Question

I find myself using RelativeLayout more than any other types of layouts in Android XML files. Given that my apps use primarily simple and basic interfaces, it is quite easy to bang out a new RelativeLayout.

Currently I create a RelativeLayout and I assign each component of the layout properties such as Layout Below, or Layout Left, or Layout Right to anchor that component to the correct area of the user’s interface.

While it’s easy to define new layouts, it’s hell trying to move a single component within a layout. Given that I’ve used components in my layout to space other components, once a component is moved, the layout around that component falls apart. Moving a component means I have to re-do the relationship for all components below that one. Surely I am doing this wrong? There must be a better way?

TL;DR I use RelativeLayouts and the components I put in the UI to space one-another relatively (of course). If I move a component say to the top, the items below it break as the relative relationship breaks. How can I more easily move components around and experiment with my UI without renaming tens of spacial relationships each time?!

Answer 1

This is one of the cases where the tooling is preferable over hand-coding the layout XML. Editing the XML using the Graphical Layout tab helps ease lot of this pain of refactoring RelativeLayouts. It is not the perfect solution, but it does make things a lot easier.

I should point out that these changes have come about in ADT 14 and newer. If you are using any older ADT, I suggest you upgrade. In case you do not know how to use the Graphical Editor to get the most out of your RelativeLayouts, check out this video.

Having said that, the inflexibility of RelativeLayout is the main reason I prefer using nested LinearLayouts over the former – in spite of Google’s suggestions to use the former for performance reasons.

As a compromise, I use RelativeLayout only for items in a ListView, and nested LinearLayouts for everything else.