I have a custom component which consists of 2 text view and 4 toggle buttons. I want to draw this view at some specific position on the screen. How is that possible?
You could wrap the controls in a Layout, e.g. a LinearLayout, and add android:paddingLeft and android:paddingTop by some pixel value to that Layout to position it how you want.
However I would advise that Android Layouts are better designed with relative positions rather than absolute positions. Different devices have different screen sizes, and unless you prohibit it your layouts can be switched between Portrait to Landscape ratios without warning. Layouts designed with relative positioning hold up much better under these conditions. The RelativeLayout container allows tricks like centering controls on the screen, and aligning them relative to other controls.
http://developer.android.com/intl/de/reference/android/widget/RelativeLayout.html
Related
When I modify accessibility settings zoom and font size in Android my app layout is all broken.
I'can't find information about good practice to avoid this.
Most of my screen are not lists and are not scrollable, I have a bottom area with button, and in the middle I have complete layout with text fields / buttons / input / ...
Font size is too big so the text gets clipped vertically and horizontally.
Buttons don't fit in the width and display one over the other.
Do I have to manage this with different layouts depending on screen size?
Is there a way to automatically truncate text with "..."?
Is there a way to prevent some part of my layout to zoom (ex navigation part / lower button area)?
How do I prevent view from displaying one over the other (I use contraint layout)?
If I had to take a guess though, you probably are using a constraint or relative layout and haven't made the appropriate adjustments for all the child objects.
For truncating, try looking here - Android: TextView automatically truncate and replace last 3 char of String
For font sizes, it's recommended to use "sp" for the unit type, e.g. "15sp".
For constraint layouts, you need to set the anchors for each child object or they end up bunching up in the middle together.
this is a tutorial on constraint layouts - https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/constraint-layout/index.html?index=..%2F..%2Fio2018#0
I have been struggling to figure out which layout to use and how to achieve what I am looking for. I've tried gridlayouts, linear and relative layouts as well as scroll views in many different combinations. What I want is something like Google now.
I have two buttons to launch the two modes in my app. I have an imagebutton in the top right which they press for more information and when they do so a text view slides out. I have made the layout work, and to overlay the imagebutton on my mode buttons I require a relative layout. However my problem comes from trying to optimise for different screen sizes. I would like it to centre the buttons to rest a quarter of the way down and the layout to pop out underneath towards the half way mark. For the bottom button I want it three quarters of the way down with a text view that drops down towards the bottom. If there isn't sufficient space to fit everything I want a scroll view for when the text views appear, but otherwise it should fit comfortably and not require scrolling.
How do I do this? Two nested relative layouts within a linearlayout, both with equal weight? Then some how I need to address that if the length of the height (taking in account orientation) does not allow it to fit, adapt it so the buttons are closer and scrollable.
You can use sepperate res/layout folders for different screen sizes just like with drawables, examples: layout-small, layout-large etc.
More explained here http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/screensizes.html#TaskUseWrapMatchPar
I have 12 basically identical views which I want to arrange in a grid that covers the whole screen. Depending on the device's orientation, I want to use a 3x4 or a 4x3 grid.
As far as I understand, there are basically three approaches to this topic:
Use a GridView
Use nested LinearLayout instances
Use a TableLayout
I'd like to have a layout that
automatically adapts to orientation changes (as GridView does)
uses all available screen space (as nested LinearLayout instances do)
doesn't allow scrolling (and without that "can't scroll any further" effect of the GridView)
allows me to force the same size on all of my items
By default, GridView has scrolling and doesn't fill the screen, whereas LinearLayout and TableLayout don't automatically adapt to orientation changes.
Currently I'm using a GridView with disabled scrolling and a custom adapter which sets the item views' minimum height depending on the orientation and the container's height to force a filled screen. This works but feels like a really ugly hack.
Dynamically constructing nested LinearLayout instances depending on the orientation would probably also work, although I haven't tried that.
This seems to be a frequent goal (1, 2, 3, 4), but all the suggested solutions are either as hackish as mine or don't satisfy some of my requirements.
As I'm new to Android development I'm not sure whether I'm missing something.
What is the optimal way of implementing this?
I'm targeting API level 8 and above.
