Now, I will discuss some basic activities related to android studio. After you will get to know about how to use an android studio, and what are the basic widgets we use in it.
Everyone needs to learn about the android studio as all android apps are made on these tools. So, one should be familiar with the tool. And after learning it, you should be able to start with it.
What’s in it for me?
Now, I will discuss the above points in detail which will help you to understand the Android Studio.
if you are new to this blog then read the introduction to android – Android Development
Activities
The activities are the fundamental model of an app and the way they are launched to make our basic application model.
There is an Activity life cycle which we need to study which can give about how it works and how to use it for our model. There are 12 activities available in the android studio which I will discuss some of them in detail below.
Basic Activity
It is the basic activity which we use when we have to make a basic app that has a functionality of menu option in the corner and add option is for the addition of some new files into it. This is the activity we use after starting our android journey.
Empty Activity
It is mostly used in the starting as it is easy to learn in this activity as the whole layout is empty. And beginner can easily understand its functionality.
Bottom Navigation Activity
It contains the bottom navigation which we can specify various functions with it. Like if we want to go to the next slide we can specify thereon in the bottom right corner, and if on to the previous slide then bottom left corner. It is just an example of it.
Full-Screen Activity
This activity is used for showing the items in full screen as we use many apps like YouTube for seeing the video in full-screen mode, it is made for this.
When a user wants his/her app to works on Full Screen.
Master/Detail Flow
It is an interface design concept in which a list of items is displayed to the user. When the user clicks on it additional information about the user can be seen.
An example can be Facebook in which when you click on the item of a user then you see in-depth knowledge of the user like user address, email id, etc. if a user has needed its position on it.
Navigation Drawer Activity
This Activity is a sliding left menu that is used to show the important links related to the app like about us section, contact section, and much more. It is not always visible by default you have to slide it out from left towards right. It is used in almost every application.
Google Maps Activity
It is used for getting or receiving location purposes. Its example can be Zomato it receives your location and delivers the food at your house. When you need that your application is like that you want to access someone’s location you need to use it.
Login Activity
This activity is used for login or signup purposes. When a user comes to your app, you first take its credential so you can contact him through email/phone number or more IDs, which is necessary.
I have explained almost every activity above, other things you will get to know by yourself when you start learning it. And one thing more All the above activities can be made by the use of empty activity only, you not need to choose other activities if your app is complex.
Widgets
Widgets are one of the important aspects of layout customization. In this you can imagine your app important data and customize accordingly.
You can move the widgets by clicking on them and dragging onto your layout and with the help of the attributes section you can change widget characteristics like color, size, and much more.
There are many widgets available but I will discuss some basics of them so you can get an overview of it.
TextView
It is used for specifying a view in which you write your text. There are several types of text view like plain text view, password, number, etc. you can use the type according to your usage.
And many attributes are available for enhancing your text view like size, color, background, etc. which are used for like a designing.
Buttons
It is used for placing buttons in your application. In it you can specify your text related to your activity and when the user clicks on it you can specify the task which you want to perform through it.
It is an attractive way to perform your tasks. You can use attributes for this section too which have been discussed in the text view.
ImageView
It is used for placing the image in your app. One of the good functionality in android studio.
ProgressBar
When there is loading in your application there is a bar that is there is a studio that shows loading when the user is waiting for it.
Maps
You can use maps in your activity from here also in which you can access the location of the user and use it for your business.
There are many more Widgets available but in the starting you will use Text views and Buttons and somewhere image view because it is the base of an application, after which you can move on and learn other widgets.
Folders
Now I will discuss some basic folders which are available on the left-hand side in the project section. You need it to know how to use them before moving forward.
Manifests
It is one of the important folders in which all the specifications of the app are mentioned like app name, the theme of the app, necessary files for the launching of an app.
When you get some error in the launching of the app or some compiler error you should first look out this file, that something shouldn’t be missed here.
Java
In this section the main class Activity is shown in which we have to code to specify some features of the widgets which we have read in the previous section. We will code for specifying what we have to do with the text views or Buttons.
Res
It consists of 4 folders named as drawable, layouts, mipmap, values. I will describe each in brief.
Drawable
It is related to the files which store all the images which we use in the app. And some images have come stored previously in Android studio. We use it with the help Image View in our app.
Layouts
The layouts refer to the activities we use in our whole app, it shows all the activities list in one frame. One has to use many activities in an app so you have to use different layouts for it.
Mipmap
It is the collection of all the icons of an app. You can store the icons then first you have to store it in the mipmap folder, and use it afterward.
Values
It is basically for storing some values of the app like String resources, color, and style of the app. There is shown what theme you have chosen in style resources one can change it. Then you can change color resources after transversing to the file.
Conclusion
In conclusion I have shared all the basic details of the most powerful tool of android development, Now you have to go and start building great apps and with that your bright future.
Also Read- Best Tech YouTube Channels
FAQs
Now, I will take some questions to the best of my knowledge for beginners and try to answer them intuitively.
You can make an app to an extent that can be used easily for a customer, but for making big E-commerce apps or social apps like Facebook, Amazon, or comparable to them. You have to learn more things like ML, deep learning, and algorithms related to it. And then some software which makes it easy for making your app super efficient like TensorFlow and much more will be needed. So, Android studio is just starting, you have to go beyond for making advanced apps like Facebook, Amazon.
If you want to grow in the field of Android Development only and make apps for Playstore then you have to learn Android Studio. But you can also make apps using flutter as I have described in my previous blogs. And one also can use react framework to make an app which will be helpful for cross-platform also.
But for starting with Android one should know Android Studio, then only he/she lookout for other ways to develop apps.
So, I think I would be able to provide you descent knowledge of the android studio in detail and it would be enough to start looking out for your career in android development.
Happy Coding…
