Too far, too fast, in Eclipse

I should start with something smaller than CM7

Published on October 7, 2011 By CerebroJD In Mobile Tech

I'm fairly certain that importing CM7 into eclipse first wasnt a good step. I really dont know enough yet to do much with it besides build it, and that is all done on the command line anyways. Its just cluttering up eclipse now, so I'm gonna take it out and just work with a basic project and play around with layouts.

The logic for the search should be straightforward, so I'll have to dig up my Java book and start picking away at that, in between dodging around layout stuff. There seems to be two ways to build around the layout of an application. You can either do it on the Java side, or in XML layout files. The XML direction is clearly the better option, since it allows for easy translation and correction of strings in a separate file from layout and programming.

Getting the SDK set up didnt take too long, but I gotta say... the emulator runs slow as HELL on this netbook! It'd almost be better to just use remote desktop into one of my better machines and have THAT one running the emulator, but that'd be a joke to try to get that set up.

Next step will be playing around with the layout xml files, and learning how the ldpi/mdpi/hdpi devices are separated, since theres probably some level of duplication thats created when building for each.

Comments

impinc

on Oct 07, 2011

Yeah, the layout certainly takes some getting used to. I've been trying to learn how to do things programmatically for the most part. It can certainly cut down the time it takes to design the app's UI.

The emulator is slow seemingly whatever computer it runs on. I'd suggest getting an android phone if you can, as it runs much faster on an actual device (though when running in debug, it will always run slower than when not in debug mode).

As far as the l/m/hdpi folders, I still only use m. I just don't want the app to be bloated with extra image files. Most files stretch, and look fine. I suppose if you're going for absolute quality, you could include 3 versions of each image file (one for each screen density, not to be confused with screen resolution). I've found it's not necessary in most cases.

One big pain in the ass when designing the UI for android is that there are so many screen sizes, with a few different aspect ratios. So far, what I've gone with is to design on one screen size, and have everything resize using multipliers of the screen size. Most of the time, you can just use fill_parent, and creative use of linearlayouts though.

While I'm no expert yet, if you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I've been heavily into eclipse, and the android SDK for a few months now.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!