I'm working on a relatively simple Android app. I want it to have an English version as well as a Hebrew version.
I have an activity all laid out in English, and I want to create the Hebrew resources. I couldn't find any easy way to do it. The only way I found was to take my layout/activity.xml file, put it in layout-iw/activity.xml and manually change everything so it appears right to left.
I need to reverse the order of all elements in any horizontally oriented container (all the columns in <TableRow>s, all the elements in horizontal <LinearLayout>s, etc...). I need to switch all layout_marginLefts with layout_marginRights, and of course - make all left-aligned controls right-aligned.
This is tedious, especially if I think about modifying the activity at some point - I'll need to modify the resources twice, and that alone gives me a headache.
There has to be an easier way.
Unfortunately you are correct this is exactly what you will have to do.
I would suggest using styles to format any elements where padding or margins need to change do to a switch from left to right text. If you construct your styles right it should limit the amount of line by line changes needed in individual layout files. However I do realize this is a case where hind-site is 20/20.
Related
My application needs to support languages that are read from right to left and vice verca.
Right now it supports only right to left, and all I need to do is change a bunch of layouts.
The approach I want to take is to have layouts in two different folders (i.e layout and layout-de), because doing it programatically, for every layout, is a nightmare.
However, Google state here http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html#strategies
"you can create an alternative layout for that language (for example res/layout-de/main.xml). However, doing this can make your application harder to maintain"
My question is, which way is better, programmatically or separate layout folders
I want to stress, since this topic has been discussed in other threads:
I am NOT talking about strings. ONLY layouts
My only concern is the language orientation(left to right and right to left), when it comes to the layout.
Thank you very much in advance
Since Android 4.2 there is native RTL support. Most attributes that used "left" or "right" in their names now have equivalents that use "start" and "end" (e.g. android:paddingStart="..." or android:gravity="end").
Read about it here: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/03/native-rtl-support-in-android-42.html
I'm building an android project and I'm using eclipse.
I just can't figure out how to disable the annoying auto alignment.
I just want to place buttons wherever I want to drop them on the GUI interface but it just keeps
to align them one to another. I've tried to delete those alignment lines in the xml code
but it still brings them back as I move the buttons on the GUI interface.
Is there an way to disable that function?
Thank you,
Alex
Is there an way to disable that function?
Not in a way that you will find satisfactory, I suspect.
You have not really explained what the "alignment lines" are, so we are forced to guess. My guess is that the "alignment lines" are because you are working with a RelativeLayout container. Quoting the JavaDocs for RelativeLayout, RelativeLayout is:
A Layout where the positions of the children can be described in relation to each other or to the parent.
And, quoting the guide for RelativeLayout:
RelativeLayout is a view group that displays child views in relative positions. The position of each view can be specified as relative to sibling elements (such as to the left-of or below another view) or in positions relative to the parent RelativeLayout area (such as aligned to the bottom, left of center).
Hence, the "alignment lines" are there, and are replaced by the GUI builder, because they are the point behind using a RelativeLayout container.
Of course, you are welcome to change the container that you are working with to something else.
However, in general, Android does not really support very well your stated objective ("I just want to place buttons wherever I want to drop them on the GUI interface"). Just as you don't do that in Web development, you don't do that in Android development, and for much the same reason: you need to take different sizes into account (browser window size for Web, screen size for Android). RelativeLayout, LinearLayout, TableLayout, and GridLayout are all designed to have you specify widgets plus rules for positioning and sizing, so that you can design a UI that will accommodate the difference between a 3" and a 4.5" screen, for example. This is akin to using HTML tags and CSS rules to define content and its positioning in a Web page. Eclipse's drag-and-drop GUI builder for Android can assist in your definitions of these rules, as you are perhaps seeing with your "alignment lines" for RelativeLayout.
I think I may be able to help. If you set your layout to Relative Layout you can drag and drop any of the views wherever on the eclipse GUI.
I'm trying to make an iOS version of my Android app. It contains text that looks like this:
There are three labels: title, author, and publication year. I need to display the full title, which may be several lines long. However long the title is, I want the author label to be directly below the title, and the pub. year directly below that.
In Android, I just used relative layouts to achieve this effect. How can I do this in iOS? Can Auto Layout do this for me somehow? If not, do you have any suggestions for effectively displaying this information in iOS? Preferably I'd like to achieve this using the storyboard.
In iOS you use InterfaceBuilder IB for layouts - it's drag and drop - not like Android layouts.
Search for IB tutorials - it is really straight forward and you see what you get:-)
I also searched quite some time a way to achieve android-like layouts in iOS (without the hassle of computing every positions for each subviews).
