How to position controls in Android? - android

I am trying to create the UI but I'm having a lot of difficulty just placing controls where I want them to appear on the main screen. For example I want to add a few ImageButtons but they just seem to snap to one corner and I can't seem to add more than one.
Do I need to use a layout or something? Can't I just drag and drop and move the controls around where I want?

I suggest you start by reading a few of the developer tools out there. http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout.html This guide will help you get your feet wet with how to properly layout a screen in Android. There are also a bunch of other great guides on there to help with other aspects of the UI. Even though you use C# in Xamarin Studio, the UI portion is native Android so the guides should still be relevant.

try to use relative layout , its kind of easy for visual studio developer and others too.
details here : http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout/relative.html

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It's possible to use scrollabeView like this in Appcelerator?

I want to have a scrollabeView (pagingControl) exactly like this image, where I can show 2 pages at the same time or more and swipe between them on Ios And Android.
In iOS you can have a look at the property clipViews. For Android it is currently not possible without adjusting the SDK. Have a look at this ticket: https://jira.appcelerator.org/browse/TIMOB-25635. It is a feature request to have this kind of layout. Also it features some links that explain how to add it to the sdk.
I fixed this problem by creating this widget com.developatic.pagingControl. I hope that will be useful.

App browsing page bar

Im developing an app and wanted to add some page browsing with those dots to identify your current page like the image below, can someone tell me how is that control called?
Thank you in advance
There is nothing in the Android SDK that provides this "out of the box". It is probably implemented as a LinearLayout holding ImageView widgets, though there are plenty of ways of doing it. If your intention is to use this with a ViewPager, there is an implementation of this UI in the ViewPagerIndicator library and perhaps in other open source libraries as well.
If you really want to see what that app is doing, use uiautomatorviewer to inspect the running UI of that activity and see what widgets are involved.
There is no default Android view for that.
Take a look at this:
https://github.com/JakeWharton/Android-ViewPagerIndicator

What do they utilize to build android apps with custom graphics and controls ?

What I mean to say while you're just getting started with the development and say you add a slider theres a predefined skin for that and you can place it somewhere on the screen, but in some apps there are things like a knob in a place of slider which you can rotate to do the same stuff what the slider does . How do they do that, does it require openGL or something I am not asking for a complete tutorial or something just curious on what stuff goes into building such thing
Mostly, if something is not provided out of the box, you will have to build your own control.
For example, you mention a Knob. That isn't available in the Android SDK. Such a control could prove to be useful.
Here is a tutorial to build such a custom Control: http://go-lambda.blogspot.in/2012/02/rotary-knob-widget-on-android.html
This is an image of the final result from the tutorial linked above:
Here is an example of a custom slider / seek bar: http://permadi.com/blog/2011/11/android-sdk-custom-slider-bar-seekbar/
This should give you a rough idea on how to go about creating your own custom views.
And finally, what I personally find the best possible resource for keeping track of almost all good Custom Views is here: http://www.androidviews.net/
The androidviews.net website has shut down. Android Arsenal is a new website that lists several third party Android libraries.

Android editor Using Eclipse Link XML views to edit code and view graphic?

hi I'm using Eclipse at the moment, and I'm not sure if there is a plug in for it or a better piece of software I can use. It seems fine for the Java side The problem I have is with XML editing, the line up of the characters is very inconsistent and when editing my layouts, I work with a graphic view open and a code view open, but the two are not linked, so if I double click on an element it switches from graphic view to code view in that pane. it would be awesome if I could link the two open panes?
Please see the screen shot for my desired outcome.
I understand that this question could be seen as discussion based, but I am seriously just looking for a solution here. The example I show is very simple, but some of the xml files turn out quite large and complex, and it is becoming more important to me to find a solution for this.
You can use DroidDraw for ui designing. Although it is a bit buggy, but at-least you dont need to edit raw xml files if you use this.
I am now using the Android eclipse Juno development kit, and while I still dont have dual window available, the double click select is working. there is also an Outline pane which shows the layout, although annoyingly this doesn't show comments very well.

Android: A good looking (standard) settings menu

I'm trying to get my app to blend in as much as possible with the "standard" with the rest of my android device. It's a stand-alone app, not integrated with the OS or anything, I just want it to look familiar.
The area I'm interested in is the "settings" screen. If I look at Android's standard settings screen, it's well spaced, perfect font size, with neat pin stripes between the menu items.
How do I do that? Is that a ListView? Is it done with a regular LinearLayout?
I would love to be able to replicate the look & feel in my app. Can anybody assist?
And it's not just the Adroid OS. it's most of the "professional" apps out there:
Many thanks
Actually, this is directly part of the Android source code, so I would strongly advise you to take a look in its structure. See the Android Settings tutorial for more info.
Settings are created from the SettingsActivity (which extends the PreferenceActivity, you might want to look this too), which in their turn have their layout based on the following xml files:
preferences.xml
preference.xml
Things are quite strongly interlocked so it needs some reading...
AFAIK its a ListView. by implementing a custom ListView, you can achieve similar effect.
Moreover, you'll have to follow the Icon Design Guidelines to create such icons for ListView rows

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