I wanted to develop android apps and searched the google and found various ways. What is the best way?

Is google adroid studio bundle is comprehensive.

If by "comprehensive" you mean does it come with all of the SDK as well as the IDE? Then yes. That said, I think I remember it only coming with the most current SDK version pre-installed. If you want earlier versions of the SDK (to target older devices), then you have to open the SDK Manager and download the versions that you are interested in. Depending on how many you actually want, the download will take a good bit of time--so prepare to wait.

For starters, start with the standard "Hello World!"

The official Android training website is;
http://developer.android.com/training/index.html

You'll need to download the Android Developers Tools (ADT) Bundle from
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

This download is 510MB and includes the following:
The Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) + ADT plugin
Android SDK Tools
Android Platform-tools
The latest Android platform
The latest Android system image for the emulator

Once you have the ADT Bundle installed you should be ready to start following the training website tutorials.

Note: there is also and Android Studio IDE which is still in 'Early Access' (i.e. not finished) and is a bit different from the Eclipse IDE. The training website I've linked above uses the Eclipse IDE so it's best to use this.

I'm curious if you've any background in programming. It would make things a bit easier if you do.

Rory

Hi Rory, I did those steps.  Are there any other programs I have to download and install?

The training steps are confusing me.

One requirement that I forgot you need is the Java Development Kit (JDK).
I've included a bit of information here about Java but you can skip to the end if you just want to download a JDK.

The JDK is different from the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) that most computers have installed. Specifically the JDK includes a Java compiler (javac.exe) as well as the full JRE. The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) is essentially extra Java classes that can be compiled in your Java application which means your Java Application is now an Android Application i.e. in programming for Android you're actually programming in Java.

So you need to download a version of the JDK. Firstly, there are different Editions of the JDKs. These are Standard Edition (SE), Enterprise Edition (EE) and Micro Edition (ME). These are the most used but you'll only need SE to build your Android Apps. The difference between them is basically what classes are available to you when developing your application.

There are 2 versions that are currently available. Version 7 and version 8. Version 7 is probably the safer bet at this point as Java 8 is very new and there might be some incompatibility between the Android SDK and Java 8.

So in short, you need to download Java SE 7u55 from Oracle's Java website at the following link (a bit of trivia, A couple of years ago Oracle bought the Java platform from Sun Microsystems)
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

Scroll down to the Java SE 7u55 section and choose the download button with JDK written over it. You can ignore the other bits and pieces for now.

Once you've installed the JDK there's one more step to do before you're ready to go with it (I'm assuming you're using Windows here).
You need to add the "bin" directory within the Java install directory to your "PATH" environment variable.

To confirm you have the JDK installed and available, open a command prompt and type in:
javac -version

You should get back a line that says: javac 1.7.0_55

Once you confirm this is done you should be ready to ready to go with the Tutorials.

Rory

You might also want to check that you have all the recommended options installed for the Android SDK. Have a look at the following link which tells you about the Android SDK Manager (You can open this using the Eclipse IDE through the "Window" toolbar menu).
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/adding-packages.html

Rory

Thanks, Rory - I will follow.  I am more use to windows environment .Net etc.

I do have working knowledge of Java.

i found this video, hopefully this will be helpful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl-zzrqQoSE&list=PLFE2CE09D83EE3E28

Still no luck, confuse about changing Path under system properties.  There is already a Path parameter defined.  Do I edit and append to it a path or create a new parameter Path?

I do not want to mess up any existing functions on the computer.

Please guide.

Thanks a lot