I eventually gave up and coded a fast equivalent of VerticalLayout and HorizontalLayout. Here's the repo (it's ARC compliant) :
https://github.com/kirualex/iOS-Layout-helper
It's sketchy but it does the work !
Put simply relative layout organises items on the screen relative to something else. Like linear layout, relative layout is commonly used by android developers. I myself do like this layout and have used in the development of my applications before. See
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/RelativeLayout.html and http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout/relative.html for more information on relative layouts.
Working with Android for the first time, I've blocked out a layout using the relative layout and laid down some buttons and text widgets how I like them. However when I go back to rename the IDs the layout goes all crazy moving elements around and in general destroying the hours of work I spent laying them out.
Does anyone know how I can rename the widgets without Android destroying the positioning for widgets in the Relative Layout? Is this some "feature" of Android? I can't imagine why it would be hard for the UI builder to handle simple renaming of a widget ID without destroying the positioning information.. Do I have to use an external text editor and modify the XML files directly? Ughh I hope not.. I'm using Eclipse IDE.
You can use find and then replace all to change the names every place that they appear. Shouldn't take anywhere near an hour if you're dealing with a small layout.
In general the graphical UI creator that is currently included with the Android SDK is not so great for creating anything but very simple layouts. In my experiences (which were a long time ago, it may have gotten better since) it was terrible with RelativeLayouts.
If you have not modified your xml directly then it is time that you jump in and start learning to do it that way. You'll find that you have a much greater level of control over your layout, and once you get the basics figured out you'll probably be able to create quicker using raw xml then with the graphical tool anyway. I do wish that there were a nice GUI creator for android out there, the best one that I've ever come across is Droid Draw which I found to be better than the one included with the SDK, but still not as good as I was hoping.
To modify the xml directly you don't need any additional text editors, you do it inside eclipse. Open up your layout file and at the bottom click on the tab that says "Source" when you want to switch back to graphical (good to see the changes that you make to the xml graphically) just click back to the tab that says "Design"
i need to create around 26 buttons for simple task like display alphabets. i can do this by using layout design.
if i create this button at run time will it give more performance(Considering memory, speed,apk size!)?
Important Requirements:
this layout will be used by 4 different activities.
I need to display 26 buttons at a time to user.
These button may contain background
image.
edit: This layout is like pop up window for other four activities. user can press any alphabets in this layout. As soon as alphabets get selected layout will be closed
Since everything is static residing in your assets, it is fine to have everything in xml files.
Still, one can argue that the 'notion' of parsing the xml layout files of your project introduces an overhead to the process of creating the views.
I would go with a well-designed layout defined in xml.
Yikes. While XML is the best practice answer, 26 of anything screams for some dynamic run-time creation, or at least a combination of the two. You're not going to see much difference in processing time or apk size either way - it will come down to code maintenance down the line.
For instance, consider what will happen when you want to change or add a new attribute, say padding, for each of your letter buttons. Do you want to have to manually go change all those XML elements, or think about a clever regex to properly find/replace?
I'd go with a combination of styles, <include> statement, and run time modification for a comprehensive, maintainable solution. First create a single button styled how you think you want all your buttons to look. Extract your "LetterButton" style out to style.xml and use the android:style="#style/LetterButton" attribute on your button instead. This will allow you to change your style in a single file and have it affect all your letter buttons.
Next, extract the button itself into an <include> file. You can do this by right clicking on the GUI version of the button and choosing "Extract include...". Then arrange your <include>-buttons however you need to, perhaps in a <TableLayout>. Make sure you give each one a unique id, like #+id/letter_button_0 up through _25. The text attribute for all these buttons can be anything, you'll set those dynamically later.
Finally, in your onCreate, define an array of ints of the form {R.id.letter_button_0, ...}, and an array of Strings of the form {"A", ...}, and iterate over those, doing a button = findbyId(int), button.setText(String) to put a letter on each of your buttons.
It may seem like more work this way, but you're doing all the heavy lifting creating a smart UI, so that down the line you can change code in a single place (style or include) and all your buttons will be updated.
Strongly recommend XML layouts for best practice and more understandable code. Also, If you are worried about performance for large view, use relative layouts, these are faster to render than other types of layouts such as LinearLayouts.
Showing XML is best practice:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout.html
Also to increase performance keep the Buttons as Activity member variables, then they only need to be loaded once from resources.
Hope that helps,
Marc
You should create it at xml file and make visible and invisible as you need.
You could create a layout with having static assets in it & have dynamic text content & for dynamic backgrounds.You can have use the button properties of gone & visible in it.