Question

I want to create a component that will appear as a navigation menu for an Android application. Basically, the custom component is a rectangular “Div” (to use HTML terms) that contains six buttons. Each button provides a link to another part of the application. I want to use this on every “page”, so I want to make it easy to maintain.

What is the recommended class to extend for creating custom components like this? (I’ve seen the “Widget” class, but not sure If this should only be used for widget that appear outside the app (like Google search))

And

Is the process as simple as creating the custom “Widget” class with it’s own XML layout and then adding it to each Activity class?

Answer 1

The class to extend is View, the Widget class is for widgets in the homescreen. This is a nice doc to read: Building Custom Components, I suggest to look at the Compound Controls section, that seems suitable for your problem.

Is the process as simple as creating the custom “Widget” class with it’s own XML layout and then adding it to each Activity class?

Yes, once you have written your own view, you just have to add it to your layouts in the XML (just like you do with the android views), something like this:

<com.your.package.YourNiceView
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"/>