Book Image

Android Studio 4.1 Development Essentials – Java Edition

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Android Studio 4.1 Development Essentials – Java Edition

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

For developers, Android 11 has a ton of new capabilities. The goal of this book is to teach the skills necessary to develop Android-based applications using the Java programming language. This book begins with the steps necessary to set up an Android development and testing environment. An overview of Android Studio along with the architecture of Android is covered next, followed by an in-depth look at the design of Android applications and user interfaces using the Android Studio environment. You will also learn about the Android architecture components along with some advanced topics such as touch screen handling, gesture recognition, the recording and playback of audio, app links, dynamic delivery, the AndroidStudio profiler, Gradle build configuration, and submitting apps to the Google Play Developer Console. The concepts of material design, including the use of floating action buttons, Snackbars, tabbed interfaces, card views, navigation drawers, and collapsing toolbars are a highlight of this book. This edition of the book also covers printing, transitions, and cloud-based file storage; the foldable device support is the cherry on the cake. By the end of this course, you will be able to develop Android 11 Apps using Android Studio 4.1, Java, and Android Jetpack. The code files for the book can be found here: https://www.ebookfrenzy.com/retail/androidstudio41/index.php
Table of Contents (88 chapters)
88
Index

22.2 Manual XML vs. Visual Layout Design

When to write XML manually as opposed to using the Layout Editor tool in design mode is a matter of personal preference. There are, however, advantages to using design mode.

First, design mode will generally be quicker given that it avoids the necessity to type lines of XML. Additionally, design mode avoids the need to learn the intricacies of the various property values of the Android SDK view classes. Rather than continually refer to the Android documentation to find the correct keywords and values, most properties can be located by referring to the Attributes panel.

All the advantages of design mode aside, it is important to keep in mind that the two approaches to user interface design are in no way mutually exclusive. As an application developer, it is quite likely that you will end up creating user interfaces within design mode while performing fine-tuning and layout tweaks of the design by directly editing the generated XML resources...