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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
To create a dynamic and multi-pane user interface on Android, you need to encapsulate UI components and activity behaviors into modules that you can swap into and out of your activities. You can create these modules with the fragment class, which behaves somewhat like a nested activity that can define its own layout and manage its own lifecycle. When a fragment specifies its own layout, it can be configured in different combinations with other fragments inside an activity to modify your layout configuration for different screen sizes (a small screen might show one fragment at a time, but a large screen can show two or more).
Creating Dynamic UI with Android Fragments shows you how to create modern Android applications that meet the high expectations of today's users. You will learn how to incorporate rich navigation features like swipe-based screen browsing and how to create adaptive UIs that ensure your application looks fantastic whether run on a low cost smartphone or the latest tablet.
This book looks at the impact fragments have on Android UI design and their role in both simplifying many common UI challenges and providing new ways to incorporate rich UI behaviors.
You will learn how to use fragments to create UIs that automatically adapt to device differences. We look closely at the roll of fragment transactions and how to work with the Android back stack. Leveraging this understanding, we then explore several specialized fragment-related classes like ListFragment and DialogFragment as well as rich navigation features like swipe-based screen browsing.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Creating Dynamic UI with Android Fragments
Creating Dynamic UI with Android Fragments
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: September 2013
Production Reference: 1180913
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78328-309-5
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Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Jim Wilson
Reviewers
Robert Dale Johnson III
Alex Lockwood
Acquisition Editor
Edward Gordon
Anthony Albuquerque
Commissioning Editor
Poonam Jain
Technical Editors
Pratik More
Anusri Ramchandran
Project Coordinator
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Graphics
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Production Coordinator
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Cover Work
Kyle Albuquerque
About the Author
Jim Wilson is president of JW Hedgehog, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in solutions for the Android, iOS, and Microsoft platforms. Jim has nearly 30 years of software engineering experience, with the past 13 years heavily focused on creating mobile device and location-based solutions. After nearly a decade as a Microsoft Device Application Development MVP, Jim now focuses on developing Android and iOS device applications.
Jim's passion is teaching and mentoring software developers. He is a regular contributor of Android-related training materials to Pluralsight (http://training.jwhh.com), a leading provider of online developer training. Jim has authored more than 30 articles on device application development, and has developed mobility and smart client curriculums for several organizations. You can find Jim speaking at a variety of industry conferences, including AnDevCon, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Tech Ed, VS Live, Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference, and many others.
Jim and his wife, along with several cats, live in Celebration, Florida (just 3 miles from Walt Disney World). Check out Jim's blog (http://blog.jwhh.com) where he talks about a variety of mobile software development issues as well as the fun of life just 3 miles from the "House of Mouse".
You can reach Jim at <[email protected]>.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost I want to thank my beloved wife, Bonnie. Without her support and patience through the many long nights and six (often seven) day work weeks, this project (and so many others) would never have happened. Our life together has grown into more than I could have ever hoped or dreamed. I love you.
Thank you to my dear friend Rev. Dr. William A. Lewis of Community Presbyterian Church in Celebration. Your friendship and guidance have opened my eyes up to a life of joy and purpose beyond imagination.
To all the folks at Pluralsight, thank you for creating an organization that offers people like me the opportunity to dig deep into technology and share the knowledge gained with others.
About the Reviewers
Robert Dale Johnson III is a Software Engineer who specializes in Android, Joomla, and BD-J (BluRay Disc – Java) development. He graduated in 2008 from California State University Northridge with a BS in Computer Science. He started his career working with BD-J for Deluxe Digital Studios (DDS), Panasonic, and Deluxe Digital Distribution (D3), where he worked on movie titles such as Avatar, Oceans, Spinal Tap, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes along with many other titles and web-enabled BluRay features. During his time at D3, Robert made the transition from BD-J to Android development where he was a principal developer on the StarzPlay, EncorePlay, and MovieplexPlay apps. He also worked on the NookVideo app developed for non-Nook devices. During his time with D3 Robert moved to Nashville, TN and eventually found Aloompa LLC where he found a home as a Senior Android Developer developing applications for festivals throughout the country such as Coachella, Stagecoach, Governsball, Bannaroo, and many more.
