I have an app that has a screen like this (on a 10" tablet) :
Now I need to amend the app to also work on a phone. As the screens will be smaller, I want to take the "split view" UI and change it so that the left hand side list view is shown on its own, then on selecting a row the appropriate right hand side list view is then shown.
How do I handle this in the app, as one activity currently handles both listviews, and I guess the phone will need two one for each listview.
How do I detect which one to do?
thanks
See Supporting Different Screen Sizes.
Typically this is done using Fragments, but the basic idea is the same whether you use fragments or not. You create two different layouts for your Activity depending on the screen size.
Save the default layout single-pane for phones at res/layout/activity_main.xml
Save the dual-pane tablet layout at res/layout/activity_main_twopane.xml
Then you use layout alias files with the screen size qualifiers described in the link to determine when the tablet layout should be used. For example to show the dual-pane layout on large screens and on screens with at least 600dp in the widest direction (includes large screen phones such as the Galaxy S3), you could do this:
res/values-large/layout.xml contains:
<resources>
<item name="activity_main" type="layout">#layout/activity_main_twopane</item>
<bool name="twopane">true</bool>
</resources>
res/values-sw600dp/layout.xml contains:
<resources>
<item name="activity_main" type="layout">#layout/activity_main_twopane</item>
<bool name="twopane">true</bool>
</resources>
The Android system will take care of loading the proper layout file (either res/layout/activity_main.xml or res/layout/activity_main_twopane.xml) when your Activity loads the layout:
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
Just remember that the views that don't exist in the single-pane layout will be null when you try to access them (e.g., there won't be two ListViews anymore). Checking whether a certain View exists is one way to detect which layout you are using.
Also note the use of optional Boolean resources in XML files. This is a handy way to pass the "is it a large screen or small screen" variable to your Java code. You can access Boolean resources in your Activity like this:
boolean isTwoPane = getResources().getBoolean(R.bool.twopane);
You should have a look at the MasterDetailedFlow Navigation template. Eclipse:NewProject>check create Activity>select "MasterDetailedFlow" Navigatoin type. Have a look at Data Binding on Android
Related
I'm developing an Xamarin Android Mvx5-beta application. When running on a small-screen device, I want to show a drawer navigation using the Toolbar and the hamburger-icon. On larger devices, e.g. tablets, I want a different layout conaining three columns. No drawer navigation but a static panel with navigation options and two other panels for content.
I started with the examples XPlatformMenus and Fragments to get a drawer navigation layout combined with the use of activities (with fragments) in different layouts qualifiers, like:
Question:
Using this approach, Android automaticly looks for an activity with the same name (e.g. main_activity.axml) in the appropriate layout-qualifier folders. But on the larger screens I don't need a drawer layout and I do need an extra column. The Mvx-viewmodel does not yet know what layout to render, so it just calls:
ShowViewModel<HomeViewModel>();
ShowViewModel<MenuViewModel>();
These ViewModels, for example MenuViewModel, are registered for fragments that require a navigation_frame, as shown in here:
[MvxFragment(typeof(MainViewModel), Resource.Id.navigation_frame)]
[Register("mydemoapp.droid.views.fragments.MenuFragment")]
public class MenuFragment : MvxFragment<MenuViewModel>, NavigationView.IOnNavigationItemSelectedListener
{
<..>
}
So, rendering this same Activity in layout-sw600dp requires a navigation_frame. Which I don't want on these larger displays.
What would be the preferred design choise in this situation? I can think of two:
Show/hide elements in the Activity programmatically by querying the screen info
Don't make use of layout qualifiers, but design complete seperate Activities for larger screens and based on screen size let MVX Show ViewModel-A or ViewModel-B.
Any advice would be appreciated, many thanks in advance.
I think it depends how different your layout need to be between large screen and small screen form factors.
Few UI differences
In addition to using different layouts, you can define a bool property in your XML values resources that is different between standard and sw-600dp
values
<bool name="is_large_screen">false</bool>
values-sw600dp
<bool name="is_large_screen">true</bool>
You can then read this value in your Android views and prevent methods like ShowViewModel<MenuViewModel>(); firing when on large screens by altering the method calls from the view.
Many differences/Structural differences
If they share the same business logic but have very different UI requirements and you want to keep large screen code separate. Then I would suggest sharing the ViewModels but creating two separate Activites and layouts to handle the UI presentation. Using this method requires a bit more setup as you have to override some default MvvmCross behaviors as by default you can not register multiple Activities/Fragments to the same ViewModel. Overriding the MvxViewModelViewTypeFinder view lookup FindTypeOrNull you can intercept the lookup and filter types base on naming conventions. For example all large screen views end with "Tablet". Using the is_large_screen bool you can flag which views to register.
