Question

I’m trying to debug a website, and am not fluent in android development. I thought the android emulator would help me understand the behavior, but it seems I need an android virtual disk that has the web browser on it. Anyone have any shortcuts to finding or building such a virtual disk?

Answer 1

Here are my notes on how to do this:

1. install java SDK (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html)
2. install Eclipse (from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/, use classic)

3. install android plugin for eclipse (“ADT Plugin for Eclipse” from http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html)
   This is done by copying this url: https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ to a dialog in eclipse. To get the dialog, in windows, its “help” -> “Install new software”
   There should be an option to install the Andoid SDK as part of this. Do that.

4. Once thats installed, see the two android buttons on the toolbar (they’re greenish, the first is the android SDK manager, the second one is the virtual device manager)

   • Click the SDK manager button, install the versions of the SDK you want to test (at least 2.3.3, but its probably a good idea to include 2.3.3 and above)
5. Click the virtual device manager to start creating a new virtual device
   click “new” button
   choose the SDK version / screen size etc. (increasing ram is a good idea for speed, 512 or 1024 meg)
   click “create” button to finish
   the virtual device manager has a “start” button to start the device once its been created.
   if it doesn’t start, try decreasing the amount of ram (I couldn’t start it when using 1024 meg ram, but it started when I used 512)

Other notes:
To see the status of installing the SDK and whatnot, “window” -> “show view” > “console”
To rotate the virtual device’s screen orientation, click ctrl+F11