Develop Reference

Android App - Aligning EditTexts doesn't work

I'm writing my first Android-App. The App should solve Sudokus for the user.
So the interface should look like the typical Sudoku-Layout with some Buttons down below. For the number-fields i just used EditTexts.
At first i used a ContrainsLayout. That worked fine so far but the problem is that the editTexts on the right are not visible anymore if the screen of the user is too small.
I use a fixed height and width of 40dp for the editTexts and a constraint of 1dp between the editTexts.
But i cant get it to work that way on different screen sizes.
So i used the GridLayout. There problem here is that i cant get the whole thing to be in the center. And besides that i dont know if its possible to stretch a TEXTview over multiple rows?! I would need this to show the errorText in case the sudoku isnt solvable.
I hope someone can help me out or at least give me some ideas :)
Thanks in advance

If you want the same result for different screen sizes the recommendation is constraint layout but the reason you don't have the same result is that you used hard coded width and height and on different sizes you need to change the size that you hard coded.
The best thing to do is to make separate xml files for screen sizes
for more info you can see here: how to have different sizes supported

Android: Selecting Layout/ How to format Design for Calculator

I am wondering how I would design a calculator with graphics similar to the following: Design help for Calculator App or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.Appsys.PanecalST.
The key requirements:
The buttons must be squared (it can pop out etc. but squares are more aesthetically pleasing than rectangles).
It must be device compatible and retain square buttons upon orientation change
My problem is that Relative formatting (as I attempted) disorients the layout in different devices and is not as nice as I hoped. (i.e. trying to design the button to harbor no empty space in one device using relative instructions. One idea I fancy is putting a center button and orienting the others above left etc. so at the very least, no empty space is in the center.
Below is the designs I made:
I prefer the first image but I neglected 0 (only buttons for 1-9). How would attempt at transforming these designs to code?
*I think I may use ImageButtons. I will include images based on density but how would I account for different screen sizes?

First of all, for your calculator, use LinearLayout.
Link: Documentation will be found here
Secondly, To Support multiple screen,
This documentation will help, documentation1, documentation2
What would I do in this situation?
First of all, I would use the LinearLayout as my primary layout and give it an orientation > Vertical instead of RelativeLayout. This LinearLayout is for the whole screen (The output, the numbers and other functions). Then for each line, say for the output screen, I would put it in another LinearLayout (Orientation Horizontal) inside the previous LinearLayout (NestedLayout). For numbers in each row, I would use a new LinearLayout.
For the second problem of yours, I would use buttons instead of images as images take large space in perspective of buttons which will unnecessary increase the app size. To support my button for multiple screen, I would use Weight option in android for buttons. This stackoverflow answer has a nice description.
I hope it helps.
Cheers mate!

Layout of a android application

I'm working on the layout of an android application. But I have a question about the layout. Once i have created a layout and then go to another screen (for instance 4 inches to 5 inches) all my buttons and text boxes are messed up..
Is there a method to make everything static, so that my layout works on every mobile phone..

What kind of layout are you using, could it be RelativeLayout? that might be your problem in this particular instance.
Anyway, in android there are many screen sizes, each of them you should handle with different layouts depending on orientation, size and density. There is no magic formula as far as I know, but 9-patch images can help a lot. Another thing you should do is make sure that you understand how match_parent and wrap_content values work for height and width.
Check this out: Suppoting different screens

You have to create folders for different types of screens take a look at android developers training

This document contains everything you need.
Instead of having everything fixed, it shows how to design a layer that adapts to the various screens you may encounter.

Which layout is suitable for all Android mobile?

I am developing one application, right now i am on designing phase. i design one screen
on the 3.7WVGA(Nexus One) screen in eclipse using Linear Layout. but when i test it on 2.7
my some icon are go outside of the screen. my question is that which layout is suitable for all screen whether i design it in 3.7 inch or run it on 2.7.
Please give me a suggestion.
Thanks in Advance.
1st i design it in 3.7 and second in 2.7.

Don't ever, ever, ever design a screen for Android based on an actual screen size. You will always screw yourself up because there are a hundred different screens out there. What looks good on one phone will look like crap on another. That being said, here are some tips:
Use RelativeLayout to lay your button contents out. Once you understand the model it's much easier than you suspect and it will make it easy to automatically scale things.
Only use actual pixel sizes for things that "float". You never want to specify the width of something and try to fill the width of the screen.
Include multiple resolutions of your images. Let the system pick the right resolution for you.
A table/grid layout will make things easier for you on the overall design.
Big panels of buttons are played out. There are other UI options at your disposal (menu buttons, swiping left and right through screens, etc.). When users see a field of buttons it looks like the app was slapped together.