I have 4 activities in a single application. Each application can be launched individually. I would like to associate different icons for each activity. I have created the required icons for different resolutions and placed them in the drawable directory. In the AndroidManifest.xml, I have an icon defined for the application using Android:Icon as a default icon. In the activity group I entered the Android:Icon with a different icon. It does not seem to make a difference.
Please provide some guidance
If you want to show different icons in Actionbar, then you can add below given code in your activity's oncreate method..
getActionBar().setIcon(R.drawable.icon);
Per the question here,
What's "tools:context" in Android layout files?
The 'tools' namespace reference (xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools") has begun to appear in my layouts recently, and I want to know more. The original post only described the 'tools:context' attribute, but I have also noticed usage of the "tools:listitem" attribute appearing when I have designated a preview layout item for a listview, i.e.
<ListView
android:id="#+id/lvCustomer"
tools:listitem="#layout/customer_list_item" >
</ListView>
Are there more elements?
What brought me to this 'tools' namespace is that I want to be able to have 'preview-only' text (i.e. in a TextView or EditText) when using the layout designer in eclipse.
Currently, I assign the 'text' or 'hint' property for previewing text when arranging my layouts... but then I always have to remember to clear the preview value from within the code.
Ideally, instead of
<string name="preview_customer_name">Billy Bob's Roadhouse Pub</string>
...
<TextView
android:id="#+id/tvCustomerName"
android:text="#string/preview_customer_name"
</TextView>
have a something like:
<TextView
android:id="#+id/tvCustomerName"
tools:previewText="#string/preview_customer_name"
</TextView>
Thanks-
We've just added support for designtime attributes like this in Android Studio 0.2.11. See http://tools.android.com/tips/layout-designtime-attributes for more.
Think of them as design time helpers only.They do not get processed in actual view rendering at run time.
For example you want to set background of some view in your layout design when working on android studio so that you can make clear distinction where that particular view is.So you would normally do that with
android:background="#color/<some-color>"
Now risk is that sometimes we forget to remove that color and it gets shipped in apk.
instead you can do as follows:
tools:background="#color/<some-color>"
These changes will be local to android studio and will never get transferred to apk.
And also check out http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/tools-attributes for more options.
You will find tool attribute when you set object in graphical layout.
Listview (in graphical mode) -> right Click -> Preview List Content -> Choose Layout...
produces:
tools:listitem="#layout/customer_list_item"
See in layout XML below. There are 2 namespace in use "xmlns:android" and "xmlns:tools".
Tools namespace is used when the developer wants to define placeholder content that is only used in preview or in design time. Tools namespace is removed when we compiled the app.
So in the code below, I want to show the placeholder image (image_empty) that will only be visible at design time, and image1 will the actual image that will be shown when the application launch
I am using the Extension Libraries Application Layout Control and need to have a banner graphic placed in the .lotusBanner div on the right. How can this be done as it seems that the Application Layout Control can't be modified.
You could use the utilityLinksFacet on the extended control that Steve Pridemore did.
http://www.openntf.org/internal/home.nsf/project.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=CED2E61A75526CD086257997006DA95B
or you could use onload javascript to add it.
I was able to place a graphic in the upper right of the Application Layout Control in the Banner area by doing the following:
In the control under the Banner > Utility links I added a Basic node. For the node I specified the href and image. This worked and placed the image n the correct spot.
Artifacts of this were the location of the Banner Application links. To remedy this I used some CSS for the .lotusBanner ul.lotusLinks {margin-top: 45px;position:absolute;}
The margin-top was to push the links down so I could enlarge the logo that is used by the Application Layout Control.
The applicationLayout control in ExtLib is, as you have found out, locked down to only allow certain aspects of the configuration to be changed by the developer. You can add links to different sections of the applicationLayout but nothing beyond that.
One possible alternative is to NOT use the applictionLayout control itself but create your own approximation of it in a custom control, You would need to add all the necessary panels/divs with the special oneUI2 classes in all the correct places and then add editable areas and callbacks within these panels for the parts that you would want to customize throughout the application. All of the other sections in the applicationLayout control, like the bannerUtilityLinks are created using the ListofLinks control that is also found in the Extension Library.
I do have a custom layout with some controls written in an XML layout file.
a class is attached to this layout like
<com.project.layout ...>
<Checkbox...1
<TextView...2
<Button ...3
<ImageView..4 ...
../>
depending on the user interaction i would like to display only 3 of the defined controls like 1,2,3. With a click from the user i'd like to have 1,2,4
To do so, i developed some state classes that handle the removeView and addView.
I have some issues about this as:
1/ When can i be sure everything is created and i can interact with the UI (onLayout() & onMeasure() seem to happen everytime a control is processed)
2/ it seems that since i defined the layout with the 4 controls, even thought i write removeView, the space used by the removed control is not used by the other controls... is there a way i can ask the layout to reorder it display?
I found out , it turns out it was easy actually, there is a method i have to override called onFinishInflate().