Along with his fulltime professional pursuits, Robert is a seasoned freelancer with many projects in his repertoire (see his personal website www.rdjiii.info) and has started a software consulting company, Contrahere Solutions LLC (see www.contrahere.com). You can reach Robert by going to one of the websites previously mentioned or by e-mail anytime at <[email protected]>. Robert is also an avid racquetball player who travels across the country playing in tournaments as a Team Ektelon player. He is a motorcycle enthusiast and loves to dabble in tech such as Arduino and RaspberryPi in his spare time.
I would like to thank my son Xander Johnson for being the best son I could ever wish for. His love and appreciation drives me to become the best that I can, pushing me forward with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. Xander, I love you and thank you for everything you have and will do to make me a better person.
Alex Lockwood is an experienced developer/consultant in the Android community, and an active user on StackOverflow. His blog can be found at http://www.androiddesignpatterns.com.
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Preface
Long gone are the days of the mobile apps with a static UI squished onto a tiny screen. Today's users expect mobile apps to be dynamic and highly interactive. They expect an app to look fantastic when they're looking at it on their medium-resolution smartphone, and that same app needs to look just as fantastic when they switch over to using it on their high-resolution tablet. Apps need to provide rich navigation features. Also, apps need to be adaptive and responsive.
Trying to meet these demands using Android's traditional activity-centric UI design model is difficult. As developers, we need more control than that afforded by activities. We need a new approach: fragments give us that new approach.
In this book, you'll learn how to use fragments to meet the challenges of creating dynamic UIs in the modern world of mobile app development.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Fragments and UI Modularization, introduces fragments, UI modularization, and the role fragments play in developing a modularized UI. This chapter demonstrates the creation of simple fragments and using fragments statically within activities.
Chapter 2, Fragments and UI Flexibility, builds on the concepts introduced in the previous chapter to provide solutions to specific differences in device layouts. This chapter explains how to use adaptive activity layout definitions to provide support for a wide variety of device form factors, with a small set of fragments that automatically rearrange based on the current device's UI requirements.
Chapter 3, Fragment Lifecycle and Specialization, discusses the relationship of the lifecycle of fragments to that of activities, and demonstrates the appropriate programming actions at the various points in the lifecycle. Leveraging this knowledge, the special purpose fragment classes ListFragment and DialogFragment are introduced to demonstrate their behavior and provide a deeper understanding of how their behavior in the activity lifecycle differs from that of standard fragments.
Chapter 4, Working with Fragment Transactions, explains how to create multiple app screens within a single activity, by dynamically adding and removing fragments using fragment transactions. Topics covered include, implementing back button behavior and dynamically adapting multi-fragment UIs to differences in device characteristics.
Chapter 5, Creating Rich Navigation with Fragments, brings everything together by building on the previous chapters to show how to use fragments to enhance the user's experience through rich navigation features. This chapter demonstrates how to implement a number of navigation features, including screen browsing with swipe-based paging, direct screen access with the drop-down list navigation, and random screen viewing with tabs.
What you need for this book
To follow the examples in this book, you should have a basic knowledge of Android programming and a working Android development environment.
This book focuses primarily on Android Studio as the Android development environment, but other tools such as Eclipse with the ADT plugin, JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA, or a similar Android-enabled development tool can be used.
Who this book is for
This book is for anyone with a basic understanding of Android programming, who would like to improve the appearance and usability of their applications.
Whether you're looking to create a more interactive user experience, create more dynamically adaptive UIs, provide better support for tablets and smartphones in a single app, reduce the complexity of managing your app UIs, or just trying to expand your UI design philosophy, this book is for you.
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Code words in text are shown as follows: "An application initially calls the startActivity method to display an instance of Activity1. Activity1."
A block of code is set as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Select layout as the Resource type."
Note
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Tip
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Chapter 1. Fragments and UI Modularization
This chapter introduces fragments, UI modularization, and the role fragments play in developing a modularized UI. The chapter demonstrates creating simple fragments and using fragments statically within activities.
Let us have a look at the topics to be covered:
By the end of this chapter, we will be able to create and use fragments within a static activity layout.
The need for a new approach to UI creation
Chances are that the first class you learned to use when you became an Android developer was the Activity class. After all, the Activity class provided your app with a user interface. By organizing your user interface components onto an activity, the activity became the canvas on which you were painting your application masterpiece.
In the early days of Android, building an application's user interface directly within an activity worked reasonably well. The majority of early applications had a relatively simple user interface and the number of different Android device form factors was small. In most cases, with the help of a few layout resources, a single activity worked fine across different device form factors.
