Hi everyone, after a few weeks of missing development articles, I will try to come back on track with them. Today I am going to explain what the Android Manifest xml file is, why it is included in every android application and how to use it.

Every application must have an AndroidManifest.xml file (with precisely that name) in its root directory. The manifest presents essential information about the application to the Android system, information the system must have before it can run any of the application's code.

The Android Manifest includes information about the permissions used by the app (remember those permissions you accept when installing an app from the android market, this is where they are input by the developer), supported screens (small, medium, large, xlarge), activities used in the app (translation for these would be "windows" for a Microsoft Windows user, but more on these in one of the future articles) etc.