- Getting to Know Our Tools 4:52
- Android Tools Overview 5 questions
- Editing a Layout File 4:52
- Changing Text in a Layout 1 objective
- Adding a TextView 4:15
- Changing Text Size 1 objective
- Adding a Button 4:31
- Adding a Button 1 objective
- Setting Colors 5:26
- Setting Colors 2 objectives
- Setting Padding 1:13
- Setting a Fullscreen Theme 3:30
- Setting Padding 1 objective
Preview
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Getting to Know Our Tools
4:52Before we start changing anything, let’s take a brief tour of our tools so we can get familiar with what’s on the screen and where we write code or make changes.
[MUSIC]
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Before we start changing anything, let's
take a brief tour of our tools so we can
0:04
get familiar with what's on the screen and
where we write code or make changes.
0:08
The very first thing we want
to do is start our emulator.
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You may already have it up and
running from the previous stage.
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But if you don't, it's a good idea
to start it ahead of time, so
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it'll be ready when you need it.
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Up here in the tool bar
are a few Android buttons.
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This one with the phone is our
Android Virtual Device Manager.
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And here just select the virtual
device you want to run, and
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then click on the Start button.
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Once the emulator window appears, we can
safely close our Virtual Device Manager.
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We don't need to leave it
open to use the emulator.
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All right, while that's loading,
let's take a look at Android Studio.
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On the left-hand side, there should
be a view for the project structure.
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If it's missing or you accidentally
close it, what you can do with
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this button right here,
you can reopen it with this same button.
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Or you can either go up to
View > Tool Windows > Project.
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Or you can go down to the bottom, and
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as we saw before, you can select
Project or other windows from here.
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Also, remember that clicking
this icon toggles whether or
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not we can see the Tool Window
shortcuts around the screen.
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The project view is where we
can see all the files and
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folders that make up our project.
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By default, Android Studio displays our
project files in the Android Project View.
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The Android Project View shows
a trimmed down version of your project
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that provides quick access to the most
important files for Android development.
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Let's click here and
switch to the Project View.
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This view shows our entire project.
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Here we can see our
FunFacts folder at the top.
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Let's expand that.
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Also, notice that our FunFacts folder is
in our Android Studio Projects folder that
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we used when we first created the project.
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In fact, if we switch to Finder or
Windows Explorer,
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we can navigate to our project,
And sure enough,
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we see that these files and folders
match up with what we see over here.
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The most important folder in
our project is the app folder.
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It contains all the resources and
raw materials that make up our app.
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Let's take a look inside
to see how it's structured.
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At the top is a build directory which
contains all the files that are built for
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us by Android Studio.
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We shouldn't ever need to change
anything in the build directory.
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The next one is Libs which is short for
Libraries.
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It contains any optional libraries of
code we might need in our project.
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This will be empty for this project but
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we'll show more on how to use
libraries in later courses.
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Next up is SRC.
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This is the important directory and
it's short for source.
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I know source isn't that long of a word,
but programmers love abbreviations.
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If we expand source,
we can see three more folders.
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The Android test and test folders
are used for different kinds of testing.
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But let's save those for later.
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We are more concerned
with the main folder.
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Inside main are all the files
we'll be working with.
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Java files are placed here in Java folder,
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and then below, we have res,
which is short for resources.
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Resources are everything that we see or
hear in an app.
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So in addition to images and sounds,
it also contains the layout files for
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how our screens will be laid out.
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If we keep going further, then inside res,
we find the layout folder.
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And in here is one file named
activity_fun_facts.xml.
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This is the file that is
already opened over here.
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That's enough about project structure.
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Let's change back to the Android view so
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we don't have to do as much
digging to find the files we want.
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So click up here, and then pick Android.
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Great, now over here, this is
the main section for writing code, or
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designing screen layouts.
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We're currently looking at the Design view
for the activity_fun_facts layout file.
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The Design view is a drag and
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drop editor that lets us visually
manipulate the screen layout.
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In the middle is a preview of how
it should look on a device, and
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it looks just like what we saw a few
minutes ago when we ran the app.
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Next to the preview is a blueprint view,
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which shows us a little more detail
about how all our views are positioned.
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When designing screen layouts,
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sometimes we want to modify the code
directly instead of using the design view.
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To modify the XML code, we can just click
on the Text tab here at the bottom.
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Also, if you've clicked on the Text tab
and you're not seeing a preview over here,
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you can show and hide the preview
by clicking on thisPreview button.
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All right,
that should be enough to get us started.
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In the next video,
we'll start making some changes.
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