Question

I dread designing UI for Android apps, and I have been searching and trying every possible combination of things to get this the way I want it, but I just cannot seem to get it right.

I want to have a simple Android app that has a text field and a send button next to each other on the bottom of the screen (I already have this correct), and I also want a functional chat area filling the rest of the screen above.

It obviously needs to be scrollable, and I would like to be able to add a new line to the bottom of the chat by doing something like chatBox.add(username, text).

This is the type of view I am looking for:

<bob> my name is bob
<bill> hi bob, my name is bill!
<bob> we are having an awesome conversation, bill
<bill> both of our names start with a b
<bob> how right you are

Answer 1

I had made such app. For chat window I used listView. ListView has stackFromBottom mode. So the last added messages will be on the bottom of ListView. Also I created custom Adapter extending ArrayAdapter, so it is easy to add new messages.

Here is a nice example, how to use listView with adapter and add new items.