown here since they tend to change with time.

There will be a sign-in page; sign in using your usual...

Becoming an iOS developer


Creating iOS LiveCode applications requires that LiveCode must have access to the iOS SDK. This is installed as part of the Xcode developer tools and is a Mac-only program. Also, when you upload an app to the iOS App Store, the application used is Mac only and is part of the Xcode installation. If you are a Windows-based developer and wish to develop and publish for iOS, you need either an actual Mac based system or a virtual machine that can run the Mac OS. We can even use VirtualBox for running a Mac based virtual machine, but performance will be an issue. Refer to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/63147/is-mac-os-x-in-a-virtualbox-vm-suitable-for-ios-development for more information.

The biggest difference between becoming an Android developer and becoming an iOS developer is that you have to sign up with Apple for their developer program even if you never produce an app for the iOS App Store, but no such signing up is required when becoming an Android...

Before we make our first mobile app…


Now that the required SDKs are installed and LiveCode knows where they are, we can make a stack and test it in a simulator or on a physical device. We do, however, have to get the simulators and physical devices warmed up…

Getting ready for test development on an Android device

Simulating on iOS is easier than it is on Android, and testing on a physical device is easier on Android than on iOS, but the setting up of physical Android devices can be horrendous!

Time for action – starting an Android Virtual Device


You will have to dig a little deep in the Android SDK folders to find the Android Virtual Device setup program. You might as well provide a shortcut or an alias to it for quicker access. The following steps will help you setup and start an Android virtual device:

  1. Navigate to the Android SDK tools folder located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\ on Windows and navigate to your Documents/android-sdk-macosx/tools folder on Mac.

  2. Open AVD Manager on Windows or android on Mac (these look like a Unix executable file; just double-click on it and the application will open via a command-line window).

  3. If you're on Mac, select Manage AVDs… from the Tools menu.

  4. Select Tablet from the list of devices if there is one. If not, you can add your own custom devices as described in the following section.

  5. Click on the Start button.

  6. Sit patiently while the virtual device starts up!

  7. Open LiveCode, create a new Mainstack, and click on Save to save the stack...

Left arrow icon Right arrow icon

Description

The ideal reader for this book would be someone who already knows LiveCode, is interested in creating mobile apps, and wants to save the many hours it took for me to track down all of the information on how to get started! Chapter 1, LiveCode Fundamentals, will help those of you who know programming but are not familiar with LiveCode. The knowledge you've acquired should be enough for you to benefit from the remainder of the book.

What you will learn

  • Create a simple sample application and build its interface
  • Write code using a multimedia scrapbook as an example application
  • Make a "To do/reminders" application
  • Upload your final app to the app stores
  • Create a jigsaw puzzle app that takes advantage of several mobile device features
  • Make standardlooking buttons and fields and programmatically create the screen layout
  • Preview LiveCode version 8 Widget and Builder capabilities

Product Details

Country selected
Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : May 29, 2015
Length: 256 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849699655
Category :
Tools :

What do you get with a Packt Subscription?

Free for first 7 days. $19.99 p/m after that. Cancel any time!
Product feature icon Unlimited ad-free access to the largest independent learning library in tech. Access this title and thousands more!
Product feature icon 50+ new titles added per month, including many first-to-market concepts and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.
Product feature icon Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.
Product feature icon Thousands of reference materials covering every tech concept you need to stay up to date.
Subscribe now
View plans & pricing

Product Details

Publication date : May 29, 2015
Length: 256 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849699655
Category :
Tools :

Packt Subscriptions

See our plans and pricing
Modal Close icon
$19.99 billed monthly
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Simple pricing, no contract
$199.99 billed annually
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Choose a DRM-free eBook or Video every month to keep
Feature tick icon PLUS own as many other DRM-free eBooks or Videos as you like for just $5 each
Feature tick icon Exclusive print discounts
$279.99 billed in 18 months
Feature tick icon Unlimited access to Packt's library of 7,000+ practical books and videos
Feature tick icon Constantly refreshed with 50+ new titles a month
Feature tick icon Exclusive Early access to books as they're written
Feature tick icon Solve problems while you work with advanced search and reference features
Feature tick icon Offline reading on the mobile app
Feature tick icon Choose a DRM-free eBook or Video every month to keep
Feature tick icon PLUS own as many other DRM-free eBooks or Videos as you like for just $5 each
Feature tick icon Exclusive print discounts

