Develop Reference

Android UI Implementation Advice Needed

I'm fairly new to Android and I'm working on an application in which one particular section involves a more advanced UI interface than what you would normally create with the stock UI components. I've read through most of the SDK tutorials and I get the basics but I can't see how to implement something like this. I'm not looking for any code, just some advice on what technologies I should be reading about to achieve this.
Here is a mockup:
So basically at the top there is a thumbnail strip that the user can flip through. Clicking on a thumbnail will perform some action. I'm pretty sure there's a stock control for this.
Underneath that I need to be able to create a composite image that can be pinch zoomed and panned and has hotspots that can be clicked (tapped) on. For example, an image of the solar system, in which the background would be static, but the planets need to be placed at runtime and need to be clickable, and the whole thing needs to be pan/zoomable. Support for very minimal animation (eg slow planet rotation) would be a plus, but not necessary. I'm at a loss on what I would achieve this with.
Finally, there are three pull-out panes that contain other content, such as images, menu items, and other media. Basically these just need to be containers in which I can place any other UI content.
I've done some basic Activities so far with simple forms, so I understand the basic workflow of Android, but I'm just not sure what to look at to achieve something like this. Is this a good candidate for a SurfaceView? Is there something else I should look at? I have been a bit afraid to get involved with OpenGL, since I don't really have a 3D background, and I still want to be able to use native components (buttons, listboxes, etc) without having to re-implement them in OpenGL.

Have a look at this for the slides:
http://developer.android.com/training/animation/screen-slide.html
as for the thumbnails you can use a linear layout, with some imageviews and buttons.

Display an image over the view

I am making a small application and I have noticed that a lot of people don't really check the menu to see all the possible options my app has, and I think that they don't know how to access it. I have seen this on an application some time ago, and I tought I should make something like that. I would like to display like a transparent image over the app with small arrow pointing to all the buttons that I have on my app. The problem is I don't really know how to make this and I thought may by somebody here knows how.

Try the Showcaseview library.
The ShowcaseView library is designed to highlight and showcase
specific parts of apps to the user with a distinctive and attractive
overlay. This library is great for pointing out points of interest for
users, gestures, or obscure but useful items.

Creating professional GUI for Android application

I want to create professional looking GUI for Android application. Something more than just raw widgets which I'm taught to use in countless tutorials in the web.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any source of information how to customize those widgets and create better looking GUI.
Examples could be: http://android.appstorm.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/calorific-sc.jpg
or http://android.appstorm.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/chomp-sc.jpg
How are such GUIs created? If you could point me out to some tutorials on it, I would be really thankful!
Greetings,
Bart

There's nothing in those examples that looks like it couldn't be made from standard components. For instance the second screen of that calorific application is just a background image for the window with a list and a button with a background image as well. The first image could easily be done with just buttons and background images for views as well.
TLDR: Split the view into rectangles, assume that these are all standard components with images as backgrounds unless they seem to have nonstandard interactions.

Those are called custom components.
You will need to do a fair amount of work to get the look you want. (compared to using system components).
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/custom-components.html
Edit
Bone up on your Google-fu Bart!
http://www.google.com/search?q=custom+components+android+tutorial

What containers/classes do I want to use for the following android game?

I am programming an android game that has a screen, which has a ScrollView that contains almost everything on the screen. I need to have image elements that move around, can be clicked on (but also be transparent to clicks in certain situations) that have multiple layers and animations.
Should I use layered Imagebuttons? there can potentially be doezens of them on the screen at once, and i don't know if there are memory concerns about having 200 imagebuttons on a screen.
Do I need to use a canvas? I have seen canvases in many examples, but i don't know if they are the best option.
Is there some other class or way of doing this that is better?
any help you can provide would be much appreciated.

You'd be best served by an Android game library. Check also e3roid.

Slide images the screen. Do I really need to write my own "game engine" or use someone elses?

I'm thinking about writing a pretty basic game, which mostly involves sliding images around on the screen when tapped. So tap an image and it slides to one side. Doesn't seem like Android Animations will help me here since those don't actually move the images, just makes it appear moved.
So even though this seems like pretty basic functionality, it seems like I have to write a game loop,etc and implement my own code to handle the "animation" (including some acceleration/deceleration), etc. Not hugely hard or anything, but just seems like overkill. Also using a 3rd party game engine also seems like overkill, just in the time it would take to learn that, and so on.
Am I off base here?
If anyone has any suggestions that might get me pointed in the right direction (links, etc) that would be great. Is there a good way to use Android Animation functionality in this case that I am missing?

If you are developing for Honeycomb, it may be as easy with animations. With Honeycomb, there is a whole new strategy to animation. Check out the blog. The premises is that any property or value can be animated, and that includes the view's actual position (and not just look like it moved).

I have built a couple of games using AndEngine (http://andengine.org) I would recommend it for making games for android. And since it is all written in java, it is relativiely easy to integrate it with layouts and other activities.