Question

I’ve been messing around with this for a few days now, hopefully someone here can lend me a hand.

I have a simple two-column layout, the left side is a navigation bar with buttons, the right side is a content panel. When the user taps one of the buttons (say, the third one down), I’d like to have a floating view aligned to the right of this button but floating on top of the content pane. Here’s a picture to illustrate what I mean:

Everything I’ve tried shoves the floating menu inside the navigation bar or inside the content panel, which is not what I want. Any ideas? Here’s basically what I have so far:

<RelativeLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:orientation="horizontal"
>
    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
        android:id="@+id/navigation_bar"
    >
        <FrameLayout 
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="0.14"
        >
            <ImageButton 
                android:id="@+id/button1_btn"
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:background="@drawable/icon"
                android:layout_gravity="center"
            />
        </FrameLayout>
        <FrameLayout
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_weight="0.14"
        >
            <ImageButton 
                android:id="@+id/button2_btn"
                android:layout_width="wrap_content"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:background="@drawable/icon"
                android:layout_gravity="center"
            />
        </FrameLayout>
    </LinearLayout>
    <FrameLayout
        android:id="@+id/content"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent"
        android:layout_weight="0.14"
        android:layout_toRightOf="@id/navigation_bar"
    >
    </FrameLayout>
</RelativeLayout>

Answer 1

A FrameLayout allows you to have a view overlapping another view. I’m not sure it makes sense to have them with only one child view, as you have in your example. Try having a FrameLayout at the highest level, with your "static" view as the first child element, and the floating menu as the second child.

The developer documents have a good overview the layout types, it might help you get started.