Develop Reference

How to stop a textview pushing layout off of screen

I am building a app and I just need some help with the attached screen shot.
Currently I have 5 Plain Textfields with the last 2 being textMultilines. I have a Relativelayout with a button placed at the bottom for the user to press submit. The problem is when the textViews above are filled in, especially the multiline ones, it will push the Relativelayout and button off the screen.
How can I stop this from happening
Picture of layout

Either You should fix the height of multi lines text or you can simply use Scroll View and put all the text view and button in same relative layout

You can make them Scrollable by adding ScrollView around them.
like
<ScrollView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
//all your views here
</LinearLayout>
</ScrollView>

android best layout to display image button that will fills the screen

what's the best layout to use to display a series of image button, side by side (as displayed in attached image), and that will fills the screen horizontally when the orientation changes to horizontal (as attached)?
horizontal orientation http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/657/layoutxs.png
vertical orientation http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/2428/layouthy.png

<GridView android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:numColumns="auto_fit" >
</GridView>

It looks like you want to use something like FlowLayout, which doesn't exist in Android. You can make your own, however. More information
How can I do something like a FlowLayout in Android?
http://nishantvnair.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/flowlayout-in-android/
I have an activity with a layout similar to yours, but I use a different method. What I do is define a different xml layout for landscape and portrait. So I have layout-port/mylayout.xml and layout-land/mylayout.xml and the system determines which one the activity should use.

just create two separate layout files and call setContentView() in your onOrientationChanged().

creating a camera view with button for android

i have set up an activity that loads up the camera and allows me to preview it but i need to add a button to the screen but the only way i can get the screen to display is by using the following layout:
<android.view.SurfaceView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="#+id/myview"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">
</android.view.SurfaceView>
is there a way for me to add a button to the view?

Put your SurfaceView and button into a RelativeLayout. Both of those types of layouts allow views to overlap so your button will be on top of your SurfaceView. The set up would be something like this
<RelativeLayout>
<SurfaceView></SurfaceView>
<Button></Button>
</RelativeLayout>

DeeV's answer is correct for the RelativeLayout part. The FrameLayout isn't intented to contain multiple children. So the RelativeLayout is the way to go.

View entire content of ScrollView in Eclipse's graphical layout

I'm using Eclipse Helios 3.6.2 for Android development and whenever I design a layout in the graphical layout mode (not the XML layout), I can't see the entire content of a ScrollView in the graphical layout.
Specifically, when I'm using a ScrollView and the height of the ScrollView exceeds the height of the content view area (i.e., the phone screen visible in the graphical layout mode), I am not able to see the items that I have at the bottom of the screen.
In Eclipse Helios 3.6.1 there was an option called "expand to fit"; whenever I used to click on it, the phone screen increased in size to encompass all the elements that I had added. How do i achieve the same thing in 3.6.2?

There's no way to scroll the content inside the Android Layout Editor. What you can do, though, is create a new device simulation with a huge height, so you can see what is hidden in the ScrollView.
To do so, go to the dropdown menu below "Editing config" ang choose "Custom..." (top-left corner of the Android Layout Editor). Select one of your preferred resolutions (mine is 3.7in WVGA) and hit "Copy". The copied resolution will appear in the "Custom" group in the bottom of the list.
Choose your new configuration and hit "Edit...". In there, you can select the "Screen Dimension" property and change the value. I created a resolution 2000x480 (portrait). This way, I can see the whole content inside the ScrollView.
Hope it helps.

Use an included layout for the scrollview.
Move the entire scrollview layout in a separated file (ie: my_scrollview.xml).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ScrollView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
...
</ScrollView>
The layout editor will then display the entire scrollview.
In the main layout use in place of the scrollview something like:
<include layout="#layout/my_scrollview" />

There was a button that allow to remove the clipping generated in a scroll view and show all the views that you have inside it.
In later sdk versions the button is removed, and the view mode is triggered if the scroll view is the root element of the view, so my solution when this doesn't happen (because you have a relative layout with some buttons over the view for example) is extracting the scrollview to it's own view, and including it in the original layout with an include tag.

My quick fix.
In the upper right corner of the graphic layout window you will see a drop down menu that shows what minimum version of android you are creating for. Make sure you have it set to at least android 2.1. I had an app at 1.6 and i had the same issue you have. swapped minimum build platform to 2.1 and it was magic.
Hope this helps.

If use Relative layout, you can use layout_marginTop negative, like that:
<ScrollView
android:id="#+id/scrollView1"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:layout_marginTop="-500px"
android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
android:layout_below="#+id/linearLayout" >
Increase the layout_marginTop to move scrollview.

The drop-down on the left (under the text "Editing config: ...") allows you to change the simulated screen size in the graphical layout. Perhaps that is what you are looking for.

Just click on the Config window of the Graphical Layout and click on the preview for all screen sizes and u will be able to see your scroll

Use the android:scrollY in the ScrollView child and remove it before publishing.
<ScrollView ... >
<LinearLayout ...
scrollY="300dp">
</LinearLayout>
</ScrollView>

Android Layout suggestions required

I am building an Android app in which there is a list of items in a gridview, and I would like the user to select any of them.I do not want to use a radio group/radios, but an icon and a name of the item next to it.
Once the user has selected something, I have three buttons at the bottom, back, cancel and set as default.
The problem is arranging this stuff so that it appears fine on a landscape mode as well as portrait mode.
Can someone suggest a good layout skeleton?
Here is the Android layout file content
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><RelativeLayoutandroid:id="#+id/widget30"android:layout_width="fill_parent"android:layout_height="fill_parent"xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"><GridView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:id="#+id/GridView01" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="370dip" android:numColumns="auto_fit" android:stretchMode="columnWidth" android:layout_alignParentTop="true" android:gravity="center"></GridView><Buttonandroid:id="#+id/back"android:layout_width="wrap_content"android:layout_height="wrap_content"android:text=" Back "android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"android:layout_below="#+id/GridView01"></Button><Buttonandroid:id="#+id/setDefault"android:layout_width="wrap_content"android:layout_height="wrap_content"android:text=" Set as Default "android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"android:layout_toLeftOf="#+id/cancel"android:layout_below="#+id/GridView01"></Button><Buttonandroid:id="#+id/cancel"android:layout_width="wrap_content"android:layout_height="wrap_content"android:text=" Cancel "android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"android:layout_alignParentRight="true"android:layout_below="#+id/GridView01"></Button></RelativeLayout>

Use Relative Layout,Click Here to know how to use Relative Layout.