Book Image

Hands-On Android UI Development

By : Jason Morris
Book Image

Hands-On Android UI Development

By: Jason Morris

Overview of this book

A great user interface (UI) can spell the difference between success and failure for any new application. This book will show you not just how to code great UIs, but how to design them as well. It will take novice Android developers on a journey, showing them how to leverage the Android platform to produce stunning Android applications. Begin with the basics of creating Android applications and then move on to topics such as screen and layout design. Next, learn about techniques that will help improve performance for your application. Also, explore how to create reactive applications that are fast, animated, and guide the user toward their goals with minimal distraction. Understand Android architecture components and learn how to build your application to automatically respond to changes made by the user. Great platforms are not always enough, so this book also focuses on creating custom components, layout managers, and 2D graphics. Also, explore many tips and best practices to ease your UI development process. By the end, you'll be able to design and build not only amazing UIs, but also systems that provide the best possible user experience.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
13
Activity Lifecycle

Chapter 8. Designing Material Layouts

When designing and creating the layout for a screen, there are many different schools of thought about how it should be done. Modern layouts are often complex systems that change their shape dynamically as the user interacts with them. In the past, layouts tended to be quite rigid structures with only specialized areas such as windows or slit panels that could be adjusted by the user. However, a mobile application must make better use of their available space, since they're typically used on physically smaller devices. The direct interaction of a touch interface also changes how the user expects an application to behave; you need to not only react to the users gestures, but also be mindful of where their hand and fingers are likely to be on the screen as they might be obscuring some part of the screen, as they drag to scroll through your application.

The easiest way to see how a layout can change and adjust is with a jumbo collapsing toolbar. When the...