Linear, Relative, Constraint, Table, Frame and so on and so forth. Android applications have a whole bunch of layouts to choose from when you want to design your application. The question is, which one is the best?
Before we go into detailing the different layouts, we’ll first go over the view object hierarchy and Android’s drawing process.
View and ViewGroup
Think of ViewGroup as the parent class of any view and also, the base class for layouts. It represents an object which is the container for other views. For example, a LinearLayout is a ViewGroup since it can contain views and other layouts as well.
View, on the other hand, is the basic building block of UI elements. Views can be a part of a ViewGroup. For example, a TextView is a View.
Measure -> Layout -> Draw -> Repeat
Layouts are saved as XML files in Android. But how do they get converted to the objects we see on the screen? Each XML file gets instantiated (read: inflated) and a view hierarchy tree is formed. This means that if you have layout B that is nested inside layout A, they will have a child — parent relationship (layout A is the parent of layout B). Once the tree is formed, there are 3 phases that will happen: Measure, Layout and Draw. Each of these phases traverses the tree in a Depth First Search order.
Measure
In the first phase, each parent node figures out certain constraints its children have regarding their size. It passes these limitations downward to its children, where each child will evaluate its own size (how big it wants to be) and take into consideration the limitations it has been given and its children’s limitations.
Layout
Here, each node will decide the final size and position of each of its children on the screen.
Draw
Starting from the root node, which draws itself, it then tells its children to draw themselves. In this fashion, what happens is that a parent will be drawn and its children will be drawn on top of it.
Keeping the process above in mind, you should try to keep the layout of your application as shallow as possible so as to reduce the time it takes to traverse the view hierarchy
Layouts Breakdown
Linear
Organizes its children in a row with an orientation of vertical or horizontal. Meaning, the views will either be all in one row or one column. You can specify the direction by using the android:orientation attribute.
One interesting feature a Linear Layout has is the layout_weight attribute. This is used to tell Linear Layout how to divide the space between child views. It is useful when you want your layout to be consistent among devices and orientations.
Let’s say you wanted the first TextView, containing the word Hello, to always take up 3/4 of the screen’s width. To do this, we can use the layout_weight attribute.
Relative
As the name implies, this layout will set its inner child views in relative position. This can keep your layout hierarchy flat with no nested view groups. At the same time, however, each Relative Layout has to undergo a process of two Measure passes, which can impact performance.
One useful feature of a RelativeLayout is the ability to center a child view by using the centerInParent attribute.
Constraint
A constraint is a connection or an alignment to the element the constraint is tied to. You define various constraints for every child view relative to other views present. This gives you the ability to construct complex layouts with a flat view hierarchy (no nested ViewGroups). Similar to RelativeLayout, this layout also requires two Measure passes.
Frame
This layout is used only to hold a single child view, thus blocking any other view in the layout. The layout itself will be as big as its biggest child view (visible or not), plus some padding.
Avoid having several child views inside a FrameLayout since it will be difficult to avoid the child views from overlapping one another. You can control the positions of these child views by assigning the layout_gravity attribute to each child.
List View/Grid View
Use when you have a need to present several items on screen (like in a restaurant menu). List View is a single column list that the user can scroll through. You can think of Grid View as a List View with more than one column.
What is important to know about these layouts is that the Views are dynamic and created at runtime. To make the items populate at runtime, you need to use an AdapterView.
TableLayout
Very similar to Grid View, this layout arranges its children into rows and columns. Each layout will contain several TableRow objects, each defining a row.
Don’t be afraid to try different layouts until you find the one that works best for you. Feel free to let me know in the comments below which layout is most useful to you and why.