Chapter 1, Fragments and UI Modularization, introduces fragments, UI modularization, and the role that fragments play in developing a modularized UI. This chapter demonstrates creating simple fragments and using fragments statically within activities.

Chapter 2, Fragments and UI Flexibility, builds on the concepts introduced in the previous chapter to provide solutions to specific differences in device layouts. This chapter explains how to use adaptive activity layout definitions to provide support for a wide variety of device form factors with a small set of fragments that are automatically rearranged based on the current device's UI requirements.

Chapter 3, Fragment Life Cycle and Specialization, discusses the relationship of the life cycle of fragments with that of activities and demonstrates the appropriate programming actions at the various points in the life cycle. Leveraging this knowledge, the special purpose fragment classes, ListFragment and DialogFragment, are introduced to demonstrate their behavior and provide a deeper understanding of how their behavior in the activity life cycle differs from that of standard fragments.

Chapter 4, Working with Fragment Transactions, explains how to create multiple app screens within a single activity by dynamically adding and removing fragments using fragment transactions. Topics covered include thread handling, implementing back button behavior, and dynamically adapting multifragment UIs to differences in device characteristics.

Chapter 5, Creating Rich Navigation, brings everything together by building on the previous chapters to show how to use fragments to enhance the user's experience through rich navigation features. This chapter demonstrates how to implement a number of navigation features, including screen browsing with swipe-based paging, direct screen access with drop-down list navigation, and random screen viewing with tabs.

Chapter 6, Fragments and Material Design, introduces the next generation of application development using material design. This chapter demonstrates how to implement fragments that incorporate a rich visual appearance and animated transitions using the latest features of Android's material design capabilities.

To follow the examples in this book, you should have a basic knowledge of Android programming and a working Android development environment.

This book focuses primarily on Android Studio and the Android development environment; however, other tools, such as Eclipse with the ADT plugin, JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA IDE, or a similar Android-enabled development tool, can also be used.

This book is for anyone with a basic understanding of Android programming who would like to improve the appearance and usability of their applications.

Whether you're looking to create a more interactive user experience, create more dynamically adaptive UIs, provide better support for tablets and smartphones in a single app, reduce the complexity of managing your app UIs, or just trying to expand your UI design philosophy, this book is for you.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "To create a fragment for the book list, we will define a new layout resource file called fragment_book_list.xml."

A block of code is set as follows:

public class BookListFragment extends Fragment
  implements RadioGroup.OnCheckedChangeListener {
  @Override
  public void onCheckedChanged(RadioGroup radioGroup, int id) {
  }
  // Other members elided for clarity
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

public class BookListFragment extends Fragment
  implements RadioGroup.OnCheckedChangeListener {
  @Override
  public void onCheckedChanged(RadioGroup radioGroup, int id) {
  }
  // Other members elided for clarity
}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "In Android Studio, we associate a resource file with this qualifier by selecting Screen Height in the New Resource File dialog."

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