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

Introducing CoordinatorLayout


Android has a small family of layouts designed to work together to achieve the dynamic movement effects when the user scrolls. At the core of this group is the CoordinatorLayout class, which allows complex behaviors to be attached to any number of floating sibling widgets that can depend on and react to each other's position and size. To illustrate how a CoordinatorLayout actually works, take a look at this diagram:

Even though the FloatingActionButton appears to be floating above the other widgets, it's a direct child of the CoordinatorLayout. It remains in place because it is anchored to the bottom of the toolbar. If the toolbar changes its size or position, the CoordinatorLayout will move the FloatingActionButton so that it appears to be attached to the bottom of the toolbar. These movements are all done together as part of the layout process, resulting in every frame being pixel perfect and everything appearing to move and resize together.

CoordinatorLayout...