Question

I’m having trouble developing the UI for my first lame “game”.

Here is a screenshot.

I’m using a LinearLayout that contains a TableLayout with TableRows. It seems so tedious and hard to control the position of elements.

For example, to get things to line up, I’ve inserted empty TextViews to “push” other elements into place.

I’ve also added padding to the buttons to get them to be the size I want.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You definitely want to be using a Relative Layout for this.

You would be able to specify where each button is in relation to other buttons.

Absolutely AVOID developing your UIs the way you are currently trying. The TextViews will be different sizes for different distributions of Android, and will likely only look right on the device you tested them for.

EDIT:

If you need empty space, use the XML attribute android:weightSum="x" in the parent view and android:layout_weight=”y” in the child. This will make the child take up (y/x) of the space allotted to it in the layout_height and layout_width.

EDIT:

I think another good bit of advice for this would be to use individual layouts for things like your “direction” buttons. You’ll be able to handle where they are on the screen as a group, instead of having to move each individually.