Use a GridView
A GridView is a widget that you would use when you want to show data in a grid like manner with a larger set of data(as the GridView's recycling mechanism would provide a greater performance than a normal built hierarchy). This is not your case as you want all the views visible from the start and from my point of view the overhead of a GridView isn't simply worth it.
Use nested LinearLayout instances
A good option but avoid nested weights. You could use instead two LinearLayout with weights on the longest direction(vertical for portrait and horizontal for landscape) placed in a RelativeLayout with a centered anchor view.
Use a TableLayout
Another option. Use the stretchColumns option for the width and weight on the TableRows for the height.
Depending on the device's orientation, I want to use a 3x4 or a 4x3
grid. What is the optimal way of implementing this?
There isn't an optimal way, either of the solutions above could be used, you could also make your own layout.
I'm working on the controls for a game, and require part of the control panel (gray in the figure below) to change dynamically, either showing a single canvas (left) or 5 buttons (right). The border between the lower-row views should always be positioned at exactly the same x-position as the border between the buttons on the upper row, as shown. At the same time, all twelve upper buttons should be scaled and distributed evenly.
I've considered several approaches, but as of yet none do all of what I want:
Using two LinearLayouts, one for each row of controls: reliably aligning the borders seems to be impossible, and replacing part of the layout is difficult at best.
Using a TableLayout: again, replacing a portion of the layout is difficult.
Using a RelativeLayout: resizing and aligning buttons independently of the screen size doesn't seem possible
Any suggestions for an alternative method, or on how to make one of the above approaches work? It would also be nice if there were some way to animate the change of views, i.e. sliding in the buttons from the left over the canvas. Thanks!
Interesting, I've done this several weeks ago. What I did is to make use of this property of View object: "Visibility". So that means at a fixed position, I can set any View to display on to, not depending on any type of Layout, it can be Visibility.GONE, Visibility.VISIBLE or Visibility.INVISIBLE.
In my app, I used RelativeLayout to set relative position to the right side TextView.
Give it a try :)
In order to close this question: I have solved the problem by writing a custom layout class that places and sizes the child views without heeding the measured size of the children. Effectively this gives me the behavior of a linear layout with layout weights, but is more deterministic with border placement.
A ViewAnimator is used to switch between the Canvas and the Buttons.
What is the best layout to use to support the app on different devices (Size of screen)?
EDIT
I am not just talking about resizing the layout, obviously the OS does that automatically. I am talking about repositioning the objects in my layout.
by repositioning I mean moving the objects according to the size of the screen. For instance i created my layout for a larger screen which looks great, but when i run the app on a smaller device (smaller screen) some of my User Interface elements were out of the bound of my screen.
There is no "best" layout. Almost all types of layouts will scale to different devices (Android is designed around this concept) other than AbsoluteLayout, which is deprecated anyway.
LinearLayout is best if you just have a row (horizontal or vertical) of content to insert. Using values such as dip values, fill_parent, or wrap_content will automatically adjust themselves to their content or screen size.
RelativeLayout, as Vladimir pointed out, is best for layouts where views are positioned relative to other objects within the layout. For instance, a TextView positioned beside a "Submit" button, is a common example.
FrameLayout is sort of a replacement for AbsoluteLayout; you can layer objects on top of each other, just specifying margin offsets from the sides of the frame.
TableLayout is, as it sounds, a layout for Table style design. You can have multiple rows and columns, and set certain columns to stretch to fit the size of the display, so that no matter the screen size, the layout fits as you designed.
EDIT: If you're having objects falling outside of the screen area, try wrapping your root layout in a <ScrollView>. This will allow the layout to be scrollable.
e.g.
<ScrollView
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
>
<RelativeLayout
..... //and so on
</RelativeLayout>
</ScrollView>
All Layouts are flexible in terms of size... the rule is: don't use AbsoluteLayout. That's all.
And with regards to the repositioning concerns... well, use always dips instead of pixels and you are good to go. Again, don't use AbsoluteLayout, the rest of the layouts should work fine on every screen size. Sometimes you can anticipate those "disappearing acts" by wrapping your layout in a ScrollView.
RelativeLayout is what you should be looking at. It easily resizes the elements relative to their neighbors. Just make sure to include drawables for all resolutions and densities
LinearLayout,RelativeLayout,FrameLayout are import Layouts....