Question

Basically, I have a view that needs to be split up into a 2×4 grid, with each section equal in size (i.e. each row would be 25% of the screen height, and each column would be 50% of the screen width).

My approach was to use a horizontal LinearLayout with two inner LinearLayouts with a weight of 0.5 and then in each of those LinearLayouts set the weight of the children to 0.25 so that each one takes up 25% of the screen.

Although this seems to work, this is apparently very bad for performance (see this thread for a reason why Why are nested weights bad for performance? Alternatives?)

Are there any alternatives to achieve this? I have had a look around but I can’t find a pure XML solution to this.

See below a code example of how I have the LinearLayouts and their children setup

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="horizontal"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:baselineAligned="false"
    android:weightSum="1.0"
    >
    <LinearLayout
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:layout_width="0dip"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:layout_weight="0.5"
        android:weightSum="1.0">        
            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />

            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />

            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />

            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />
    </LinearLayout>

    <LinearLayout
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:layout_width="0dip"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:layout_weight="0.5"
        android:weightSum="1.0">        
            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />

            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />

            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />

            <ImageView 
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="0dip"
                android:src="@drawable/example"
                android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
                android:layout_weight="0.25"
            />
    </LinearLayout>
</LinearLayout>

Answer 1

You might want to give the GridLayout a spin.

There’s also a library that makes it available to 1.6+ devices.