CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-layout
developer82
developer82

Reputation: 13723

android - best way to place objects / design an activity

So I received a graphic interface for an application I'm building. It has some images and texts and the images are set in a specific way, and some text goes inside or on top some images.

In the android project I opened I get the default activity which is RelativeLayout, but it's hard to set all the elements exactly where they should be with the designer and editing the XML directly seems like a pain.

I also see that elements that I add always "align" to something or right/left to some other element - but what I really want to do is place them at a specific location (so the end result will be the same as the design I got). If I was building it for the web I would have used absolute positions.

What is the correct way to go about this in android?

Thanks

EDIT

I managed to start implementing some elements of the design in a manner that makes them look ok on the eclipse Graphical Layout and on my device.

Is this XML ok - or am I using it wrong:

<ImageView
    android:id="@+id/imgClouds"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="50dp"
    android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
    android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
    android:contentDescription="@string/layout_activity_main_imgClouds"
    android:scaleType="centerCrop"
    android:src="@drawable/clouds_ltr" />

<ImageView
    android:id="@+id/imgBaby"
    android:layout_below="@+id/imgClouds"
    android:layout_width="50dp"
    android:layout_height="52dp"
    android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
    android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
    android:layout_marginLeft="5dp"
    android:layout_marginTop="75dp"
    android:contentDescription="@string/layout_activity_main_imgBaby"
    android:src="@drawable/baby" />

<ImageView
    android:id="@+id/imgBubble"
    android:layout_toLeftOf="@+id/imgBaby"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignParentLeft="false"
    android:layout_alignParentTop="false"
    android:layout_marginLeft="56dp"
    android:layout_marginTop="-5dp"
    android:layout_marginRight="5dp"
    android:src="@drawable/bubble_ltr" />


</RelativeLayout>

Upvotes: 1

Views: 765

Answers (1)

Martin Cazares
Martin Cazares

Reputation: 13705

This is primarily opinion based, but there's certain things most android developers will agree, "Absolute Position" is not an option in Android, because of the OS Nature like Fragmentation in Device Screen Sizes/Densities, having an absolute position of the elements will lead to a crappy app, it will look good only in the device you are using and chances are that all the other devices will not look as you expect, you really need to look at the android design patterns and best practices to avoid a terrible GUI implementation, RelativeLayout is the best way to go, in android you must learn to love it...

Also the sooner you get used to work with XML directly in layouts will be better for you, most IDEs that help out with this functionality end up adding a lot of unnecessary code, once you go through the learning curve to build layouts using XML it totally worth it.

Hope it helps!

Regards!

Upvotes: 4

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