Grid system in android UI development - android

I am switching from web design to android design. Usually website design is based on the 'grid system' eg. 12 columns, 16 columns and etc. The grid system helps organize the layout and also works well with the responsive design, if the columns are set as the percentage of the screen width. However, when i start learning android, I didnt see anyone talking about the grid system for Android. I am wondering if android developers just dont use such grid system or there are other alternatives?

There is GridView.
and GridLayout.
Both have been introduced from different API levels - check your minSdk version.
Depending on your requirement, you can apply a table layout or implement a custom layout.
Go through these docs

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Android Layout for Google Maps - Choose starting point Screen

Please have a look at this screenshot from Google Maps for Android. What layout is Google using for this particular screen?
Using multiple ListView controls here would be an overkill in terms of performance (or so I think). Also, because one can scroll on this screen, I don't think Google is using ListView controls here as ListView controls don't work along with ScrollView controls. Is Google using multiple instances of the all new CardView control on top of a ScrollView control here?
Can someone help with the best possible layout (from a performance perspective) for rendering this particular screen? I need to make sure my app supports lower end Android handsets so rendering performance is the number one priority but nothing like achieving it with clean, simple & reusable code + layouts (if possible in this scenario).
Thanks in advance!

How to add Android.Dialogs inside scrollable fragments?

I am developing the Android version of my Xamarin.iOS application, so I want to share as much code as possible between both platforms.
I am using MonoTouch.Dialog for iOS screens and the MvvmCross Android.Dialog for Android screens.
How would be the best approach to develop the right side (Android) screen?
I am targeting Android 4.0.3+ and using the Support Library v13 (Rev 18) to work with child fragments.
The DialogListFragment is a custom Android ListFragment.
I have been reading lots of questions about ListViews embedded inside a ScrollView but I could not figure it out yet what is the best practice to follow. Is there some official documentation?
When trying to implement the right (Android) screen I could see two behaviours:
By using the internal ScrollView, all child fragments' ListViews are displaying just their first content row;
By eliminating the internal ScrollView, fragments get correctly displayed. But in some cases, their height may be higher then the screen height and so they will not completely appear.

How to create multi-pane layout in android

I want to make screen in which I have used multi pane layout.In screen ,left side show custom list view and right hand side show detail about click item.When I have run app in protrait from that show only single screen for example list.But on lanscape mode that is show list and detail page on screen.Please suggest me what can i do or example.
This is fairly easy with Fragments
And I think this is exactly what you want.
Android introduced fragments in Android 3.0 (API level 11), primarily to support more dynamic and flexible UI designs on large screens, such as tablets.
TIP:
If you update your SDK, and ADT plugin for Eclipse (If you are using it). You can even create a new project based on a fragment example! Which is very informative and easy to adjust.
You project has to have a minimum SDK version of 11.
Normally it would check with a configuration qualifier if you have a small handset screen or a big tablet screen, this check is fairly easy to find in your example project (Sorry I don't have much time to find a good example for you). Now you can change this configuration qualifier from large to large-landscape, or whatever you want.

Android layout translations

are there design conventions for layouts on larger layouts? I feel like this is a question few have asked.
A lot of android layouts don't look good on larger screens, or the user experience doesn't translate so seamlessly.
A critique of android apps is that they just stretch on large screens, but don't have any design considerations for them.
Is there a resource that details how a user might want to make their layout-large xml file, if their default layout xml file includes a listview, for instance. On the mobile experience, a listview with just text will be fine, where on the larger screen experience, the listview by itself doesn't look too good.
I would like to add extra layout files, but I don't have any reference on what they should look like, or even in the planning design phases of an app, I don't have any reference on how it ought to be designed so that other screen sizes can be incorporated.
Mainly looking for a resource that addresses these issues. Like maybe a blog post that goes into detail about this. Google's tablet design guidelines were a helpful start too.
Insight appreciated
Perhaps these resources will help you out. I would make the general statement that probably the most common technique for adapting layouts from handset to tablet is making tablet layouts multi-pane. You mentioned that you already perused through the Google design guide, but I figured I'd highlight the one page that talks specifically about this:
Android Design: Multi-Pane Layouts
The general concept is that information you would have presented on multiple screens on the handset (e.g. the list of items, followed by the view to display the selection) can be brought together on the same screen on a tablet (so the list now sits side-by-side with the view of the current selection). You mentioned already how the resource framework assists in selecting the proper layout; on the code side Fragments are intended to assist with modularizing the code that goes along with the view as well.
Another resource that may be of use is from Googler Kirill Grouchnikov. He has a series of blog posts dealing with Google Play as a case study and how conceptually the UI was broken up to work between the handset and tablet:
Responsive Mobile Design
Hope that Helps!

Scrolling list in Android home screen widget

I am trying to teach myself the basics of Android dev. At the moment I am experimenting with home screen widgets. I would like to create a simple widget that lists all my bookmarks. Somewhere in my googling I read that ListView is not usable in a widget. What's the best way to display a scrolling list in a widget? An example would be fantastic, but otherwise point me in the right general direction and I can research further.
Thanks in advance,
Dany.
ListViews are supported in Custom Launchers that support the scrollable-widgets extension or in the Launchers since Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Take the Android Agenda Widget for example, this supports scrolling in Custom Launchers, or the GMail-widget on Honeycomb.
Scrolling widgets in Custom Launchers is described here:
http://www.geekrono.com/2010/08/android-scrollable-widgets.html
Scrolling widgets in Honeycomb and up is described here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/appwidgets/index.html#collections
You can finnd the sources for good working example except for Honeycomb at http://code.google.com/p/scrollablecontacts/
I've only seen a huge list widget on phones with HTC Sense - example. HTC Sense has a widget like that for Stocks, Twitter, etc. I don't think it's a good idea to develop huge widgets like that, because they take up too much space and some phones are limited to 3 screens (screens that you can put your app shortcuts, widgets and etc).
This is a good article on Widget UI Patterns:
Widget Design Guidelines
Seesmic for Android has a 'list' widget with latest tweets:Seesmic Blog
Widget Screen
There's also an article on UI Patterns, based on the new Twitter app, hope that helps you - Link and a video (Android UI design patterns).
Re: user controls (like in .NET), Android Views and in your case 'ListView' is what you might use for your app. You also mentioned .NET (Visual Studio), you might be interested in MOTODEV Studio. It's basically a better version of Eclipse (with Android SDK) that has common code snippets and other cool stuff.

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