I’m fairly new to android programming (making the switch from Windows programming to Mobile Platforms.)
Problem: Every time I add, let’s say, a text view, I get a green box around it that will put it in a location. When I add multiple text views, I go to place it down under another text view and everything in my app shifts, and moves everything into a stack on the upper left most part of the screen. It seems like every time I move one thing, 5 other things move with it.
Question: Is there a way to disable that function?
Android forces you to develop without a pixel-rigid notation. Basicly you have a set of Layout types (Linear, Relative, etc) that stablish a relation between the child’s elements.
Therefore, it is important to know those Layouts, how can you connect them and how their childs are arranged.
In eclipse you can add elements but some things eclipse doesn’t know how they are related. Eclipse will update the new data, and therefore moving all kind of views out of the way to update into the new hierarquy you defined. Therefore you can’t remove “auto-layout”. Even if you change to Absolute Layout (like David suggested) you are not removing the “auto-layout” feature. You are simply telling eclipse that you want to arrange your things with absolute positioning. However, absolute positioning is not advisable since you have several devices with different resolutions.
I advice you to read some information about Layouts and then try to use the XML. Don’t be afraid. It can become quite easly. Actually, I prefer XML to interface builder in eclipse. After you get some idea how layouts work you can use make a better use of the interface builder.