Book Image

Android Studio 4.0 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Android Studio 4.0 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

Kotlin as an Android-compatible programming language is becoming increasingly popular. Fully updated for Android Studio 4.0, this book will teach you the skills necessary to develop Android-based applications using Kotlin. Starting with the basics, this book outlines the steps necessary to set up Android development and testing environments, and goes on to introduce you to programming in Kotlin. You’ll practice Java to Kotlin code conversion and explore data types, operators, expressions, loops, functions, as well as the basics of OOP in Kotlin. You’ll then learn about Android architecture components and advanced topics, such as intents, touchscreen handling, gesture recognition, multi-window support integration, and biometric authentication. As you make progress, you’ll explore Android Studio 4.0’s key features, including layout editor, direct reply notifications, and dynamic delivery. You’ll also delve into Android Jetpack and create a sample app project using ViewModel, the Android Jetpack component. Finally, you will upload your app to Google Play Console and model the build process using Gradle. By the end of this Android book, you’ll be fully prepared to develop applications using Android Studio 4.0 and Kotlin.
Table of Contents (97 chapters)
97
Index

24.1 Basic vs. Empty Activity Templates

As outlined in the chapter entitled “The Anatomy of an Android Application”, Android applications are made up of one or more activities. An activity is a standalone module of application functionality that usually correlates directly to a single user interface screen. As such, when working with the Android Studio Layout Editor we are invariably working on the layout for an activity.

When creating a new Android Studio project, a number of different templates are available to be used as the starting point for the user interface of the main activity. The most basic of these templates are the Basic Activity and Empty Activity templates. Although these seem similar at first glance, there are actually considerable differences between the two options. To see these differences within the layout editor, use the View Options menu to enable Show System UI as shown in Figure 24-1 below:

Figure 24-1

The Empty Activity template creates...