Category: Android Studio

The previous chapter outlined the concept of material design in Android. It introduced two of the components provided by the design support library in the form of the floating action button and the Snackbar. This chapter will demonstrate how to use another of the design library components, the TabLayout, which can be combined with the…

One of the objectives of this chapter is to provide an overview of the concepts of material design. Originally introduced as part of Android 5.0, material design is a set of design guidelines that dictate how the Android user interface, and that of the apps running on Android, appear and behave. As part of implementing…

The previous chapters introduced and demonstrated the concepts of integrating animation into Android app user interfaces using the MotionLayout container combined with the features of the Android Studio MotionLayout editor. The chapter entitled Android Studio MotionLayout in Java briefly mentioned the cycle (KeyCycle) and time cycle (KeyTimeCycle) keyframes and explained how these can be used…

Now that the basics of MotionLayout have been covered, this chapter will provide an opportunity to try out MotionLayout in an example project. In addition to continuing to explore the main features of MotionLayout, this chapter will also introduce the MotionLayout editor and explore how it can be used to construct and modify MotionLayout animations…

The MotionLayout class provides an easy way to add animation effects to the views of a user interface layout. This chapter will begin by providing an overview of MotionLayout and introduce the concepts of MotionScenes, Transitions, and Keyframes. Once these basics have been covered, the next two chapters (entitled “An Android MotionLayout Editor Tutorial” and…

The previous chapter described the Android Jetpack Navigation Component and how it integrates with the navigation graphing features of Android Studio to provide an easy way to implement navigation between the screens of an Android app. In this chapter, a new Android Studio project will be created that uses these navigation features to implement an…

Very few Android apps today consist of just a single screen. In reality, most apps comprise multiple screens through which the user navigates using screen gestures, button clicks, and menu selections. Before the introduction of Android Jetpack, implementing navigation within an app was largely a manual coding process with no easy way to view and…

The previous chapter provided an overview of lifecycle awareness and outlined the key classes and interfaces that make this possible within an Android app project. This chapter will build on this knowledge base by building an Android Studio project to highlight lifecycle awareness in action. Creating the Example Lifecycle Project Select the New Project quick…

The earlier chapter, Android App and Activity Lifecycles described the use of lifecycle methods to track lifecycle state changes within a UI controller such as an activity or fragment. One of the main problems with these methods is that they place the burden of handling lifecycle changes onto the UI controller. On the surface, this…

The preservation and restoration of app state is about presenting the user with continuity in appearance and behavior after an app is placed in the background. Users expect to be able to switch from one app to another and, on returning to the original app, find it in the exact state it was in before…