For that kind of layout use GridView if you want it scrollable, or a simple RelativeLayout if you want all the elements to scale depending on the size of the screen (use toRightOf, toLeftOf, above, below and weight to achieve that)

You need to consider the guide provided by android
Multiple Screen Support
What you will do is to provide all screens icon regarding different screens and you can also specify layouts for different screens, for example you want to provide drawables and layout for multiple screens, you will provide resources in that specific folder + below suffix.
Screens for layouts for drawables
ldpi layout-small drawable-ldpi
mdpi layout drawable-mdpi
hdpi layout-large drawable-hdpi
xhdpi layout-xlarge drawable-xhdpi
This topic will be more relavent to your need.

The following are the view groups in android. you can use any of these as per your requirement. But in your case You can use GridView
View Groups in android
FrameLayout Layout that acts as a view frame to display a single
object.
Gallery A horizontal scrolling display of images, from a bound
list.
GridView Displays a scrolling grid of m columns and n rows.
LinearLayout A layout that organizes its children into a single
horizontal or vertical row. It creates a scrollbar if the length of
the window exceeds the length of the screen.
ListView Displays a scrolling single column list.
RelativeLayout Enables you to specify the location of child objects
relative to each other (child A to the left of child B) or to the
parent (aligned to the top of the parent).
ScrollView A vertically scrolling column of elements.
Spinner Displays a single item at a time from a bound list, inside
a one-row textbox. Rather like a one-row listbox that can scroll either horizontally or vertically.
SurfaceView Provides direct access to a dedicated drawing surface.
It can hold child views layered on top of the surface, but is intended for applications that need to draw pixels, rather than using widgets.
TabHost Provides a tab selection list that monitors clicks and
enables theapplication to change the screen whenever a tab is clicked.
TableLayout A tabular layout with an arbitrary number of rows and
columns, each cell holding the widget of your choice. The rows
resize to fit the largest column. The cell borders are not visible.
ViewFlipper A list that displays one item at a time, inside a
one-row textbox. It can be set to swap items at timed intervals,
like a slide show.
ViewSwitcher Same as ViewFlipper.

I have the same problem but i found a very simple solution is use dp and sp instead px. You may read this:
What is the difference between "px", "dp", "dip" and "sp" on Android?
And you may create icons with different resolution and put it in suitble folder.

create a table layout and every row contains a vertical linear layout put all buttons inside and provides weight to each button according to need,at the last put this table layout to ScrollView that is suitable for all android devices

I created a tool that allows you to scale/adjust your layouts for tablets and small screen devices and made a blog post about it here: http://onemanmobile.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-scale-your-android-layouts-to.html
Basically, defining your layouts in dp units for one size is not enough if you want your app to fit on all devices and tablets, since there's four different "density-buckets". This tool will allow your layouts to be converted into fitting these density buckets.
It also explains in further detail how to make more flexible layouts for all resolutions.

Android Layout On Top of an Image

I am struggling with a Layout Problem on Android. This is very simple to do on the iPhone, but with the various screen sizes and the Layout classes available. I am having a hard time doing this.
One thing that I have noticed is that setting backgrounds on objects in the xml really messes up the layout on the device. I generally have to put in a FrameLayout and an ImageView to get a background.
So Am trying to get to this. http://www.calidadsystems.com/images/AndroidListItem.png (Sorry I don't have enough pts to post the image)
his is a status view and is an item in a List View. There are 8 TextViews that need to be set. Each of the 222 fields will change. The current background has the colors in there at specific locations and I am trying to line up the Labels and TextViews to get the picture below. I built this one with AbsoluteLayout which is deprecated, but it also does not work very well on the device.
I have constantly struggled with the layouts on Android. Does someone have some good sample code that could do this?

You're probably going to want to use a RelativeLayout. You can use the android:layout_alignTop="id" attribute to make the rows be in line correctly. And android:layout_alignLeft="id" for the columns. Other than that its just a matter of playing with the android:layout_marginLeft="XXdip" attribute to get the space between them how you want it. Check out this page for an overview and examples of all of the Layout types. Here is some more sample RelativeLayout code. And one more page with another example. RelativeLayout is a bit tricky to get used to but once you've used it a few times its pretty easy to understand and get the Layout that you want. The benefit of it is that your UIs look nice on several different screen sizes when you define them this way.

Why not just composed the layout in a table layout and set the table layout's background to a custom made graphic you make? This should work well with you. Specifically the design of your design would be like 4 columns with x rows. Then using the strechcolumn property, you should be able to accomplish what you are trying to do!
If you scale the graphic properly, then you shouldn't have this problem overall.