Chapter 4 Create a UI

It is extremely important to create a complex and intuitive UI for your application. Make sure they are beautiful and easy to use. Their Functionality can also be considered as a basic design.

 

Reference Stephen Fry's words about the importance of style in substance in design of digital devices:

 

 

As if a device can function if it has no style. As if a device can be called stylish that does not

Function superbly .... Yes, beauty matters. Boy, does it matter. It is not surface, it is not an extra,

It is the thing itself.

-Stephen Fry, The Guardian (October 27,200 7)

 

As you can see from the increasing screen size, display resolution, and strong mobile processor, mobile apps are becoming more and more visual. When small screens pose a challenge to creating complex visual interfaces, the prevalence of mobile devices makes this challenge unacceptable.

 

In this chapter, you will learn the basic Android UI elements and how to use views, view groups, and layouts to create a functional and intuitive UI for your activity.

 

After learning some controls provided by the android SDK, you will learn how to expand and customize them. You will see how to use view groups to combine views and create atomic and reusable UI elements consisting of interacting child controls. You will also learn how to create your own views to display data and interact with users.

 

Use the layout manager inherited from viewgroup to organize a single element in the android UI to the screen. Correct use of layout is very important for creating a good UI. This chapter describes several layout classes and demonstrates how to use them and how to create your own layout.

 

Android applications and context menu systems provide the optimal way for modern touch devices. As a small test to check the android UI mode, at the end of this chapter, we will take a look at how to create and use the activity and menu system.

Android UI Design Basics
Introduction to Views
Use views to create the UI of an activity
Android Widget Toolkit
Layouts Introduction
Use layouts
Create a new view
Modify an existing View
Customized to-do list
Create a Composite Control
Create custom widgets and controls
Create a new visual interface
Draw Control
Widget Size Calculation
Handle UI events
Example of creating a compass View
Use Custom Controls
Create and Use menus
Android menu system Introduction
Define an activity menu
Menu Options
Dynamically update menu items
Processing menu selection
Sub-menu and context menu
Create Sub-menu
Use context menu
Example of continuing to-do list
Summary