Android User Interface

Layouts and views are the core components of any Android UI. In this chapter, we will discuss the different UI components and how they can be combined to create a functional user interface. To create this UI, you'll first need to understand the core building blocks of every Android user interface; layouts and views.

Views

Views are the most basic building blocks of any UI, and Android contains several different types of views to perform different functions. Every component you see on the screen is an instance of one of the many different Android views*.

_{* This statement isn't entirely true for games. Games typically utilize some sort of SurfaceView or GLSurfaceView to run the entire game, but the individual UI elements in a game are actually textures that are drawn on top of a SurfaceView. These are topics are outside of the scope of this material.}

Layouts

While a view is a single control that's shown on the screen, a layout, or view group as they're more formally known, contains and positions groups of views in the UI. Different layouts position views in different ways and can nest inside of each other to accomplish more complex interfaces.

Resources

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/declaring-layout.html http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html