Frequently bought together


Stars icon
Total $ 158.97
LiveCode Mobile Development Cookbook
$54.99
LiveCode Mobile Development Beginner's Guide (2nd Edition)
$54.99
LiveCode Mobile Development Beginner's Guide
$48.99
Total $ 158.97 Stars icon
Banner background image

Table of Contents

9 Chapters
1. LiveCode Fundamentals Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Getting Started with LiveCode Mobile Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Building User Interfaces Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Using Remote Data and Media Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Making a Jigsaw Puzzle Application Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Making a Reminder Application Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Deploying to Your Device Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A. Extending LiveCode Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
(1 Ratings)
5 star 0%
4 star 0%
3 star 100%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
Bernie Jul 25, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
If you want a proper Livecode reference, don't bother with this.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Get free access to Packt library with over 7500+ books and video courses for 7 days!
Start Free Trial

FAQs

What is included in a Packt subscription? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

A subscription provides you with full access to view all Packt and licnesed content online, this includes exclusive access to Early Access titles. Depending on the tier chosen you can also earn credits and discounts to use for owning content

How can I cancel my subscription? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

To cancel your subscription with us simply go to the account page - found in the top right of the page or at https://subscription.packtpub.com/my-account/subscription - From here you will see the ‘cancel subscription’ button in the grey box with your subscription information in.

What are credits? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Credits can be earned from reading 40 section of any title within the payment cycle - a month starting from the day of subscription payment. You also earn a Credit every month if you subscribe to our annual or 18 month plans. Credits can be used to buy books DRM free, the same way that you would pay for a book. Your credits can be found in the subscription homepage - subscription.packtpub.com - clicking on ‘the my’ library dropdown and selecting ‘credits’.

What happens if an Early Access Course is cancelled? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Projects are rarely cancelled, but sometimes it's unavoidable. If an Early Access course is cancelled or excessively delayed, you can exchange your purchase for another course. For further details, please contact us here.

Where can I send feedback about an Early Access title? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

If you have any feedback about the product you're reading, or Early Access in general, then please fill out a contact form here and we'll make sure the feedback gets to the right team. 

Can I download the code files for Early Access titles? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

We try to ensure that all books in Early Access have code available to use, download, and fork on GitHub. This helps us be more agile in the development of the book, and helps keep the often changing code base of new versions and new technologies as up to date as possible. Unfortunately, however, there will be rare cases when it is not possible for us to have downloadable code samples available until publication.

When we publish the book, the code files will also be available to download from the Packt website.

How accurate is the publication date? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

The publication date is as accurate as we can be at any point in the project. Unfortunately, delays can happen. Often those delays are out of our control, such as changes to the technology code base or delays in the tech release. We do our best to give you an accurate estimate of the publication date at any given time, and as more chapters are delivered, the more accurate the delivery date will become.

How will I know when new chapters are ready? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

We'll let you know every time there has been an update to a course that you've bought in Early Access. You'll get an email to let you know there has been a new chapter, or a change to a previous chapter. The new chapters are automatically added to your account, so you can also check back there any time you're ready and download or read them online.

I am a Packt subscriber, do I get Early Access? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Yes, all Early Access content is fully available through your subscription. You will need to have a paid for or active trial subscription in order to access all titles.

How is Early Access delivered? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Early Access is currently only available as a PDF or through our online reader. As we make changes or add new chapters, the files in your Packt account will be updated so you can download them again or view them online immediately.

How do I buy Early Access content? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Early Access is a way of us getting our content to you quicker, but the method of buying the Early Access course is still the same. Just find the course you want to buy, go through the check-out steps, and you’ll get a confirmation email from us with information and a link to the relevant Early Access courses.

What is Early Access? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Keeping up to date with the latest technology is difficult; new versions, new frameworks, new techniques. This feature gives you a head-start to our content, as it's being created. With Early Access you'll receive each chapter as it's written, and get regular updates throughout the product's development, as well as the final course as soon as it's ready.We created Early Access as a means of giving you the information you need, as soon as it's available. As we go through the process of developing a course, 99% of it can be ready but we can't publish until that last 1% falls in to place. Early Access helps to unlock the potential of our content early, to help you start your learning when you need it most. You not only get access to every chapter as it's delivered, edited, and updated, but you'll also get the finalized, DRM-free product to download in any format you want when it's published. As a member of Packt, you'll also be eligible for our exclusive offers, including a free course every day, and discounts on new and popular titles.